An unnamed lonely gravedigger (director Grace Glowicki) from a long line of gravediggers (Family Motto: Dig deep. Dig hard. Never stop digging.) yearns for a worthy man to love, a good man to love her back. The problem is that her dedication to the job makes the gravedigger smell of corpses; her flesh, hair and clothes emit a putrid rot that would turn aside any potential suitor. She experiments with botanicals whose scents might mask the stink of death, but to no avail. Her loneliness builds until the untimely death and burial of a famous opera diva (Leah Doz) brings the deceased’s mourning brother (Ben Petrie) into her graveyard. Catching her gaze, the brother professes a strong attraction to the gravedigger’s malodorous state, rather than the repulsion she’s used to.
An intense relationship follows, but the man admits to the gravedigger that he has sterility issues that make their desire for children and a family difficult. He elects to travel abroad for a new experimental procedure to treat his infertility, but en route home he is lost at sea, only his ring finger bearing the symbol of their love retrieved to be returned to the stunned and heartbroken gravedigger.
Dig deep. Dig hard. Never stop digging. The gravedigger refuses to give up on her love, and sets out to use her botanical skills to grow her lover back from the severed. Which only succeeds in growing an exceptionally elongated and comical animate finger that desires a body. Thankfully, there’s the dead body of her lover’s opera-singer-sister just outside. Only the aristocratic former husband (Lowen Morrow) of this corpse might object, and the creature the gravedigger forms might be more monster than lover.
Dead Lover starts with short instruction on “Stink-o-Vision”, a numbered scratch-n-sniff card that accompanies the movie to fit with the gravedigger’s odor and other scents related to the plot. A number that appears in the upper corner of the screen lets the audience know when to use the interactive feature. This kind of gimmick goes back to 1960’s Scent of Mystery with William Castle’s promotional ingenuity, also revived with the “Odorama” of John Waters’ Polyester. The gimmick fits the style and tone of Dead Lover perfectly, even though I didn’t sign up to be sent a card to go along with the screener I was able to watch of this. (I did try the Odorama card when seeing Polyester earlier this year and everything just smelled pretty much the same to me and elicited allergies, so like the modern 3D glasses that my eyes don’t work with, this is a gimmick I just can’t enjoy.)
The very start of Dead Lover had me thinking of Michele Soavi’s Dellamorte Dellamore (Cemetery Man) in the basics of its solitary protagonist and setting (yes, Dellamorte did have some company, but the undead and Gnaghi don’t really fight off loneliness that well, hence his pursuit of love.) Of course, as the plot summary above makes clear, Dead Lover soon betrays Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as the foundational inspiration. But it’s certainly not the only inspiration.
Glowicki cites diverse inspirations from Monty Python and cartoons to Kenneth Anger and exploitation classics. Even more comparisons could be readily made in the eyes and minds of viewers. A largely Canadian production, the style of the film techniques used (more below) immediately reminded me of Winnipeg’s Guy Maddin. The fact that the studio Cartuna is involved in the distribution of the movie also immediately evoked the recent style and success of Hundreds of Beavers (the movies also share a marketing director.) Scenes of gossiping townswomen (and many moments of humor in Dead Lover) reminded me of an Ernest P. Worrell movie. The cross-dressing and comic style does end up feeling like a mixture of Jim Varney, Monty Python, and Mel Brooks. Despite all of these inspirations the film manages to feel utterly unique and wholly creative.
This latter point is one of the more endearing and awesome parts of Dead Lover, its constant gender bending and gender blurring characters. Men play women, women play men and the sexuality and horniness abound while also including depictions that could be construed as representations of asexual love and yearning. In this it resembles a John Waters movie with dialogue going into transgressive territory of kink even if not explicitly enacted or shown. As far as I can tell there’s also multiple characters being played by the same small cast giving even a bit of an incestuous vibe to the film literally and figuratively.
The theater training and talent of the cast and crew is clear through all elements of the film. The script pops with moments comic, deeply serious, revolting, and simply bonkers. Made with a very cheap budget and two simple ‘black box’ sets, Glowicki and her crew inventively employ tools and tricks of theater, experimental film, and film-making of eras past (a la Guy Maddin) to make the most from limited resources. Effects and action are practical and cartoonish, matching the comedic tones of the film, such as the gravekeeper fighting off cheaply costumed “wolves” with her shovel or the strikes of lightning that power her experiments of resurrecting her lover. (It’s a total aside, but I do have to comment how funny it was to see the gravedigger brandishing the same beloved shovel ahigh mid-coitus.)
The sole criticism that I can make of Dead Lover would only echo one felt by other critics: the comedy of the film begins to feel worn and redundant as it approaches its conclusion. Glowicki seems to fight this tendency by introducing slight twists to the plot, particularly to the question of whether the gravedigger’s lover is faithful and honest or a deceptive womanizer, and what the motivation of the opera singer’s husband exactly is. I don’t know as the movie really definitively answers these questions, even if resolution does come to the gravedigger character’s mind.
The theme of this movie is simply going to extremes for love, perhaps the ultimate uncertainty of how deep or true that love runs, and certainly the conscious decision one can make regardless to Love deep. Love hard. Never stop loving. It’s a zany fun ride of comic horror that shows the intelligence and talented craft of the artists involved, people not just skilled at theater but in using film effectively and wonderfully to convey a similar experience.
