‘Don’t kiss me, I’m not dead… yet’
Graverobbers – aka Grave Robbers and Dead Mate – is 1988 American horror film written and directed by Straw Weisman (The Devil’s Heist; Trunk; Hatchet post-production supervisor; US version of Godzilla 1985). The Lew Mishkin (Monstrosity; Carnage) produced movie stars Elizabeth Mannino, David Gregory and Larry Bockius.
The synth score was composed by Katherine Quittner.
The nightmare begins with Nora’s vision of her beating heart being ripped out of her body. Awakening with a start in the diner where she is a waitress, she meets suave Henry Cox. A lightning courtship leads to his marriage proposal and her acceptance.
Henry’s “home” turns out to be a funeral parlour, but the wedding takes place anyway. Nora’s increasing uneasiness proves justified after a harrowing chase through the cemetery, where she sees the empty grave of the graverobbers’ latest victim…
Reviews:
“The acting and dialogue are both uniformly terrible throughout, there’s extremely clumsy use made of voice-over and it can never seem to decide on a tone […] It feels almost as if the filmmakers threw in the towel at some point and just opted for random absurdity and forced camp because they had no clue what else to do.” Justin McKinney, The Bloody Pit of Horror
“Filled with amateurish scenes of necrophilia backed by lurid pop music, rubbery body parts, and other assorted hokum, Graverobbers looks to imitate superior films like Dead & Buried and Let’s Scare Jessica to Death but never succeeds. It starts off serious, but it’s as if they didn’t know how to end it, and the finale is packed with pure stupidity and ludicrous dialogue. DVD Drive-In
“The acting is terrible, the dialogue bad, the jokes are lame and the story line is stupid. The low-budget horror/comedy is a sicko film, that’s fit for the dead.” Dennis Schwartz: “Ozus’ World Movie Reviews
“There are some minor pacing issues here and there and there’s a fairly drastic shift in tone that occurs in the last twenty-minutes or so of the film, but if you’re in the right frame of mind for it this is pretty entertaining. Don’t misunderstand, this is no masterpiece and it was clearly made with a modest budget, but Weisman’s picture does manage to hold our attention…” Ian Jane, Rock! Shock! Pop!
Choice dialogue:
“Best of all, she’s safe. It’s safe sex now because we can’t get AIDS from dead people.”
Sheriff: “Everybody needs a good scare once in a while. Don’tcha think?”
Filming locations:
Red Hook and Rhinebeck, New York, USA
