In the Victorian times, when you were poor you were the envy of those who were dirt poor.  Young Arthur Blake, to help his widowed mother, apprentices himself to Willie Grimes, a body snatcher.  If the title doesn’t give it away, or if someone out there just doesn’t know, a body snatcher…how do I put this…snatches bodies.  Grimes and Blake steal corpses for Dr. Quint, a very mad, very deranged, scientist of some sort.  Quint’s demands are nearly impossible to supply, he goes through corpses like you just wouldn’t believe.  The thieving duo want to stop doing business with the crazy doc, but Quint won’t let them, threatening to turn them in if they don’t continue filching him stiffs.

Grimes and Blake raid the graveyards night after night, but business ain’t so good.  They  become so desperate at one point they steal a body from the funeral parlor as it’s on display.  It’s in this dire straits that they are instructed to the location of a quite peculiar grave.  Seemingly in the middle of nowhere, at a crossroads, they unearth the corpse of a woman.  She deceased wears a wreath of garlic around her neck and has a stake struck through her heart.  Of course they remove the garlic necklace and the stake, and the woman comes alive and tries to kill them.

This little incident is their introduction to the Resurrection Trade.  It seems there are people, somewhere, who want to purchase bodies of the undead, or the living dead, or whatever.  Grimes and Blake discover that the undead pays more than just the regular dead.  It’s lucrative, but it comes with new dangers.  Not only are the corpses more dangerous, but their is the House of Murphy to compete against.  The House of Murphy is a family owned and operated league of body snatchers with some quite colorful characters in their employ.  The House of Murphy is as deadly as the creatures of the night.

All of this is told in flashback as Blake sits in a prison cell awaiting his turn at the guillotine.  Someone, probably from the House of Murphy, laid a trail of body parts to Grimes’s and Blake’s homes.  It’s easy to see it’s a set up.  Blake recounts it all to a priest who has come to record his confession, and he happily confesses all he knows thanks to the priest’s whiskey.  The priest believes the story whole-heartedly; he’s there to learn more about the occult.

For all the creatures of the night, there really aren’t that many to be seen.  And who hires these guys?  Where are all these mad scientists at?  I wanted to know what the people were doing with all these vampires and zombies.  What was Quint’s research?  It’s hinted at, but is never really fleshed out.  The story is kind of skimpy.

I Sell the Dead almost works.  It’s a diverting horror/comedy, though not really consistently funny; it’s amusing, with a couple of decent laughs, and that’s about it.  The look of the movie is nice, and it’s Victorian setting is marvelously dingy.  The Evil Dead and it’s sequels did this material much better.  It doesn’t get as zany as Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead films, but it feels like it wants to at times but can’t rise to the occasion.

3 out of 5
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