The most notable thing about FUNERAL HOME is its title, an
achingly obvious horror movie title if there ever was one. You’d be forgiven
for thinking that you have seen a half a dozen movies bearing that name. How it
was that by 1980 we managed to have THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE but not FUNERAL
HOME is beyond my comprehension. It really, truly is a no-brainer title. Like
PSYCHO or HALLOWEEN, the title FUNERAL HOME immediately tells you everything
you need to know about the film. You instantaneously form an idea of the
horrors contained within. Decay, embalming fluids, pasty faced corpses laid out
in gaudy pine boxes… it’s both a perfect title and an underwhelming title.
Nothing too flashy, nothing too original, everything is obvious, everything is
routine.
That perfectly summarizes the film itself too. This was early
1980, well before the attractive, horny teenager became the de facto standard
for slasher movie characters. Sure, we have Heather, the lovely, busty protagonist
and Rick, her hunky boyfriend, but we’re mostly stuck with a bunch of chubby,
nondescript schlubs, all of whom have their own individual plot threads, for
the majority of the movie. Amid all the comings and goings of our hideous
40-somethings is Maude Chalmers, Heather’s grandmother. Left alone after her
mortician husband ran off with another woman, Maude has decided to turn her
home, the titular funeral home, into a bed and breakfast. This of course raises
the very valid question of why anyone in their right mind would choose to spend
their weekend vacations in a largely rundown, ultra creepy home in the middle
of a field but hey, it’s their money and they can waste it as they wish.
Maude is your typical bitter, conservative prude, a real cantankerous
old crow that is as likely to berate her customers (in particular, a sleazy
traveling salesman and his horribly downmarket mistress) as she is to fix them
breakfast. But of larger concern than the service is the way Maude sneaks down
into the basement to have arguments with a mysterious man whom we never see.
There’s also the mentally challenged handyman lurking about and because this is
a 1980s horror movie, that can’t be good for anyone at the property. It doesn’t
take too long before people start dying and the truth about Maude’s more
anti-social tendencies come to light. Anyone paying attention to the near
constant Hitchcock references will figure out the twist ending pretty quick and
honestly, this is about the only thing FUNERAL HOME does really well.
Unfortunately, when the best I can say about your movie is that it very cleverly
references a much better movie… well, that might not be much of a compliment.
At little more than 90 minutes, FUNERAL HOME absolutely
blows by. This is a film I actually watched twice in a row to see if I could
figure out why a movie in which nothing much happens feels like a movie half
its length. After those two viewings, I still have no idea. I don’t want to give
the impression that the movie is totally without merit though. William Fruet,
the director of the much more satisfying DEATH WEEKEND and the incredible KILLER
PARTY, does have a considerable amount of skill. When the film decides it wants
to be a slasher instead of just a low rent Hitchcock knock-off, it contains a
surprising amount of punch, with more than a few stalking scenes done quite
well. There’s some genuinely effective stuff in here, but it is surrounded by
endless stretches of unlikable characters doing uninteresting things. Had the
film been a bit more focused and a lot less obvious, it would have achieved
what it set out to do. As it stands, it is just an alright, middling little
horror film that doesn’t quite stand out from the pack.