Like most films in this sub-genre, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie is more a visceral, emotional experience than an intellectual one. Leave your logic at the door and you’ll do fine. That’s not meant as a backhanded compliment either. Though weak on plot and characterization, the film is filled with moments of genuine uneasiness and terror (the first time we spot a zombie as it shuffles toward Edna; George and Edna stuck in a crypt as the dead awaken; the finale in a hospital as the living dead dish out a little payback). Grau sustains the paranoid and oppressive mood throughout, as well as the strangeness of the entire experience. Even the seemingly ridiculous premise of the ultrasound waves causing the dead to rise plays out with a surrealistic plausibility.

Unfortunately, what keeps the film from ranking as a classic of its genre (unlike Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, or The Beyond) is Grau’s naïve and laughably simplistic ecological and sociological stances, as well as the outdated Youth vs. The Man premise. The character of George, who we are supposedly meant to identify with, comes across as a thoroughly rude and obnoxious bastard who, despite his long hair and leather jacket, is just as close-minded and bullying as the reactionary cop, McCormick.

That said, Let Sleeping Corpses Lie does deliver when it’s needed most, and the film’s influence over the years is by no means a fluke. Fulci’s own zombie films -- especially City of the Walking Dead -- owe a huge debt to Grau’s film, even down to Fulci’s zombies mimicking the death-rattle howls of Grau’s living dead creatures.

Francisco Sempere’s cinematography beautifully casts the English countryside in a lush-though-naturalistic light. The tension and eventual nightmare that unfolds is appropriately incongruous in such a seemingly placid setting. The special makeup effects by Giannetto De Rossi -- who would later go on to work on Fulci’s Zombie, City of the Walking Dead, The Beyond, and Antonio Margheriti’s Cannibal Apocalypse, among others -- are excellent and relatively subdued for a film of this kind.

Director Jorge Grau gives a short and amusing introduction to his film on Anchor Bay’s DVD. The disc also includes an entertaining and fascinating 20-minute interview with the director, as well as a poster and stills gallery, and some rather hilarious radio spots.