Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
That is of course the beginning of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. It's such a wonderfully humorously light yet dark way to start a story. It's a good read, if you've never read it. Dickens' sense of humor is all to often lost when translated to film, because you lose his authorial voice.
Nonetheless you can watch the entire 1935 film adaptation featuring Seymour Hicks right now if you'd like:
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