Christie Parson is having a bad year. Her father died a month ago, and she believes he was murdered. Her mother seems unresponsive and unhelpful, going out on dates. She sleeps poorly and sleepwalks. Her relationship with her boyfriend is falling apart. The local awkward nerd has the hots for her. And she believes she is being stalked by a man in a black robe.
Mortuary is a slasher film from the early 1980s, in which a girl whose world is falling apart is stalked and harassed by a man wielding an embalming tocar as a weapon. There are also witches, seances, a bumbling sheriff who blames the kids, so on and so forth. The film starts with a poorly filmed murder sequence (seriously, it was pitiful), and then goes through some weirdness as our hero Greg and his best buddy try to get revenge on the local funeral home director for firing him. Unfortunately for Greg’s buddy, he’s slasher film fodder. Eventually, after a slowly-paced hour, the killer appears and actually goes about doing his killing, until he is finally bested by Greg in a final fight sequences which is painfully ridiculous as Christie kills him from behind with an axe while sleepwalking, followed by the film trying to have a shock ending that just comes off as stupid.
There are a couple of highlights for you perverts out there, such as Christie Parson (played by Mary Elizabeth McDonough) and her mother, Eve Parson (played by Lynda Day George), spending a good thirty minutes of the film in their nightgowns. The movie is just under 90 minutes long. They’re in their nightgowns for a third of it. The sad thing is, the titillation almost seems necessary because this film is really dull. Christie’s plight is rendered far less interesting once it’s revealed that her mother really does care, and the other mysteries of the story are all explained in such a nonchalant way that I found myself just not caring.
But I mentioned a couple of highlights, and while nightgowns are one, there is another: the killer! Sure, his kills just aren’t that flashy, and his costume sucks, but that’s not important. What’s important is: who is the killer? Or more specifically, who is the actor playing the killer?
You wanna know who it is?
BILL FUCKING PAXTON!
Also, this trailer has pretty much nothing to do with this movie.
Movie Reviews by a Mook 