What were you expecting, honey? A tuna on rye?, April 10, 2008
Hello B fans, this is us, Sid the Elf, how are you? It's a double dip this week. We tackled Steven Segal in Pistol Whipped early 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 mortician. 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 transcendent Mystery Science Theater 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 resemblance 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 settling 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 weird 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 plaguing 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 ground opens up and something grabs 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.
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 mortician. 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 transcendent Mystery Science Theater 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 resemblance 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 settling 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 weird 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 plaguing 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 ground opens up and something grabs 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.
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