Night of the Living Dead but praised the direction of Jorge Grau, referring to him as a "director with genuine talent for the macabre mood and unsettling detail" Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 86% of 21 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating was 7.35/10. Writing in The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia, academic Peter Dendle called it "surprisingly effective" and said it has "perhaps the best zombies in a year of very good zombies". Zombiemania: 80 Movies to Die For author Arnold T. Blumberg said that the movie "manages to sustain interest thanks to a creepy droning soundtrack, some excellent suspenseful sequences and the requisite over-the-top gore," adding that the film "earns a place in zombie movie history by being one of the first to feature an onscreen gut-ripping feasting scene with zombies actually tearing into a living victim." Glenn Kay, who wrote Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide, said that it foreshadowed the later Italian zombie films of the 1980s. Kay called it "the most effective and disturbing Spanish film of the period". In popular culture A sample of dialogue from the film appears in the track "Wizard in Black" by Electric Wizard on their 1997 album Come My Fanatics… A song by the melodic death metal group Carcass named "The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue", named after one of the film's English titles, was released on their 2020 Despicable EP. The film's American titles, has been cited as the main inspiration for the name of the Edgar Wright short film, Don't. References Works cited External links 1974 films 1974 horror films 1970s science fiction horror films Italian independent films Italian science fiction horror films Spanish zombie films Spanish independent films Spanish science fiction horror films English-language Italian films English-language Spanish films 1970s Italian-language films 1970s Spanish-language films Italian zombie films Films set in the Lake District Films shot in Madrid Video nasties 1974 independent films Films shot in Greater Manchester 1970s English-language films 1970s Italian films 1970s Spanish films