If memory serves, the last theatrical release to arrive with a scratch-and-sniff component was 2011’s Spy Kids 4, which invited its victims to huff the gastric emissions of a yapping robot dog voiced by Ricky Gervais. This microbudget Canadian horror curio offers more art than fart, although its Stink-O-Vision conceit is only one unusual element in what is an altogether bizarre proposition: a morbidly perverse chamber play with a pastiche penny-dreadful plot, pieced together by writer-director-star Grace Glowicki. Some whiff of that narrative persists among the perfumes awaiting your nostrils: scents include “love”, “opium” and “ghost puke” – plus “milkshake’ by way of light relief. Delicate sensibilities are advised to stay at home.
Dead Lover’s heroine is odorous by trade, a lovelorn gravedigger of indeterminate age and origin. Glowicki’s accent, roaming between Canada, Canvey Island and Canberra, becomes part of the fun – she’s driven to extremes after her verse-spouting poet sweetheart (co-writer Ben Petrie) perishes in a shipwreck. Part-Burke and Hare, part-Victor Frankenstein, she salvages what she can of the corpse. The script – part-Carry On, part-Ken Russell – grabs both: “I do hope he loves how big my bush has got while he’s been away,” sighs our gal during some wistful botany. Even without the scratch-and-sniff, even before two lesbian nuns wander on, much of it would qualify as ripe indeed.
Unmistakably the work of the area of the industry that nurtured Guy Maddin and the singing-rectum musical Zero Patience, lock on to its wavelength and rude chuckles await, otherwise the filthier fragrances flooding the stalls will probably prompt an awful headache. This one is going for gross and grotesque, and it beds right down when it gets there. Even so, Glowicki frames her go-for-broke performance within striking images, and she finds suggestive ways to cover budgetary holes, not least nicely squishy practical effects. It is perhaps too much the acquired taste (and smell) to appeal to everyone, but it’s distinctive, never dull and – much like its most noxious niffs – difficult to shake.
• Dead Lover is in UK and Irish cinemas from 20 March.
