The Mortuary Collection (2019)

 

Ryan Spindell's anthology of horror tales, narratively offered by a wonderfully intimidating Clancy Brown (who had me so jiving to his ghoulish mortician, I could see him alongside the greats such as Price, Karloff, and Cushing), operating a mortuary that architecturally and aesthetically carries the veneer of a place the Warrens would occupy to cleanse of its dark spirits. Spindell's team really lathered Brown with old age makeup and a particular hair piece that gives him this withering human artifact look. It is as if he has overstayed his welcome, clinging to the edges of existence, teetering on the brink of extinction way longer that anyone would probably care to. After conducting a funeral service for a little boy, the spooked relatives and loved ones try to escape from the place as soon as possible while The Mortician offers his condolences. Arriving peculiarly is pretty Sam (Caitlin Custer), attempting to open the coffin of the little boy until The Mortician stops her. Why would Sam even want to open the coffin?

Sam tells The Mortician that she is answering his Help Wanted, seemingly interested in working as his assistant. Over the next 100 minutes The Mortician offers Sam a number of stories involving possible corpses who appear in books in his mortuary.

For me personally, this was a ton of fun because I love Clancy Brown. His deep, ominous voice, very deliberate movements, and working environment (I think he dated the home around 1825) are so very 19th Century, it very much feels like we have visited, like Sam, a whole other time period. You see that a lot in Spindell's film, too. It seems every story has technology from the past, no longer in use, brought back to full functionality for some kind of retro homage. You see the use of the cathode ray tube, answering machine, record player, rotary phones, and radios, all making appearances as if old friends from the past, retired but allowed to emerge for a cameo appearance. I felt Spindell had a great affection for the technology of the past. Having a tale called "The Babysitter Murders", really leaning on the 80s slasher on a tube as a supposed actual lunatic is engaged with Sam (or is he?) as a child's safety is at risk fits Spindell's overall inspired choices for his horror film.

This film is incredibly stylized as if Spindell raided condemned homes for their deceased former owners' trinkets and furniture, populating his settings with those confiscated items. Well, it also seems he shot most of the tales (if not all) in rundown apartments and decaying buildings set to be detonated for eventual parking lots. The story about a weary husband taking care of a wife who needs medical care and attention after a type of stroke renders her pretty much brain dead seems to have been filmed in a great grandparent's house with oddball animal figurines, stacked books, dirty brown furniture, and such dimly lit rooms, it literally feels like you are surrounded by a deadened life. It's all quite dreary. But that's the point, both of these people are in a prison. And when he goes to poison her with pills his doctor gave him (untraceable), his "putting her out of her misery" doesn't quite go according to plan. The figurine of an Arctic rat set on the table in the wrong place as a head splats on it as blood and vomit mix together. It is as gross as it reads. But once the guy's guilty conscience starts to get the better of him in an elevator when he crates his wife (with help from a motorized knife), his brain breaks.

Each tale is quite of the horror anthology personality. Sam even comments on that with The Mortician, as he claims those who commit sin must pay a price for it. Whether it is the pickpocket who pries open a mirror on the wall, releasing a "kraken" that claims her as its acquisition, a white male with "toxic masculinity" who is aiming to have his name banner inside his frat for achieving the 67th fuck and decides to take off his condom with the wrong female freshman (he didn't realize he might need birth control!), or the "tooth fairy serial killer" looking to pull a tooth from her last charred child; The Mortician is right in that bad behavior brings with it an even worse punishment.

I have to say that we as horror fans have such an embarrassment of riches these days. An entire site like Shudder dedicated to us, replacing the unfortunate executed channel, Chiller, has so much content designed specifically for every kind of horror fan. Every kind of subgenre under the Horror Tree is present on this site. And "The Mortuary Collection" (2019) follows that delightfully dark and twisty anthology format that I appreciate and embrace with such a warm hug. This film's aesthetic and dark spirit just speaks to me and I respond like the good horror slut I am. And Clancy Brown's character's name is Montgomery Dark...come on, this is a film after my heart.

***I will have a sort of additional post for this film sometime later as a sort of "supplemental material"***