Directed by Grace Glowicki
Canada | 2025 | Fiction | 84 min | English
Friday, October 24 | 9:30 PM | FH
If you’re down for rampant silliness, then you’ll have a blast with Dead Lover. Cheap fright wigs and accents that split the difference between Cockney and Elmer Fudd abound in Grace Glowicki’s sophomore feature. Her Bride of Frankenstein remix—where she’s both Dr. Frankenstein and the Bride—acquaints us with a lonely, pungent gravedigger who just wants companionship. She finally finds the kinky love she longs for when she meets the grieving brother of a freshly buried woman. Much to her surprise and delight, he’s not just able to tolerate her smell but is attracted to it! Alas, their torrid affair is short-lived as he is soon after lost at sea, with only one severed finger recovered. But perhaps that’s enough to bring him back from the beyond… Photographed using a 16mm Bolex, Dead Lover is charmingly handmade; it’s shot on a shoestring and proud of it. Glowicki bottles some of the randy, winking energy of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, the inventive silent-era playfulness of Guy Maddin, and the Looney Tunes zaniness of Hundreds of Beavers, but this theatrical take on the modern Prometheus is all hers, a lovingly crafted Lovecraftian (zing!) DIY delight. ~OO