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Mortuary: Slasher Classics Collection
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (4th November 2024). |
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The Film
 "BEFORE YOUR FUNERAL... BEFORE YOU ARE BURIED... BEFORE YOU ARE COVERED WITH THE LAST SHOVELFUL OF DIRT... BE SURE YOU ARE REALLY DEAD!" Young Christie (The Waltons's Mary McDonough) has never believed that her psychologist father's drowning death was an accident – there is such no doubt for the audience who have seen the credits sequence – and she believes that her mother Eve (Pieces' Lynda Day George) has started dating after only two months of mourning. What she does not know is that Eve actually spends her evenings at a coven headed by local mortician Hank Andrews (City of the Living Dead's Christopher George). One of their meetings is witnessed by Christie’s boyfriend Greg (Mazes and Monsters's David Wallace) and his pal Josh (Denis Mandel) when they sneak into the mortuary to steal some tires in compensation for the $150 Josh believes Andrews owes him. While Greg is distracted watching the coven, Josh mysteriously disappears with his van (actually he’s been impaled on a trocar by a figure in a hooded black cloak). When Greg’s van turns up at the bus station with no sign of Josh, Greg tells the Sheriff (Grand Theft Auto's Bill Conklin) who disbelieves him. Christie cannot get her mother to believe that a cloaked figure is stalking her and trying to kill her and believes her mother may have had something to do with her father's death and is out to drive her crazy. When she confides in Greg, he tells her that he has seen her mother in Andrews’ coven (the members of which wear the same kind of cape as Christie’s stalker). Andrews’ son Paul (Aliens' Bill Paxton) has not been right since his the suicide of his mother who used to lock him in the mortuary when he was bad, and his crush on Christie is more than a bit creepy; but is he the one who has been maintaining mother's preserved corpse and embalming friends to keep her company? With its cast of television actors, slick Gary Graver (The Toolbox Murders) photography, and a Kojak/"After School Special"/movie-of-the-week regular John Cacavasscore, Howard Avedis' Mortuary feels like a TV movie with R-rated elements; and that’s not necessarily a bad thing when one recalls some of the classic 1970s and 1980s made-for-TV genre efforts. The film’s plot has some common elements with the Canadian horror film Funeral Home as well as the Cacavas-scored TV chiller No Place to Hide which also had a stalked teenage heroine similarly fixated with her father’s death. Although destined for the grindhouse – and marketed for it by distributor Film Ventures with a trailer passing it off as a zombie film with exclusively-shot footage featuring The Hills Have Eyes' Michael Berryman that feels closer tonally and stylistically to the following year's Return of the Living Dead – the film has great production value with Christie and her mother living in a conveniently isolated Malibu beachside mansion (the Pepperdine University-owned Gulls Way Estate), and Christie and Greg also getting to trail Eve and Andrews along a sunny pier just for the sake of opening up the production. Christie and Greg’s investigation has a bit of Scooby Doo, Where Are You! feel to it, not helped by Wallace’s helmet hair (and blue van) and McDonough’s fashionably-styled red hair, but this seems to happen when you take slasher characters out of the woods. It is really more of a mystery disguised as a slasher. The climax brings to mind both Happy Birthday to Me (which starred McDonough's The Waltons co-star Melissa Sue Anderson) and Ovidio G. Assonitis' Madhouse, and the obligatory shock freeze-frame ending is simultaneously silly and endearing. McDonough's nudity was body-doubled – and the clarity of the digital presentation is not particularly flattering to the double – but the only other nude is quite bosomy but also dead. Gore is limited to some bloody impalings by trocar (also employed in the aforementioned Funeral Home) – one of which goes on for quite a bit and seems disturbingly sexual – some gushing during an axing, and a prosthetic insert during an embalming. The effects were the work of Jim Gillespie who worked on a few early Spielberg blockbusters as well as the slashers Sweet 16, The Final Terror, and cinematographer Graver’s directorial effort Trick or Treats. Paxton’s early performance is the most amusing thing about this film – outside of the Roller Boogie footage and “Hey boogeyman! Let’s boogie!” – and he goes all out, skipping through the cemetery and conducting a classical music record with a trocar. Although one is never in doubt about his guilt, the script at least gives him a scene where he explains to another character that he hates being an embalmer because no one will date him and he knows people think he is creepy (Paxton also has a prior slasher credit with a supporting bit in Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker in a more conventional secondary role). McDonough – whose Catholic mother refused to let her audition for The Exorcist – is an attractive and sympathetic final girl while Wallace plays the same kind of All-American good guy he essayed in Humongous and the TV movie The Babysitter (actually, it might have helped if the film cast some suspicion on him during the whole “they’re trying to drive me crazy” part of the plot). Christopher George is not really given much to do here but be gruff and suspicious for most of the running time (George died shortly after the film was completed), but Lynda Day George gives a warm performance even as she too is required to be suspicious long after the audience has guessed who is really responsible. Green Acres’ Alvy Moore appears in a single scene as Greg’s florist father (Moore did four films for Avedis and had previously appeared in the mind-numbing slasher Scream/The Outing). Mortuary was the second of three Cacavas’ scoring assignments for Avedis, and his stylish work here easily rivals his well-regarded score for Horror Express and easily outclasses his work on Hammer’s The Satanic Rites of Dracula. Al Adamson regular Graver’s cinematography features some atmospheric lighting with red gels accenting the backgrounds of several scenes as well as some neat tracking shots in the mortuary warehouse, while the Steadicam work is by Randy Nolan who also worked on Hell Night, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter and Friday the 13th VI: Jason Lives, as well as The Pray before moving onto high profile assignments). Avedis co-wrote and produced the film with his wife Marlene Schmidt (Scorchy) who also plays Greg’s mother. 
