The Coroner

This opens in a strip joint, with several bare pairs of breasts, just when you thought it might turn out to have class. The titular coroner, Leon Uraski(Dean St. Louis who gives it his all both when psychotic and when pretending to be innocent), kills young, attractive women who've tried to commit suicide. One night, he traps and tortures Emma(Jane Longenecker), the unconventional lawyer, but she may just prove to be in excess of what he can handle. Can she take him down, and how(maybe with her martial arts training, that doesn't at all look choreographed and underpracticed?)? And is she certain that he's the one, and that she isn't losing her mind? That one aspect not only shifts this the rest of the way towards being a psychological thriller than a horror(it was already far away from that, with its gore, blood and deaths few and far between, and how much we see the villain as opposed to his victims), it's the only potentially interesting element(and the decent ending does live up to that somewhat, though it could have been more ambiguous). At 70 minutes(not counting the short closing credits), it's unsettling just how much this needs to stretch its nothing of a plot to fill that time. Characters are introduced to be fodder or foils... and to add sex scenes(complete with complete female nudity), because with this little violence, that's the only common denominator left they can use to keep our attention. Did I mention our leading lady spends the majority of this in a short skirt, at times downright wearing a school girl uniform? The sad thing is that it's just not quite crap enough to be fun. Acting, writing, dialog, it's all rather inferior. The way this is shot screams direct-to-DVD, and the editing is sophomoric(you can show us those "grisly" images as many times as you want, since we have no connection to the dead bodies, it never increases the intensity). I feel the music in this would have benefited from them checking if there were disgruntled cats in the studio before recording. I recommend this solely to fans of B-movies. 1/10

If you enjoy:

Aprons Blowdart Stapler torture A severed finger (or is it just momentarily gone?) No plot whatsoever (with crappy sex scenes included) A very "funny" un-villain looking villain

Then perhaps this sleazy gore-less "film" is something you'd like. I didn't. And I never will.

1 out of 10!

In this 90's slasher film a demented coroner is responsible for a series of murders of young women. All the victims are suicide attempt survivors because the coroner wants to 'recreate their moment of denial'. Or something.

Opening with scenes in a strip club with a great deal of gratuitous boob action, it has to be said, the film starts out at least entertainingly. But it isn't long before its story kicks in and things go downhill. The serial killer angle is half-hearted at best and there isn't really even much in the way of horror violence to perk things up either. What we are left with is a very cheap looking production with a tinny 90's soundtrack. Pretty clearly a bargain basement example of a serial killer movie with little in it to recommend. Perhaps its main factor of note nowadays is that its director went under the infamous alias 'Alan Smithee' which was used by film directors to hide their identities when the film they were involved with turned out embarassingly bad - this method of subterfuge went out the window with the advent of the internet age, given that there was no longer any hiding place. As a consequence, The Coroner was one of the last films Mr Smithee ever made.

all i can say is that i have a problem, an addiction, if you will. and that addiction is to horrible movies like this (see my reviews for rock n roll nightmare and rocktober blood). the way i see it, being addicted to trash like this is much better than being addicted to other more dangerous things, i saw the coroner and yes, i laughed until i cried. or maybe i cried until i laughed...it's really neither here nor there.

there's a strip club opener, which is always cause for alarm because if a movie like this puts nudity right at the start, then you are probably in for it. knowing this, i pressed onward ascertaining that i have seen much much worse. then, there's salvation. you see, the killer/coroner uses a blowgun to capture his latest victim, the lawyer who tried to have him put away. i can't possibly describe how funny this scene is...just watch it...and rewind it...and rewind it again 6 times. this is all i really remember about the coroner other than the cliche' finish, which i will let you see for yourself. i was just happy to have spent $1.50 (me and a buddy went halfsies) on a film that made me laugh harder than i had since....well...rock n roll nightmare.

rating- 2 out of 10 because it still was like an hour and 20 minutes for just one really really good 3 minute scene. i recommend you go into the coroner with a friend or many friends that way maybe you could only end up paying like 50 cents each for the rental. i didn't mind paying $1.50 mind you, but a dollar is a dollar.

Absurdity at it's finest form - where else could you see a bald-headed middle-aged horizontally challenged man debuting in a lead role and even get to see his naked butt? Fans of B-movies and people who receive pleasure in pain: pay heed to this movie or regret the rest of your life.

Personally I have a tad of twisted tendencies towards the latter one of the aforementioned - mental sadomasochism - and probably not very surprisingly does my DVD shelf consist of not only bad movies but also movies that are hauntingly awful in the vain of The Coroner. Yes, there is a thin line between a bad movie and a movie that is bad in a good manner. No, The Coroner isn't a good-bad, it's plain bad, and no, I haven't been on drugs while handing over my credit card to the video store clerk when buying this film - consider this flaw of mine as an extremely entertaining fixation.

Like said, one should never underestimate the mindlessness of nonexistent requirements for a film to be released and actually distributed throughout the world. I think a plot around a chief coroner illusioning himself as the right hand of God mutilating women who have attempted suicide yet survived, cynical policemen who almost laugh at crime victims' face and a couple of lawyers trying to track down a mass murderer makes out a very decent mixture that is - quite unfortunately - mostly digestible only to a very small audience.

Nevertheless, I can't imagine anyone not liking this movie. People who don't worship bad movies just simply leave this kind of flicks in the cut-out bin for a loving family to pick them up, simple as that. Surely no sane person could possibly think that The Coroner would actually possess any potential for a horror/thriller movie to be taken seriously, for even the cover is so grotesque that it would freak the living crap out of no less than the Beast of Yucca Flats himself.

I really wonder how they managed to get this one on DVD with all the random gratuitous breast shots in the opening scene, intro credits with a musical piece that would make Danny Elfman turn in his, well, armchair etc., but I'm glad they did, because the infamous blowdart scene is truly one of the most confusing moments I've ever seen on screen and the VCR couldn't auto-repeat these disturbingly amusing seconds. I was with my buddies when I first saw this film and I imagine we all stared like retards jaws open wide with a wonderful "What in the world?" look on our faces, and having read another review of the movie afterwards I think that's exactly what will happen to anyone who dares to see The Coroner without proper preparation (though in that case the glamour would have been already taken away from you and the whole film would seem like a mindless and dull low budget production).

Enough of the blabbering, go see it yourself if you're stupid (or drunk) enough. All in all rather entertaining experience, but not to be viewed alone: make sure you can share the tears of laughter caused by the unintended comicality.