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Graverobbers/aka "Dead Mate" (1988)

Dir: Straw Weisman.

We first meet Nora Mae Edwards (Elizabeth Mannino) lying in a white satin lined coffin just as a figure looms into shot, tears open her nightgown, rips apart her stomach (with bobbing spare ribs and lots of red jelly on show) and pulls out her heart!
Luckily it's all a nightmare and Nora, slightly shaken, goes to work as a waitress at a diner

Rejecting the advances of a condom salesman, who flashes his wares and offers a personal demonstration, by spitting in his coffee (as all good waitresses should) a tired Nora suddenly sees a new customer enter.

For some strange reason (seemingly a bit of the old hypnotism!) she decides to take up the customer's sudden offer of marriage and promptly leaves with him!
He's named John Henry Cox (Surely a play on penis words… David Gregory), he's creepy and he owns a funeral home! What a catch!

He drives her to his home town of Newbury where she is immediately introduced to a variety of local dignitaries that all act in a suitably sinister way ("He's quite a lady killer you know"!), discovers that Henry has been married before and, still in a dazed state, is promptly hitched to him! All on the same night!
In their cold marital bed Henry tells Nora she must lie perfectly still as he makes love to her.
As still as a corpse maybe? Hmmm…

The next day the body of a young woman (mysteriously run off the road in her car) is brought to the funeral home, and a suspicious Nora witnesses a strange ritual where a group of locals, including her new Husband, strip the body, fondle it (a wonderfully sick scene of multiple hands all groping away) and to some easy- listening pop tunes carry out a macabre electrical treatment, after which a horrified Nora hears someone say "It's safe sex now…you can't catch AIDS from dead people", this results in the immortal line from Nora, "I think the honeymoon is over".
But what now for poor Nora and who can she trust…?

Written and Directed by Straw Weisman (the scribe of the Grindhouse/42nd Street semi-classic "Fight for your Life") this is one of the ultra cheap schlock efforts Produced for Lew Mishkin at the tail end of the old school Indy production line, that was by now in a sad and sorry state.
And sure enough "Graverobbers" lives up to these petty low expectations.

Weird and sinister are the key words here!
Everyone is just so damn weird and so damn sinister.
We have a weird and sinister Sheriff ("Everyone needs a good scare once in a while, don't yer think"), weird and sinister ambulance guys ("She sure is cute! One of the cutest dead girls I ever saw"), a weird and sinister (and mute) morgue attendant, weird and sinister school girls, a weird and sinister Librarian ("See you at the funeral") and…oh hell, lets cut to the chase, the whole damn town is weird and sinister!!

In reality, I think I can say with certainty, Nora would flee this creepy town as soon as she sees the grotesque goings on (let alone still sleep with her whacked out Husband), but to give us a film Nora, we assume, is a natural sleuth and wants to get to the bottom of the mystery.
After a brisk start (the whole marriage business takes a scant 15 minutes) the film slows down drastically, but the twisted visuals, overwrought dialogue and camp performances all conspired to keep this viewer (who really should know better) interested.

The full-on gore of the opening leads into the suffocating weirdness and paranoia of Newbury's inhabitants and we have this bizarre set-up shoved into our faces with the car crash victim's dead body being molested by the Ambulance men who take it away!
One of them cuts off the dead girls bra, feels her breasts, kisses her (as fluid dribbles out of her mouth) and, off screen, is joined by the driver for added necro fun.

Gore/violence scenes are few but fun and include a cheap and cheerful shovel decapitation, a knife in the hand, maggoty bodies ("Have you met my first Wife"), a wonderfully whacked out skin shredding biker zombie and the aforementioned stomach ripping/heart removal sequence.
But the basic sleazy idea of the film, and the general craziness of the whole exercise, means there is always something to entertain between the cheap FX.

Acting is camp and overwrought (especially from the amazingly amateur Elizabeth Marrino, who delivers all her cheesy lines at the level of a school play) but it somehow suits the film's 'so bad it's good' style (and this really is an honest example of that oft overused term) and you can't help but feel a warm and fuzzy glow towards all involved in this low budget madness.
An hysterical voiceover by Nora, as she looks through a book and sexual desires (cue some random topless photos), is an acting highlight as she utters, with all the limited passion that Ms Mannino can muster up, "There are even people whose bizarre tastes run to sexual acts including…intercourse with the dead"!
Other thespian gems include a wonderful rant by the Sheriff (Larry Bockius) aimed at Nora and the wide-eyed gurning of the cleaver wielding café owner Ma (Nevada Belle, who in NO way resembles the image her name conjures up).

But things do go rather pear shaped at the end where the light hearted, semi-comic goings on are replaced by outright dumb comedy that really throws the movie out of orbit and quite frankly was a big mistake.
Think of something on the level of the most annoyingly in-joke filled comedic sludge that curses many 'Troma' films and you will be someway there in understanding the badness of the finale 'twist'.

Recently released on a double header DVD with that other cheap as hell Lew Mishkin production "Monstrosity" (from an ageing and down on his luck Andy Milligan), "Graverobbers" is silly, cheap, cheesy, camp, sleazy, amateurish and, until the throwaway parody ending, is lots of low brow fun.
It shouldn't be fun…it really shouldn't…but it is!
It's fun I tell you! I'm not mad. I'm not…You have to believe me!!