Video
Like Superstition which came out on tape in the U.K. first under its original title and then issued theatrically as "The Witch", Mortuary arrived on pre-cert VHS in 1983 from Hokushin and then had a later BBFC-cut theatrical release in 1986 as "Embalmed". Stateside the film had a four-walled premiere in 1982 but its wide release from Film Ventures was not until 1983. Vestron Video's 1984 VHS/Beta release was a typically dark transfer with the diffusion of the outdoor daylight scenes looking particularly soft and grainy. The film made its its HD-mastered DVD debut from Scorpion Releasing in 2012 as part of the "Katarina's Nightmare Theater" mastered from the film’s original internegative. The same master got a Blu-ray bump-up in 2014 from Scorpion as a 1,200-copy limited edition sold exclusively through DiabolikDVD. MVD utilized the same master for their Rewind Collection edition in 2021, and 88 Films has also availed themselves of the master (now owned by Multicom) for their 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen Blu-ray. Despite being a decade old HD master, it breathes new life into the film with bolder colors over the tape master – particularly the greens and reds (take a gander at that title card as well as the red gels in the backgrounds of some sequences) – and improved shadow detail which important for a film with a black-cloaked killer lurking in the shadows (although the killer's identity may be obvious from the first view of their face caked in white make-up). As mentioned elsewhere, the resolution of the HD master does McDonough's body double no favors or an insert of a corpse's torso being embalmed. 
Audio
88 Films features an uncompressed LPCM 2.0 mono track, revealing the full range of Cacavas’ score from plucked harp strings to the séance chanting. There is some crackling and hiss that is more evident during silent passages but it rare distracts. Optional English HoH subtitles are also included with such bewildering notations as "(dramatic beat)". 
Extras
The sole new extra is an audio commentary by The Hysteria Continues (Justin Kerswell, Joseph Henson, Nathan Johnson, and Erik Threlfall) who discuss some of the creepier aspects of the story overshadowed by the cheese. They provide background on Avedis and his wife Schmidt who announced the film in 1980 with an unlikely high budget, as well as their efforts to promote the film themselves while trying to shop it around to major distributors (representatives from Paramount were supposed to attend the Tuscon test screening). In discussing the backgrounds of the couple, they reveal that Avedis made socially-conscious films in the Middle East where East German beauty queen Schmidt did some of her first acting roles. When they moved to the states, Avedis reportedly attended USC in the same class as George Lucas and won a George Cukor award for most promising student filmmaker (which they were not able to verify). Kerswell also draws on interviews he conducted with McDonough and Wallace who revealed that they tried to get Avedis to cut out some the teenage dialogue, they had to be on set with their nude body doubles to match their positions for close-ups – although they both refused to do nudity, the experience was amusing – and McDonough (who also made three Waltons TV movie specials the same year) cut herself on broken glass and broke her leg during the shoot and would appear with Wallace and Anderson in the 1981 TV horror movie Midnight Offerings. They also discuss Paxton's slasher cred, the Georges who also appeared together in the gorier and more entertaining slasher Pieces in Spain, and ponder whether the film was actually intended to be a whodunit given how obvious the killer's identity is from the first glimpse of him. They also discuss the delayed release and the state of the genre in the interim, comparing the initial ad campaign to the living dead one (which they liken to the U.S. advertising of the Italian supernatural thriller Zeder which was put out here as "Revenge of the Dead" with a zombie bursting out of the ground).  Ported over from the Scorpion and MVD editions is Mortuary: The Sounds of John Cacavas" (15:02), an interview with the composer which is a bit of an endurance test since he admits that he remembers nothing about the film or any of his other horror film scores (or several of his higher profile assignments), admitting that his scores all "run together." He usually recalls the scoring budget and the size of the orchestra, which is perhaps understandable given the films' budgets and his need to assemble orchestras of various sizes out of session musicians rather than the symphony orchestras that some of his better-known contemporaries got to work with during this period. While the Scorpion DVD and Blu-ray included the aforementioned misleading-but-great original theatrical trailer, both MVD and 88 Films have unfortunately substituted newly-created trailer (2:29) supplied by Multicom which at least more accurately conveys the story and tone of the film even if it feels too modern. 
Packaging
The disc comes with a first pressing double-walled slipcase and booklet notes (neither of which were supplied for review).
Overall
Mortuary feels like a TV movie with R-rated elements; and that’s not necessarily a bad thing when one recalls some of the classic 1970s and 1980s made-for-TV genre efforts, and you get a daffy performance from a young Bill Paxton.
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