Love Me Deadly

Love Me Deadly (Secrets Of The Death Room) Directed By Jacques Lacerte, starring Mary Charlotte Wilcox (1973).
An Ann Coulter looking scraggly blonde, has an unhealthy compulsion to shack up with withered, smelly, deceased bodies. Her main problem is that she carries an aversion to anyone living who touches her. This is the single credit for director Lacerte, who never worked in film ever again, I wonder if he ever became aware of corpse-fucking-auteur Jorg Buttgereit, who up until this day and age has relished in continued and well deserved success and cinematic accolades. Fornicating with the dead is where the link begins and ends, because Love Me Deadly is missing all the style and depth that Nekromantik has, it is one of the earliest examples of using main characters that are necrophiliacs (or corpse humpers) as a problem among normal society. It's shock value is more subtle in a tame kind of earth tone way.

Is that a car crash? Me so horny!

   I first became aware of it by way of the trailer on Mad Ron's Prevues and it's twisted in a 70's T.V. melodramatic fashion with extraordinary dull characters. Half the of them are full blown satanists, who's hobbies include embalming still living victims and yet it all borders on dreadfully tedious! It's not terrible, just alittle straight laced for the subject matter it's handling, that's the worst part of it! There's even a little schmaltzy Dionne Warwick style theme song (look for the 45 on ebay possibly).

rigor mortis is my mating call

 Lindsay Finch (Wilcox) has all kinds of daddy issues, which are shown during the credits, there's not a therapist in sight in this film and one should really step in and help these freaks! During her groovy 70's soiree she's almost raped by some bohunk (an young Christopher Stone later from The Howling) and after that incident actually checks the obituaries, like Beetlejuice would, looking for stiffs to snoggle. After accidentally smushing in a corpse's face by gently touching it (the mortician's work ruined, thank you very much)! She then bumps into Lyle Wagoner, who she's instantly attracted to because he looks like her dead father. This is some disturbing shit for 1973, so why am I struggling to recommend this film? You'll see what I mean if you bother to watch it, it's definitely creepy, although not beyond the pale (I'll just chalk it up my being too desensitized once again)!

Let crack open this Human Pinata!

While she's out, there's a satanic sect leader/ mortician out trolling for male prostitutes to use in his disgusting ritual, he callously jabs an embalming needle into a victims arm and floods his arteries with the poison fluid (all while he struggles and says "No, Don't Cut me"). This scene is pretty ghastly, but done in a tame kind of 70's beige fashion.

That's right folks in GAY COLOR!

   Love Me Deadly isn't far off in portraying satanists and necrophiliacs as gravitating toward funerals looking for ritualistic or sexual kicks and my favorite aspect is that they support one another's bizarre quirks! So there, they have their own support group and don't need someone with a P.H.D!
   Fred Mcsweeney (Timothy Scott) who's constantly out murdering prostitutes for Satan anyway, decides to lead Lindsay into her first sexual encounter with a dead body, how quaint, aye? Fred looks sort of like Eric Idle and warns her never to divulge the secrets of his devil cult. I should also mention there's no element of police or authority and all of these sickos are able to do what thou wilt (to quote some English occult figure). All of Lindsay's relationships are creepy and she starts to become more involved with Alex Martin (Waggoner of Carol Burnett fame), who's so out of it, that he has no knowledge of her unhealthy fixation on cold, smelly, lifeless bodies. They even end up getting married and she can only get it up if she imagines he's her dead father, how nauseating can you get?

That's it I'm going back to my old flame on The Carol Burnett show, Harvey Korman!

   I recommend seeing this sober, if that sounds unlike any other review on TOG, than you're right! I was pretty wasted when I first saw this and its too complicated to figure out, while heavily inebriated. I recommend watching it twice if possible. This film is disturbing, a little dull, but it's rewarding in its own way.  The reward is kind of like a bad burrito that sinks to the bottom of your stomach and haunts you in your nightmares! A few days after I watched this, it just seemed like all the creepiness seeps in, especially when you consider how the main protagonist finally gets exactly what she was looking for in the first place, a nice role in the hay with a corpse that looks like her dead father!

EXCEPTIONALLY CREEPY, MAY NEED THERAPY LATER!

Noway am I putting that thing near my face!