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"The dead don't walk around, except in very bad paperback novels!"

Directed by Jorge Grau and released in 1974, this Italian-Spanish co-production is a pretty weird movie. Although in fairness, most zombie movies especially from that period are pretty weird. In the UK it was originally released under the title The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, and has subsequently been released with at least 15 different titles internationally. This is one of several films to be released in Italy as Zombi 3.

Pollution has long been used in the movies as the cause of the dead rising, although this film has a pretty novel take. The Ministry of Agriculture is experimenting with a new form of pest control through ultrasonic radiation, which kills insects and parasites by causing them to fight each other. Two scientists involved proudly declare that no chemicals are used at all, although protagonist George remains skeptical. His fears are founded as the ultrasonic tones do actually cause a corpse to reanimate - although George also remains skeptical of that until he has a confrontation with zombies in a cemetery.

The film has many easily recognized tropes. Notably that those who have seen the undead have a hard time convincing people of the threat: the first woman to encounter them (secondary protagonist Edna) is written off as hysterical, the second woman as a drug addict, and finally when George himself sees them he's declared to be a satanist hippy lunatic. In addition to having a difficult time convincing the police to help in a horror movie, the primary antagonist is a hardnosed police inspector.

This is also one of the earliest examples I've seen of "zombies have messed up eyes." No explanation is given for why they look like that, but it's a trademark that will be recognized in zombie movies for years to come.

Speaking of explanations, after an encounter with a homicidal infant who blinds a nurse, George and a doctor compare the timeline of killer babies being born with the start of the ultrasonic radiation machine and find they're connected. They return to the machine and get an explanation from scientists: the soundwaves affect the primitive central nervous systems of insects causing them to violently attack each other, but there's no way they'd incite rage in the more complex systems of a human. However, while the scientist is explaining this, he becomes increasingly agitated which personally I find suspect. The doctor posits that a newborn's nervous system is far less complex than a mature human, but decides not to pursue the matter. He remarks that the government wouldn't do anything for an untested hypothesis because the government already fails to act on matters where there are concrete facts - sound familiar?

The theory presented later in the film is that the nervous system retains some basic activity after death, which allows the recently deceased to be affected by the radiation. That's plausible enough for the moviegoer. Although perplexingly, a zombie is later seen raising the dead by feeding fresh blood to corpses in a bastardization of communion. I can't for the life of me figure out what that has to do with ultrasound, although narrative consistency was not super important to films of the period.

I had originally seen this movie on Tubi although I can't find it now - that may depend on region. It is available free on youtube under the title Don't Disturb the Sleeping Dead