Deadly Business: ‘I Sell the Dead’ Review

It's hard to find a great horror comedy; unfortunately the majority of horror comedy is in 'spoof' form. Wading through the many idiotic spoof films is like trying to fight your way out of the post office during an employee riot. Everywhere you look, there's blood, guts, and neuroses. And not even the entertaining kind. But finally, --we have I Sell the Dead, --a real horror comedy. It's a movie in comic book form, with ghouls, and zombies, and most fabulously of all, vampires.

The story follows Arthur Blake, who became the partner of Willie Grimes, when he was a child. The two are reprimanded after being set-up by competing grave robbers. After Grimes is beheaded, Arthur Blake confesses his life of crime and corpse stealing to a priest, Father Duffy, played by Ron Perlman. Blake tells of a mad doctor, who constantly demands more corpses, keeping them in the poorhouse for years before they stumble upon a very unique corpse.

The two yank the stake out of the corpse's chest, after removing her necklace of garlic, and of course, the vampire woman sprints off, and sends them out chasing her down. After much theatrics, the two manage to re-stake her, --and send her right along to their doctor friend, who, as you can imagine, doesn't cause them too much more trouble. And no, this vampire doesn't sparkle, --she screams, gurgles, and is rather graceless.

The vampire is just one of the many things Blake and Grimes pick up during their late-night rounds through the graveyards. They also pick up some competition, from a family of crazy Irish circus freaks. The whole movie is like a documentary on all the crazy things that can happen to you had you chosen grave-robber as a career path. Plus it all takes place in the poorer classes of Victorian England, --excessive drinking, profanity, and prostitution! Altogether, great fun!

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