Fred, a down-on-his-luck mortician, is trying to make an improved embalming fluid when he accidentally invents a serum that, when injected into a corpse, revives it for an hour. He decides to use his new power to raise an army of the dead & help him save his business from being foreclosed thanks to his evil ex-wife Helen, who is now married to the local chief of police. But at the same time, the chief's daughter, Rhonda, is having a relationship with Fred's assistant Jerry, who is unaware of Fred's activities. As zombies begin flooding the town, the young lovers find themselves in the midst of a small war.
Corpses is an ultra-cheap knockoff of the 1985 classic RE-ANIMATOR, made a good nineteen years after & having a similar plot. Both films feature a protagonist – Re-Animator had a brilliant medical student, while Corpses has a mortician – who invents a serum that can raise the dead. But unlike Re-Animator's serum, which was so powerful that it can keep the dead undead indefinitely & can even revive severed body parts, here it is only capable of reanimation for up to an hour. This is probably an attempt to create some difficulties for the narrative.
The film might have a decent story & plenty of cheerful dark humour (my favourite kind of humour), but the execution is decidedly average. The actors give it their best shot, although Jeff Fahey, who has starred in a LOT of cheap films over the years, makes a slightly mediocre hero, despite delivering a decent performance (as usual). The zombies' rampage is funny but in a dumb way & has nothing new to add to the zombie mythology – there is nothing here that will get zombie fans raving – but the film does have enough black humour to keep undead fans watching. The film is somewhat defeated by an opaque ending that doesn't make sense.
