Funeral Home

William Fruet's film, Funeral Home, is for the most part Psycho with kids. The movie starts off with a teenager visiting her grandmother in a small town. Both plan to turn the house that the grandmother lives in (which was once the town's funeral home) into a summer house for passers by. Tenants soon show up and then quickly disappear. Soon the teenager and the town's new young deputy investigate the disappearances and discover that this coming and going of out-of-towners has been happening for some time. They finally discover the answer to the mystery in the film's scary ending.

The performances by both the older cast members and younger actors are very good. Watching the deputy character gather clues to build a case added alot of charm to the film as well. Although shot on a low budget, it is still very well produced and the action scenes are very well staged indeed. Horror fans should give this one a try next time they visit their video store. Happy Hunting!

Exceptional in all departments for a cheaply constructed horror film, FUNERAL HOME is the creepy little tale of a young girl relocating to a provincial town in order to assist her grandmother in converting the family funeral home business into a modest bed-and-breakfast retreat. When people begin to mysteriously disappear, a history of bizarre family secrets is gradually revealed in a suspenseful mystery which spires toward a bizarre and thoroughly satisfying conclusion.

A surprisingly adept parsimonious undertaking, FUNERAL HOME is an atmospheric chiller with primary characters which are believably written and energetically dramatized...a largely uncharted item demonstrative of what talented hands can craft with limited resources.

Worthwhile and recommended. 6.5/10

I'll give "Funeral Home" a little extra credit, since it was directed by William Fruet, who also gave us the decent revenge pic "Death Weekend." The plot has a young girl returning to her grandparents' home, the former funeral parlor now converted into a bed and breakfast by the grandmother; but who is grandma talking to in the basement every night, and who is bumping off the sinful heathens who stop and stay at the B&B? The typical genre stereotypes are present: Goofy Young Deputy, Mentally Challenged Gardener, Puritanical Parental Figure, and the Sweetly Innocent Girl. The plot itself echoes "Psycho" in more ways than one, but with a fraction of the budget and considerably less talent. The actors are fairly good for this type of low-rent affair, and there are a few cheesily-integrated, yet atmospherically effective flashback scenes, but "Funeral Home" is simply a forgettable affair.

This is no doubt one of the best low-budget horror flicks that I have seen since SLEEPLESS. My copy of the tape was very old and I got it in some really huge box that was falling apart. My tape was slightly damaged and it made fuzzy noises throughout the movie. But this didn't bother me. I think I kinda enjoyed the fuzziness. It added to the campiness of the film. Making it look and sound older than it actually was. It all starts out when a young girl goes to visit her grandmother at her home which was recently a funeral home. Grandma wants to make her house into a motel for passers-by. And then some of the guests begin disappearing. If you want some good, campy fun of a horror film, then see FUNERAL HOME. You will be surprised........5/5.

I just watched Funeral Home and keep wondering why I've never seen it before now. It's a 1980 horror flick that's a little above average for its budget. What I mean to say is that it fits right in there with the horror films during the time, the ones that had fairly decent acting and good enough scripts. Why didn't I ever see this on cable TV back in the day? I recognized actress Lesleh Donaldson playing Heather, remembered her from the films Happy Birthday to Me and Curtains. Now those two movies played on cable all the time back then. Also, recognized the one cop played by Alf Humphreys from My Bloody Valentine. Funeral Home is a decent horror movie, especially having been made in 1980. It does mirror Hitchcock's Psycho in certain plot aspects and in its build up, but it's still distinct enough, I think. There's not a lot of action, blood spraying everywhere, but it has a creepy atmosphere in which the setting is believable. Holds the attention. I really thought the ending was clever with the credits rolling and the movie still playing. Liked the dialogue at the end between the cop and the old woman. Funeral Home should be in every horror collector's arsenal.