Love Me Deadly (1973)

Absolutely amazing

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Blistering performances.

Lindsay Finch (Mary Charlotte Wilcox, The Beast of the Yellow Night and Psychic Killer) loves to go to funerals, where she mourns and then kisses the dead men passionately after everyone else leaves. Throw in a theme song that sounds like it comes out of James Bond while we see flashbacks of her relationship with her dead father and visiting his grave and pigtails and I'm all in.She has swinging hippie parties at her pad and her friend Wade (Christopher Stone, the late husband of Dee Wallace who appeared with her in Cujo and The Howling) tries to get with her. Just when it seems she's giving in to his makeout moves, she screams at him to stop and he calls her a bitch, because this is 1973. She dreams of her father in yellow hued flashbacks and hugs a stuffed animal.Later, she goes through the funeral notices to find the services for young men. We then meet Fred McSweeney, a mortician, as he picks up a male prostitute. That job is just a cover for his true love - a Satanic coven that meets at night, inside the mortuary, where they have orgies with dead bodies. McSweeney takes the young man to his workplace where he pumps the manwhore full of embalming fluid while he's still alive, all while Lindsay goes to another funeral where she tries to make out with Bobby. She's surprised by Alex (Lyle Waggoner, TV's The Carol Burnett Show and Wonder Woman, as well as the honor of being the first nude centerfold in Playgirl and the appointed mayor of Encino, California), the man's brother.Speaking of that embalming scene, it goes on and on and on, with the young man screaming, "I'm blind!" over and over. It's nearly campy instead of frightening. To say this film has an issue with tone is an understatement.Lindsay sneaks out to Bobby's funeral, where she starts to associate Alex with her father. He's a rich gallery owner and they begin a romance - one she refuses to consummate, even after they are eventually married. Every time she sees him, we get yellow hued flashbacks with a music box soundtrack of her playing with her father. But more about that in a little, OK?McSweeney speaks to Lindsay after he catches her at a funeral, telling her that he has a group that she should join. Yet she tries to remain normal, even going on a date with Wade that fails. That's when she decides to see what McSweeney's group is all about.She walks into an orgy with the dead, which freaks her out enough to go back home. Then she and Alex fall in love with no dialogue, just a montage. It's a strange part of an incredibly strange film, with this happy go lucky relationship coming out of nowhere in a film otherwise about sex with dead people.Lindsay keeps talking to the cult and ends up getting a dead body of her very own. But Wade follows her and is killed by McSweeney. She screams in horror. This scene wasn't n the original script, nor was the Satanic group in the one that follows, but were used to pad out the film and add more horror elements so that it would potentially play drive-ins better.Again - tone being all over the place - we're treated to a nude cult disrobing Wade's corpse and having their way with it before Lindsay awakes screaming. But the marriage isn't working out well, with Alex following her all over town and their maid - complete with the most stereotypical Irish accent ever - telling him that his wife spends her days at her father's grave, wearing pigtails and dressed like a little girl. You should see the look on Alex's face when he catches her as she yells, "This is not your place, go away!"Alex tries to get Lindsay to go on a holiday to visit his mother, but he discovers a registered letter from McSweeney to his wife for a meeting at 10 PM. He follows her to the mortuary where he discovers his wife surrounded by nude devil worshippers as she makes love to a dead body. She looks frightened and then McSweeney murders Alex, which calms her.McSweeney drugs her as she lies in her bed, then brings in her husband, now embalmed so he can last forever, finally a man who she can be attracted to: the combination of her father - who we see in flashback being shot accidentally by her - and the man she fell in love with. The editing here - combined with dissonate instruments and a remix of the title theme - is crazy, like this film has suddenly become Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.We see intercut shots of Linday getting under the covers with her dead husband and her getting in the coffin with her father as everything goes sepia tone and the theme song returns.Love Me Deadly isn't for everyone. It's one of those films that I hesitate to recommend to normal folks. But it is the kind of movie I text people about in the middle of the night.

I have a theory that this film got Lyle Waggoner dismissed from The Carol Burnett Show (he left the series the following season, by mutual agreement).Regardless, by today's standards, it's not that shocking. The copy of the film I have seems to have been carefully edited, and not as violent or graphic as I recall it being in the theater production.By 1973 standards, it was quite a shocker...very graphic and gory, complete with a gay subtext. As I recall, it was loosely based around a real-life Los Angeles "cult" of funeral home "lovers of dead" psychos. The story is fiction, but, who knows what goes on behind the closed doors at funeral homes? The acting isn't too bad, and it's fun watching Lyle play against type. The star is quite pretty, too, and she plays her role well. Her hunky boyfriend does a good job of...well, being prepared for cold sex (and so does poor Lyle).In the right frame of mind, this comes across well. In fact, I'd love to see the original, uncut version one day, on widescreen DVD, but I ain't holdin' my breath. This is lurid stuff, and it ain't likely to see the DVD "light of day".If you do see this "sicky", just don't take it too seriously, and it might be fun to watch.

Actually quite a well-made and off-beat thriller for its time; a Mr. Lobianco who wrote another "review" actually sounds quite a bit on the homophobic side, as the film has a brief bit of gay content but certainly NOT the "gay plot" he has it being. And there is certainly nothing wrong in the least with having gay content in a film to begin with. Actually well worth the time of viewing it; but out-of-print now to my knowledge. Mary Wilcox is not bad at all in the lead role; Lyle Waggoner is as wooden as a board as her devoted hubby; I saw no traces of a satanic cult in evidence, despite what a couple other viewers wrote. Definitely a necrophiliac cult, but satanism is not mentioned. The film's topic would be unusual in a film even today, let alone 1972 when the film originally played theaters. Actually quite surprising none of the multiple DVD companies have ever released this on home video, nor to my knowledge do they have an plans to do so. Considering some of the utter rubbish put out on the medium, it would be nice if one of them would make this available in a widescreen transfer for home libraries.

To be honest, when one reads the synopsis of this film one expects the worst. Surprisingly, this is an engaging and frank study both of necrophilia and of a daughter's inability to let go of the past.Helped along by a very professional sounding theme tune (sung by Kit Fuller), and a lively score echoing films of much more mainstream cinema, this is a shocking film that will make you think for a long time afterwards. Unfortunately, the good acting and imaginative story is let down by some chronically bad editing - particularly when we are suddenly introduced to the character of Alex - but this aside, you should find much more to enjoy about this movie than you will find to dislike about it."Love Me Deadly" is to necrophilia what "Max Mon Amour" is to bestiality: one of the last taboos to be tackled in an grown-up fashion, but which can be appreciated by an audience without needing to visit a seedy sex-shop; where story comes first, and titillation is far down the line.