Amateur movie with Big budget

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I don't think that I ever got around to watching this movie back in my younger years, even as an avid horror fan back then. I had a chance to sit down and watch it now late in 2016. I must admit that I didn't initially have any particularly high hopes for it, granted the fact that it was a 1983 slasher movie - as to what I understood from the synopsis. But having grown up with slasher movies, then I at least wanted to see what this movie was all about.Let's just say that I didn't even make it to the ending of the movie before I had given up out of sheer boredom. "Mortuary" was painfully slow-paced and lacked anything even remotely thrilling. And it's storyline was essentially as fulfilling as trying to giftwrap emptiness.For a slasher movie then "Mortuary" was anything but interesting or entertaining. It was, at best, a half-hearted attempt at a horror / slasher movie. Compared to movies such as "Friday the 13th" and "Nightmare on Elm Street" it was just an embarrassing movie to sit and bear witness to.The movie was lacking a proper storyline to lure in the audience and keep you nailed to the seat, and it was this that lead me to give up and move on to watch another movie.As for the acting, well I will say that people were doing adequate enough jobs with the limitations imposed on them in terms of a flawed storyline and lack of proper script. And it was fun, I will say that much, to see a very young Bill Paxton in a movie such as this."Mortuary" is not entertaining, and I can honestly say that I will not ever be returning to this movie in order to finish the last half of the movie. It just failed to entertain me on any level, and there is nothing worthwhile to be experienced here.If you enjoy a proper slasher movie, then there are more than plenty to pick from, especially if you have a thing for 1980's movies.

Mortuary was a horror film that features Bill Paxton, Mary Beth McDonough, David Wallace, Lynda Day George, and Christopher George,who appears in his final film.The movie centers on a hooded face painted killer who stabbed or impaled his victims on an embalm.Greg and Christie are a young married couple who are investigating the mysterious death of Christie's father. Their search takes them to mortician Hank Andrews, who leads a Satanic cult along with his demented son Paul.However,even Christie's own mother may be in on the series of embalming-needle murders surrounding the mortuary.The movie is an average horror film that barely scares the viewer.Also,the screenplay is decent.What makes this a better-than- average film are the performances of Bill Paxton and Lynda Day George,Mission Impossible TV series star.It has some surprises at the end but not enough to elevate this into a cult classic.

Howard Avedis, better known for directing sleazy erotic thrillers, tries his hand at horror and does a rather decent job. He gets plenty help from a capable cast (with a few notable exceptions) and screenwriter Marlene Schmidt, who appeared in a few of his earlier films. MORTUARY follows the life of tortured college girl Mary McDonough whose father was killed in an unfortunate accident. Mary seems to be the only person who thinks her old man was murdered and when her jockish bore of a boyfriend spots her mother at a seance, he feels Mary's mommy (Lynda Day George) may be a bit of a Satanist.The film's title comes from the place where much of the shady doings and bumps in the night occur--the local mortuary. Lynda Day George attends seances there because the head of her cult is Christopher George, the mortuary manager. He is grooming his son, Bill Paxton, who has more than a schoolboy crush on Mary, to take over the family business. The boy seems too preoccupied with chasing Mary around and embalming hot blonds than taking his job seriously. Thngs begin to stir up when a cloaked figure begins chasing Mary around. Mary thinks her father's killer is coming to finish off the family.STORY: $$$ (Marlene Schmidt pens a slightly better than average script here. There are some plot turns and some nifty devices but nothing too influential. One of the main questions the script puts forth is what Lynda is doing at these bizarre cloaked rituals. Is she trying to communicate with the dead or is she Satan's slave? Marlene's script could have played with Lynda's cult a little more to add to the suspense, but the suspense really wasn't lacking. This was a rather good screenplay--B-Rate horror standards).ACTING: $$$ (The acting is pretty good all the way around, with the notable exception of the blond jock that played Mary McDonough's boyfriend. The guy wasn't convincing and seemed clueless as to what to do on screen when he didn't have any lines. It's no shock that I haven't seen that guy in anything else. Mary McDonough is fine in the lead building a sympathetic character and Chritopher George and his real life wife Lynda Day are fine as always in their supporting roles. Lynda gets to play a more sassy role; quite in contrast to her more delicate female roles in flicks like ANTS. But the movie belongs to Bill Paxton who slam dunks his role of a socially awkward mortuary attendant. It was quite clear that Mr. Paxton was well on his way to bigger and better things).NUDITY: $$$ (Since this was helmed by Howard "Let's See Some Boobs" Avedis, there is a sprinkling on nudity throughout the film. Paxton embalms a pretty blond early in the film and Mary McDonough has a romp with her boyfriend before her extended nude scene in which Paxton plans to embalm her. The buxom Lynda Day George keeps herself under wraps but does offer some titillation with a lowcut nightgown that displays the type of cleavage all men wish their wives had).

