Mortuary   2005
    So, I bought this movie blindly since it was less than $7 at Wal-mart, I knew nothing about it going in to it but saw it was made by Tobe Hooper and decided to snag it. The review on the back of it made it sound like it was some sort of Halloween or Friday the 13th deal. Wrong! It's a zombie movie among other things, but it's the first zombie movie I've enjoyed in the longest time.
   Mortuary starts out with a family moving to some small hick town, a widow and her two kids. She  just moved into this town to become a mortician. You see, she bought a house which is also a mortuary, the yard has a cemetery and the she's learning the embalming and such as she goes along, with hilarious consequences. There's this weird black fungus/slime that is growing on everything. This stuff can also take control of people and reanimate the dead. There's also a disfigured guy running around, he's pretty much the Leatherface of the this movie.
  The first half of the movie is rather slow, the main characters are established as they move into the new town. Teenagers meet, love story, boy gets bullied, gets in a fight, bully gets drunk and desecrates cemetary, bully meets monster, movie picks up. From the halfway point on there is some good comic relief, and then a ton of action, plenty of monsters, a few pretty good twists, but not the friggin'  High Tension crap.
     The second half of the movie had me grinning from ear to ear' til the end. Parts of this movie reminded me of The Gate, in that it was a movie that had a ton of violence and cool stuff going on, but with younger characters as the protagonists, and some of the cheesier effects near the end only added to it. There's a lot of underground tunnels and what not littered with dead bodies, much like Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Plus there's a part with Bobby (the dude on the cover) and the little girl that reminds me of Leatherface and Stretch in TCM2 where they become friends for a moment. Though there's Bill Moseley doesn't run around chanting "Bubba's got a girlfriend".  The zombie scenes felt like they could have been in Return of The Living Dead or a slightly more serious Dead Alive. Oh! and the teenage characters were actually played by teenagers! Can you believe that? None of that  I Know What You Did Last Summer, 90210 sort of garbage.  I'd also say that this movie is really family friendly, sure there's some suggested sex, and a lot of violence, it'd be a good horror film to watch with younger people. Heck, it's the sort of stuff I grew up on. At some point the kids figure out a weakness and start using it, like Monster Squad or Ernest Scared Stupid. Anything that makes me think about spraying trolls with milk is a good thing.
     It feels so good to see one of the great horror movie directors making horror movies the way they should be done. Even the cheesier aspects of this movie were nice because it reminded me of what horror movies could be. If anything Mortuary gives me hope, a breath of life, or death or whatever, into the genre. We've had so many bad remakes shoved down our throats as of late. It's about time we get something new and entertaining. Sure I referenced a ton of movies, but it's great to be reminded of other things you love. Something doesn't have to be 100% original, but I can't stand sitting through one more "remake" that's just dumbed down for the increasingly stupid target demographic that has no knowledge of anything beyond the last year. Mortuary is a straight to DVD bargain buy, seek it out, watch it and feel home again within a movie. If you don't feel this way then please exit my site now.


4 out of 5 skulls.

Here's a picture of that one broad from the early seasons of Star Trek : TNG getting vomited on.