Mortuary / Extensive old review
So I watched this on Shudder and found these rather middle-of-the-road IMDb user comments from November 2009:
Our care and dignity is important to someone.
Christy's(Mary McDonough) father is smacked over the noggin with a baseball bat and she hasn't recovered from the death occurred by the blows. She sleepwalks and has nightmares about her father. Meanwhile Christy's mom, Eve Parsons(Lynda Day George) is performing a séance with the town's mortician, Hank Andrews(Christopher George) in the hopes of communicating with her dead husband. Meanwhile, Christy's boyfriend, Greg(David Wallace), seeks answers regarding his missing friend Josh(..who we saw murdered near the beginning while Greg was absent)and worries that it is somehow tied to a séance he was watching from within a secret room of the mortician's warehouse. Hank's son, Paul(Bill Paxton)works with him attending to the bodies prior to the funeral and is a little "off" because of the loss of his mother who attempted to commit suicide. We soon come to understand that the murdered Parson man was in fact linked to Paul and his mom, a psychiatric doctor who wanted to commit her so she couldn't harm herself further.
Heavy breathing. Heart beats on the soundtrack. Lunatic, in need of psychiatric help, responsible for the film's limited body count, whose goal is to keep his obsession forever looking the same, through embalming. Plenty of 80's characteristics on display here, lacking enough gratuitous elements to really classify as a winner, I figure, in the hearts of slasher faithful..not a lot of nudity and the violent sequences really fail to deliver the goods. The killer's chief instrument of choice is a trocar used for embalming, with his costume a black cape and white mask. The psycho's identity is rather easy to discover(..the film goes out of it's way to tell us). The best thing about Mortuary is the fantastic poster art. Attractive mainly for the casting of Bill Paxton as unstable and goofy mortician's son in love with Christy, with support from Christopher George and wife Lynda Day George in minor roles as parents concerned for their kids(CG as the mortician, Lynda Day as Christy's mom). You do get an amusing "performance" for a new "family", set to Mozart as a wedding ceremony is being prepared, as those dead at the hands of the killer are gathered together to be "participants" of his supposed betrothal..it's all so morbid. We come to realize that someone considered "unhealthy" rises to seek revenge for the murder of her boy..it's a closing frame that punctuates the idea of a passage of psychosis from mother to son, and is only fitting that our couple not just walk away unscathed.
RIP, CG.
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