This largely unheralded artifact from the Golden Age of splatter is admittedly more enjoyable because of the aesthetic it shares with the classic films surrounding it than because of the movie itself. However, thanks to some nice atmospheric touches and a well-realized climax, Mortuary ends up being a safely above average offering well worth seeking out for '80s horror enthusiasts.Granted, the story is a bit disjointed, and a sizable chunk of the film is spent following an ultimately insignificant subplot concerning the owner of the titular funeral home and the strange ritualistic séances he conducts in the basement. The real driving force of the tale is a college girl named Christie who is haunted by images of her father's murder, which she suspects may be tied in with a phantasmal killer who is stalking her (gee, you think?).The homicidal specter in question is a dark-robed figure whose face is painted up like he's auditioning to be the bass player in a Scandinavian black metal band, and who has the seemingly supernatural ability to appear just about anywhere at will. Figuring out who the killer is isn't difficult, especially since we are treated to close-ups of his pasty visage less than halfway through the film. For some reason, Christie has a tougher time connecting the dots, and despite seeing him face to face and hearing him speak at length during one encounter, the best she can come up with is, "his eyes looked familiar".It's probably inaccurate to call Mortuary a "slasher" film or a "splatter" movie, since it has a notably lean body count and only a few scenes of bloodletting. However, the sequences it does contain are well-orchestrated, and one in particular, in which the obviously aroused killer graphically stabs his victim dozens of times while shuddering with orgasmic glee, still packs a vicious punch even by today's standards.The pace is definitely on the slow side, and things don't really get cooking until the third act, but the film maintains a steady level of suspense throughout while the mystery is being unraveled. The tension is augmented immeasurably by an excellent musical score, which is among the best you'll hear in the film cycle of the era.The standard cast of unknowns is bolstered by the always welcome presences of Christopher and Lynda Day George, and a manic performance by a very young Bill Paxton lends the film additional curiosity value. Amongst the newbies, the acting is generally serviceable, although in one awkwardly performed scene depicting Christie's reaction to a flashback nightmare, Mary McDonough's facial expressions, writhing, and demeanor look less like disturbance and more like the throes of sexual ecstasy. It certainly doesn't help that she's moaning, "Daddy... daddy... daddy..." over and over again, either.The horror elements are nicely balanced with a few nuggets of delightfully droll black humor, my favorite being a scene in which Christopher George is giving a sales pitch to an aged married couple shopping for funeral accessories. When George steps away, the couple has a moment to appraise the casket he's selected for them, during which the thoughtful wife expresses her reservations to her husband: "honey, I just don't think you'd be comfortable in this".Of course, the film has its requisite share of unintentional silliness, and the melodramatic preening of the killer is guaranteed to make you snicker a time or two. Predictably, an extended scene inside a roller rink with its accompanying disco jam hasn't aged well, either. Oddly, this same disco derby scene includes three friends of our leading couple, who seem groomed to be perfect fuel for a larger body count, yet are so ultimately insignificant in the film that we're left wondering why they were introduced at all.Though it's a pretty bumpy road getting there, the giddily ghoulish finale is worth the wait. You'll find similar twists in a few other outings of Mortuary's vintage, but the way it's handled here serves as a satisfying pay-off for the methodical set-up that precedes it.Mortuary isn't mandatory viewing by any means, but the fantastic score, a likable hero and heroine, and a nifty final chapter combine to give the film enough positive attributes to warrant 85-minutes of your life. Those who treasure this period of horror's history aren't likely to regret taking a look.