Dead Lover — Review

One of my favorite things about cinema is the fact that it combines multiple art forms into one. In doing so, film has the ability to appeal to multiple senses. Naturally, there are the visuals on screen and the accompanying music or audio. But great movies also make us feel something, maybe not in the literal sense, but in the emotional or psychological sense. What few films manage to do, however, is utilize our sense of smell. Smell-O-Vision first emerged in 1960 with Jack Cardiff’s Scent of Mystery. After an array of technical issues and negative reviews of the film, Smell-O-Vision failed to catch on. In 1981, John Waters parodied the concept of Smell-O-Vision with scratch-and-sniff Odorama cards to accompany his film Polyester. The scratch-and-sniff approach was replicated several times, including for the 2003 animated film Rugrats Go Wild. Now, the concept is back with a vengeance under the name Stink-O-Vision for Grace Glowicki’s new film, Dead Lover.