‘Dead Lover’ Gets Experimental with Raunchy, Comedic Riff on ‘Frankenstein’ [Sundance Preview]

Filmmaker Grace Glowicki, who starred in last year’s Booger, not only writes, directs, and produces the horror comedy Dead Lover, but she also stars as the central smelly gravedigger desperate for love.

While the film itself cites Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a key source of influence, it is a story about a quirky woman willing to go to lethal, mad scientist wizardry to resurrect a lover after all, it quickly derails from that seminal text in favor of something that feels more like a raunchy, comedic stageplay of 19th century Penny Dreadfuls.

“I’d say that the inspo is probably Monty Python, Mel Brooks, cartoons, exploitation movies, my love of theater. A mashup of those different inspos,” Glowicki tells Bloody Disgusting of Dead Lover’s melting pot of influences ahead of the film’s Sundance premiere.

That eclectic mix of influences yields a bizarre, visually inventive comedy horror odyssey, made even funnier by featuring a small cast that takes on numerous roles throughout the film. Sometimes even in the same scene.

Glowicki explains, “I think it came from my love of old comedy troops like Monty Python, and then, of course, SNL. You have a core group of actors and they’re all just rotating through different characters. There’s something about the reference to theater troops and comedy troops. But then, of course, there’s so much comedy when you have, especially in this film, an actor playing against themselves. When the characters run into the nuns in the woods, it’s Lowen [Morrow] versus Lowen [Morrow]. That actor is on both sides of that scene. It’s so funny just to see someone playing opposite themselves.