Tobe Hooper's Mortuary (2005)

A Tobe Hooper Film. DVD Features include: Theatrical Trailer, Unrated Director's Commentary, Unrated behind the scenes featurette with Tobe Hooper, "Inside the Graveyard". When the Doyle family moves to a small town in California, they plan on starting a new life...perhaps a strange choice, seeing as this new life entails running the long-abandoned Fowler Funeral Home and cemetary. The locals fear the place, and there are whispers around town that not only are the grounds haunted, but that the Fowler boy, who wore a burial shroud to hide his hideously deformed face, still lives in one of the tombs there. The Doyles discover all too soon that the gossip is true. Someting lurks beneath the Fowler estate--someting that raises the dead from long-forgotten graves...something that feeds upon death itself. Product Description

One of my favorites

Took me over 4 hours to find this movie. I saw it on the Sci-Fi channel in February, and completely forgot the title. After about a four hour search I found it, and just ordered it. Can't wait until it gets here. May 8, 2008

Not scary at all

I got this DVD for $5 and still feel ripped off. This movie and many like it these days are just not scary.

Sometimes with very bad films, they are so bad they are funny, which is worth the time to watch just for that. Not so here.

The problem is that the storyline is so far out that there is no feeling that this could ever happen to anyone. The gratuitous gore and muck only solidify this opinion.

Whatever happened to less is more?

The acting is fine if you discount the ridiculous laughing man and the silly sheriff, but the best acting in history could not overcome this storyline.

I often wonder with very bad movies what the people who do the final editing and review think about before they release something like this. Can they actually believe it is good? More likely they are stuck and have to get whatever money they can out of it. Too bad for us. April 14, 2008

What were you expecting, honey? A tuna on rye?

Hello B fans, this is us, Sid the Elf, how are you? It's a doube dip this week. We tackled Steven Segal in Pistol Whippedearly in the week which naturally took a few days to recover from as the man is north of 400 lbs. Now we're back to review Mortuary. This film was directed by Tobe Hooper of Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame, which was probably the only reason it ever made a theatrical release. This one smacked of straight to dvd. Those of you who know Sid's reviews know that this is not a problem. In fact, there was a lot to like about Mortuary. We felt like the film had all the elements of being a certified 5 star B, but fell short.

The plot of the film revolves around the Doyle family which includes Mom(Leslie) and her two kids, Jonathan and Jamie. The mother, in her infinite wisdom decides to become a mortitian. Of course! Isn't that the job of choice for every single mother with an 8 year old girl? So, Mom buys a completely dilapidated house in California. This place could be a real beauty though, with the embalming room for a basement and a graveyard in front. Sounds like a dream right? How could these people not know there was going to be trouble? Then Jonathan gets a job at the local diner where he learns the story of Bobby Fowler, who used to live in Jonathan's new house and some say still does. In a nutshell, Bobby was the great grandson of Zeb Fowler, who started the mortuary. Bobby was a disfigured freak when he was born so his parents covered his face with a burial shroud and locked him in his room with bars on his windows and everything. Good times all around. Legend has it that Bobby killed his parents and still lives in his old house. Before we move on, let's get something out of the way: Mortuary had two HUGE parallels to The Final Sacrifice, the trancendant Mystery Science Theatre 3000 movie. By the way, look for a review of The Final Sacrifice from Sid as part of MST 3000 season 9 in a few weeks. First, the Zeb Fowler character. That sounds an awful lot like..."Hey kid, I'm Rowsdower, Zap Rowsdower." And, if you don't think Jonathan doesn't strike an eerie resembelance to the legendary Troy McGreggor, Sid doesn't know what to tell you.

At this point we're about 40 minutes into the movie and it finally starts to get really cool. That's Sid's problem with the film, they concentrated way too much on the family setteling into the new house and blah blah blah. The only thing this accomplished was you got attached to the little girl, Jamie. This is essential in a horror movie, to have someone you absolutely do not want to be harmed. She was it, anyone else would have been fine. Not her, not her. Anyway, here you have the awesome scene where the townies(1 goofy guy and 2 smoking hot chicks) go into a crypt to have a quasi-threesome. Great scene because it was totally unexpected. So, they get attacked by this wierd vine-like stuff and it turns them into zombies. Meanwhile, Mom is embalming a corpse, and she gets attacked by it and also turns into a zombie. Yep, a real zombie movie. Pretty cool idea to revive the concept. So now the zombies are after Jonathan and his friends, one of whom gets a zombie hand through the chest. Sweet.

Now, the crew is trying to get away from the zombies, including the mom. They eventually hit the epicenter of the evil activity that has been plauging the house for centuries. It's like a well filled with evil. The zombies are trying to feed Jamie to it. Not cool. They have to find a way to prevent this. They finally do. You ready for what the solution was? Rock salt. Yeah, just pour rock salt into the well of pure evil. That should do it. But, whatever, you knew they were going to get away. So, they're walking away, finally through with the ordeal. Jonathan is skipping along merrily doing his Troy "Rowsdower!" routine. And the groung opens up and something grabbs him! And that's it, the movie ends.

Was this to leave the door open for a sequel, or to just give it a cool ending? Sid hopes it's option B. This movie was definitely decent. It even had one or two scary moments. Like when the bodies attacked Mom, that was nice. If it's Sid, he's saying the flick is worth checking out if you're an avid horror fan. However, it wasn't good enough to make a sequel. All in all, a tough movie to rate. Sid says when in doubt, 3 hot chicks in the movie = 3 stars.





April 10, 2008

Sooper Dooper Hooper Gooper...

MORTUARY has Denise Crosby (Pet Sematary, Dolly Dearest, "Star Trek: TNG") as a struggling single mum / mortician who moves herself and her two kids into the grossest (or coolest, depending on your perspective) house on the planet. There are old coffins in the livingroom, bars on the windows, a graveyard for a lawn, and an ultra-fast growing black fungus on the walls! Things quickly go south as mum sets up shop in the basement morgue. You see, the fungal growth isn't just mold, it's smart and eeevil! It also has the ability to re-animate the dead! I'm sure you can imagine the problems this may cause once the town's cadavers start arriving for preparation. I enjoyed most of this movie, though some of the stuff near the end was goofy. I'm no cgi fan, so I wasn't overly impressed with the thing in the pit. It would have been better if it had remained unseen. Still, I found enough horror and humor to keep me smiling... April 5, 2008

Im a sucker for bad movies

I saw this movie in a bargain bin. Like ive said in the title and past reviews, I love cheap horror movies. This was made by a good director, so it might be good. The movie seems to ignore a few story lines and moves around all over the place. Decent movie, just dont follow it. Little gore but there is one cool gore scene. Overall, a forgetable movie. March 29, 2008

More reviews at Amazon.com ...