The Mortuary Collection

I have watched SO many absolutely awful horror movies on Amazon Prime and Netflix that I was anticipating "The Mortuary Collection" to be another cheesy stinker with enough plot holes to drive a Polaris submarine through. I have rarely been so delighted to be wrong.

I've always liked Clancy Brown, and he plays the mortician character, Montgomery Dsrk, with an affable, quirky aplomb. Caitlin Custer absolutely nails it with her performance as a young woman who has supposedly come to apply for a job opening for mortuary assistant.

If you enjoyed the old HBO "Tales from the Crypt" series... which I did... you will very likely enjoy "The Mortuary Collection". It isn't perfect, but it is well worth a watch.

But sadly the interwoven stories are a bit lame and unconnected,

I was hoping for once to have some stories to rival the old Hammer House Of Horror or Peter Cushing Tales From The Crypt and the many other great spine tingling movies from yesteryear but sadly not - How is it not possible 50 years on that we do not have the ability to create great stories like for instance one of the most frightening I ever saw "The Ghouls" and which would make a great movie on its own and who can forget the "Shadmock" story which was part of the movie The Monster Club which remains my favourite of the 70's horror movies!

Overall though it is a visual feast and Clancy Brown shows that he still has pulling power with an effortless performance but sadly apart from some gratuitous gore there are zero scares or even a smidgin' of fear so I give it an average 6 hatchets out of 10!

I wasn't expecting too much from this movie as I normally find short stories a bit disappointing. Sometimes you just don't get enough from a short story, but in this case I have to admit they were all well made and interesting to follow. The acting was good and that from all the actors in the different stories. The special effects and the make-up for the creeps and monsters, it was all done very professionally and they deserve credits for that. The Mortuary Collection is perfect for amateurs of Tales From The Crypt but it will also please people that just like a good horror tale with decent special effects.

This is a horror anthology movie. Those not familiar with the term: this is a selection of short horror stories tied together by their telling. Perhaps by cowboys around a camp fire or standard travelers taking refuge from the rain in a spooky old house. The stories tend to be along the lines of: a creepy old man finds a sweet, young girl in the forest searching for her lost puppy. He offers to help her look, with obvious ulterior motives, then when the puppy is found it turns out to be a werewolf and the girl giggles as the man is devoured.

So this format is well worn and tends to be a bit lame: so much that the Simpsons even spoof it.

So if you accept what this is and its limitation then you should find that this is an excellent example of its kind.

It is quite slow in pace and is happy to take its time showing you around the funeral home that is the tie-together story. Now, we know that our expectations are soon to be subverted, but the film knows that, and it knows that we know that. So it is not afraid to do the odd double or even triple fake-out.

The setting is immaculately laid out with great sets, lighting and effects. The main characters are interesting and well cast. It is obvious a lot of care and love has been poured into this and it really shows.

Now this is not particularly scary and the stories are quite pedestrian, but this is part of the course. I found this to be an atmospheric, fun bit of horror that is unlikely to give anyone nightmares.

Ok in an effort to keep this short as possible I had a longer review pointing out that this film has pretty much been done before. I mean c'mon how many set-ups can you use for an anthology horror movie before you need to rehash older themes. How many times has the funeral director/ crypt-keeper/ grave-digger/ pathologist/ mad-scientist ect. telling horror stories thing been done? Countless, right?

But, one thing those others didn't necessarily have was.... Clancy Brown, if the name doesn't ring a bell think of the hardest screw in Shawshank. Yeah, that Clancy Brown. And he is fantastic as a very low-key yet perfectly gnarly old funeral director.

So, does having one of the arguably finest character actors of our time (maybe even all time) save this movie from the horror movie scrap-heap? No it does not. In fact, it didn't need saving, yeah Clancy Brown is as always great in this but, he's just the cherry on top of this pretty damn good little collection of horror stories. Admittedly there's nothing particularly new here but.... So flipping what!! Its a fun horror movie. There's some twists, jumps, laughs and more than enough blood and gore to satisfy even the more jaded horror fans out there.

Looking for new blood to add to this years creepy crawly movie binge? The Mortuary Collection is one of the better new offerings for Halloween 2020