Mortuary (2005)

Favorite Line: "Together we can stop graveyard babies"

Favorite Scene: One of Jonathan's friends wants to see the dead bodies in the embalming room, one of which turns out to be that friend's piano teacher; "I have a lesson with him tomorrow", she says. Not anymore, bitch.

This whole thing started, realistically one night when I was flipping through channels and absolutely nothing was grabbing me...you know the feeling, you've been through the channel guide 3 times, and it's like some sort of a conspiracy against you personally...nothing but reruns of crappy talk shows from earlier in the day, infomercials and reality T.V. And then, almost magically...a shitty horror movie rears it's ugly head...sometimes you get lucky, and there's actually a well-known star--that you like--in it that brings an element of sanity to balance out the excrement that is the acting from the other players in the film. Like Betty White in Lake Placid, even though there were quite a few well-known actors in that one, everybody but Betty forgot how to act...except maybe Oliver Platt...he sucks, but he's charming, so he's excused. So that's how it started for me, sitting in the dark of the living room, unable to sleep, watching a movie called "Baghead", which I'll review at a later date, because, holy shit that one sucks on a level that's almost paranormal. The seed was planted with that one...and I discovered that two separate channels on my cable provider offer a nearly never-ending library of garbage...now I find myself seeking them out. The movies are mostly sci-fi and horror, and the common thread among them seems to be haste...kind of a "let's shoot this fucker before the money runs out mentality", with stars that can't even see the "D" list from where they're standing...they're either on their way out, or on their way in.

That was the case with Mortuary, which actually has a few ties to Hollywood semi-nobility. It was directed by Tobe Hooper, who also directed Poltergeist, Salem's Lot, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, not too shabby of a resume, relatively speaking. Watching this movie though, made me wonder if Tobe owed somebody a favor, kind of like Paul Verhoeven going from Basic Instinct to Showgirls. Two notable actors are in it as well, Denise Crosby, who was Lt. Yar on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Lee Garlington, who is probably best known as the "Nazi cow" in Field of Dreams who wanted to ban books. Everybody else is pretty much a nobody, including an EXTREMELY annoying Stephanie Patton, who plays the main character's little sister, Jamie.

I actually thought it was a Verhoeven film, because in the first scene, Denise Crosby and her two kids are let into the mortuary she inherited by Greg Travis, who was in both Showgirls and Starship Troopers, both of which are Verhoeven abortions...and anybody who watches as much t.v. as I do knows that actors, writers and directors work together repetitively. I was actually shocked to find out that Tobe Hooper did this flick, like I stated above, he's done some decent work in the past.

So there's the premise, single mom with two kids inherits a REALLY rundown mortuary that looks like it should have been not only condemned but demolished years ago, with what they all assume to be septic overflow on the lawn, and the obligatory attached graveyard, complete with mausoleum filled with caskets from the mid- to late 1800's (in near pristine state, mind you...probably rented by the hour from the local mortician) and a secret room with a uniquely shaped keyhole that amazingly enough matches one of a set of keys that mom found in the embalming room. Evil ensues.

Upon closer inspection of the rest of the house, the teenage son, Jonathan (played by Dan Byrd, currently in the series Cougartown with Courtney Cox) discovers a small, cell-like room complete with...you got it...bars on the window. At this scene, I looked at my girlfriend Kim, and said, "hey mom, can I have this room?". Guess what happens next? Bingo! Jonathan inherits that cozy little shithole, just like it was supposed to happen that way (has Tobe Hooper gone senile?). Jonathan also notices a name carved into the windowsill (the windows overlook the graveyard, just as an FYI): Bobby F.

Bobby F is Bobby Fowler, horribly disfigured son of the former owners, who is as legendary in this movie's one-horse town as Michael Myers or Freddy Kruger. Evidently, Bobby was born with a cleft palate and lip, and was beaten mercilessly by his parents until he went missing when he was ten. Eight years later, his parents were brutally murdered in the mortuary, and as Aunt Rita (Lee Garlington) keeps saying "You know Bobby Fowler's still alive; I see him out back stealing food from the dumpsters...he's partial to the banana creme pie"...but Aunt Rita is also somewhat of a hippie relic, with a self-professed "memory for shit" due to her liberal drug usage in the 60's...it wouldn't be a shitty horror movie without a few corny stereotypes, now would it?

Right away, you know something's wrong...especially when mom cuts her hand & bleeds on the embalming room floor, and some weird root-type thing crawls out of the floor drain and soaks up the blood...more on that in a minute. Jonathan chastises his mom for letting his younger sibling help with the cleaning of the embalming room, where they also find a ton of rock salt and an ice cream churn (remember the salt, it becomes important later on). Jonathan is also the first to notice someone--or something--stalking around in the graveyard while he's out having a clandestine smoke on the front porch.

From that point on, it's basically chaos...almost like everybody on the crew was working on a different movie at the same time...the characters are played clumsily, the storyline is muddy and contrived, of course there's the obligatory gore, violence, nudity and teenage angst. Amazingly enough, it's still a relatively entertaining film, with just enough camp to make you laugh through the really bad parts.

Once the characters, the legend, and the sheriff's desire to "end graveyard babies" is established, it's time for the plot to thicken. Unfortunately, the plot is about as thick as onion skin. The creepy, root thingy that came out of the drain is some sort of evil that emanates from an underground well that one can only assume comes from hell itself. It invades the dead, who attack mom, the sheriff, a couple of teenagers and a few others that are never really explained, puking black tar-like shit directly in their victims mouths...and all of a sudden, we have a psuedo-zombie movie. Mom serves gross black soup to her kids and some of Jonathan's friends, and forces everybody to be thankful for something...all the while exhibiting very rude behavior. In fact, rudeness seems to be the common thread among the zombie-ish...and they all end up around the well to hell with noneother than Bobby Fowler (Aunt Rita was right) holding Jamie over the well to "feed it...do it now!", as they scream at each other about giving thanks, ending graveyard babies and "shut up, punk!"...very convoluted.

And then, the rock salt melts one of the zombie-people-things, and the lightbulb goes on. The "living" grab all the rock salt they can and begin the onslaught...throwing salt on mom, the sheriff, and ultimately, into the well to hell. It works, they all melt, and the survivors can breathe a sigh of relief out on the front lawn (mom threw a few patches of sod down to give the place curb appeal). It's finally over, exhausted, they collapse. But it's not really over...somehow mom didn't really melt away to salty nothingness; she comes out & grabs Jamie, takes her off screen, and Jonathan (who's lying on the sod) is grabbed by the evil black fluid and sucked into the ground...cue death metal music and end credits.

The movie sucks. But it has a few endearing elements: Dan Byrd is actually a halfway decent actor, who is obviously paying his Hollywood dues; like I stated before, there's some comic relief, almost like the writer knew the movie was shit, so decided to wink at the viewer a few times as if to say, "yeah, it's shit & it only took me two hours to write, but enjoy it anyway"; there's one scene where Jonathan and Rita's neice are talking about the mortuary and dead bodies, and an extra who's sitting at the counter of the diner Rita owns subtly pushes his plate away in quiet disgust; and a scene where Jonathan and his friends are smoking weed...the joint is actually fuzzed out...like they do for nudity, you know? Hilarious.

Thanks for reading, enjoy the trailer: Mortuary

The Bad Movie 411 Guy
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