Review: I Sell the Dead

Glenn McQuaid's graveyard-set fright-flick send-up is a low-budget valentine to "B" horrors of yore — Val Lewton, Roger Corman, and British Hammer movies — that never manages to be quite as clever or as frightening as its sources.

• Jack Nicholson
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• Larry Fessenden
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• Roger Corman
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• more >>

In the early 19th century, a jailed grave robber (Dominic Monaghan) facing the gallows thinks back nostalgically to his spirited criminal life and how he mastered body snatching as an apprentice to a guru of coffin-breaking-and-entering, the legendary Willie Grimes (Larry Fessenden, smirking in the way of young, smug Jack Nicholson).

There are effective episodes, such as when the pried-opened graves unleash unexpected vampires, space creatures, and sundry ghoulish monstrosities. But ISell the Dead is burdened by too many plot strands and stagnant, talky scenes. Grave errors.