We start with a man named Montel being buried alive in a very Poe-esque scene. He’s subject to cataleptic fits and it appears that nobody checked to make sure he was really dead. He manages to claw his way out of the grave and as you might imagine he is not a happy camper.
Meanwhile Sofia, his wife of three months (now supposedly his widow), and his doctor are making plans for their life together. It’s pretty clear that poor Montel was deliberately buried alive.
Sofia assures the doctor (Dr Anderson) that she is still a virgin. Montel can’t perform in the bedroom because he’s terrified of sex.
Montel, back in the land of living, goes looking for women. He wants to prove to himself that there’s nothing wrong with him and that he’s quite capable of having sex. His first attempts are unsuccessful but then he picks up a pretty brunette and everything goes smoothly.
Montel has figured out that he was the victim of a plot by his wife and doctor and he has a score to settle with them. They’re already getting nervous after being informed by a police inspector that Montel’s grave is empty.
A large part of the movie is taken up by Montel’s pursuit of women and then the thriller plot starts to kick in. Dr Anderson decides that it’s essential to get Montel out of the way and to make sure he’s really dead this time. He’s a bit of a strange doctor. He has a couple of strongarm men working for him and they’re despatched to take care of Montel.
This leads to a shootout in the woods.
The opening burial sequence is quite effectively creepy but aside from that there’s not a huge amount of horror content. This is more of a deranged erotic thriller than a true erotic horror movie. There’s very little blood and there’s no gore.
There is nudity and sex, in copious quantities. It’s about as explicit as a typical 1968 US sexploitation movie, in other words it’s fairly tame but there are lots of naked ladies.
The acting is so-so. Guillermo De Córdova is quite effective as Montel, giving an odd detached performance which may have been due to a lack of acting ability but it ends up being quite appropriate. And he’s a weedy little guy with a subtly creepy look, which helps.
Love After Death is totally different from European erotic horror movies. It has a very similar feel to American sexploitation movies of this era. The look of the film, the grainy black-and-white cinematography, the tone, the craziness, the incoherence of the plot, the fact that it seems to have been made without synchronised sound (with a small amount of dialogue dubbed later), the amount of skin on display and the whole ambience make it very easy to mistake for a US sexploitation feature. In fact it fits fairly well into the roughie sub-genre.
It’s actually quite reminiscent of Doris Wishman’s wonderful off-the-wall voodoo nudie movie Indecent Desires (1967).
Love After Death seems to have been shot entirely in the United States (in fact in New York) and there is considerable doubt as to whether it really is an Argentinian movie.
The ending comes totally out of left field but it works for me.
Love After Death is pleasingly nutty and weird and very enjoyable. Highly recommended.
This movie was released on a triple-feature disc from Something Weird along with The Incredible Petrified World (a bad sci-fi movie that is unfortunately very dull indeed) and The Atomic Brain AKA Monstrosity (which is enjoyable sci-fi silliness). Love After Death gets a fullframe transfer (which is totally correct) which is reasonably good considering that it’s surprising this movie survives at all.
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