Funeral Home

An effectively spooky low-budget thriller that takes more inspiration from Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) rather than Carpenter's Halloween (1978), as so many horror films from this era did.

A girl goes to help her grandmother with her new boarding house, a former funeral parlor, and begins to uncover sinister things as the guests start vanishing.

Solid direction uplifts this tight thriller, whose storyline is ultimately not very surprising. A few well-drawn characters do help to keep the story interesting. The rustic filming locations help to add to a chilling summer atmosphere and an air of mystery that works well to the films advantage. The re-occurring images of the black cat are a nice touch. The film is fairly subtle in its horrors, and probably comes off more compelling (and classy) because of it. In short, it's simple but good.

The cast is a strong point. Kay Hawtry is a stand-out as the grandmother, Lesleh Donaldson is fetching as our young female, and Dean Garbett is good as Donaldson's summer love.

All around, Funeral Home is a film that serves well as a thriller. It's not especially brilliant, but it does make for good entertainment.

*** out of ****

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.

Every now and then, you want to watch a movie that's just cozy and won't make you think too hard, scare you too much, or leave you too disturbed. One days like that, Funeral Home would make a nice movie companion. It never goes anywhere too dark, there's not any blood or gore to speak off, and it moves along at a reasonable pace, leaving you mostly unmoved, but not feeling like you wasted your time either.

Heather moves in with her quirky grandmother to turn their old funeral parlor into a boarding house and, as soon as the guests arrive, they start disappearing or dying under mysterious circumstances.

Any horror or mystery fan won't find the central mystery of Funeral Home too tough to crack, but that's part of the charm. Sometimes, it's just nice to see a familiar story well told.

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.

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.