"Mortuary" (1983) d/ Howard Avedis

From exploitation king Howard Avedis, the man responsible for drive-in gems like The Teacher (1974) and Sybill Danning boob-nanza, They're Playing With Fire (1984), comes tonight's review, a golden era slasher that features the likes of a scene-chewing Bill Paxton along with Lynda Day George and her husband Christopher in what would be his final role, and let's not exclude a memorable trailer that featured cult legend Michael Berryman, who's interestingly nowhere to be found in the final cut of the film. Though it's pretty standard stuff, borrowing from a handful of earlier genre movies, it can boast of nude scenes from bonny auburn lass Mary Beth McDonough, who you'll remember played Erin on The Waltons. A foine ting, that.


"What a last movie to remember me by!", ponders Hank (Christopher George).
Christie (Mary Beth McDonough) suspects that her father's pre-credit chlorinated pool-death was no accident, her suspicions only strengthened by the onset of nightmares, sleepwalking into the pool in a nightie, and the feeling that she's being tailed by a hooded freak in a morgue wagon. Her goofy boyfriend Greg (David Wallace) doesn't help matters, spying on local undertaker Hank Andrews (Christopher George) as he leads a candlelit ceremony at his warehouse, decked out in red robes, with Christie's mom, Eve (Lynda Day George), in attendance, and getting a tire-heisting pal skewered on an embalming tool in the process. In the meantime, pay no mind to Hank's creepy son, Paul (Bill Paxton), who's got a slightly unhealthy crush on Christie, himself, and is taken to lurking about like a weirdo when he isn't slamming embalming tools into cadavers under dad's militant supervision. Hey, nobody ever mistook this for a murder mystery...


She must be watching dailies from her performance in "Pieces"(1983).
Just as Greg and Christie's investigative spying rules out Hank and Eve, who've been using secret seances to get to the bottom of the girl's father's untimely death, her stalker turns out to be Paul to nobody's surprise, decked out in gothy corpsepaint and hood, eager to terrorize the girl and her mother at the house during a power outage, after Christie wisely interrupts a screw on the living room floor to tell Greg she doesn't want to see him for a while, leaving nobody to protect the women later when Paul gets murderously pokey with his tool again. Hank interrupts Paul's impromptu Happy Birthday to Me (1981)-style wedding at the mortuary, with slumped corpses all seated around the groom and his naked bride-to-be(embalmed), and eats bossy father-type death for his troubles. Greg saves the day with a loaded M-16 he found stashed in a coffin earlier (I would have thrown the top hat at him, but that's just me), only to have the mother's corpse-in-attendance spring to life for a final attack a la Buio Omega (1980) or Pieces (1982). Take your pick.


"You bring up that Fish Heads video again, and I'll embalm ya, brah!", warns Paul (Bill Paxton).
David Wallace, who you may have seen in Humongous(1982), went on to a career in television and soap operas. After Christopher's death, Lynda Day George would appear solely in tv roles, with Mortuary serving as her last horror movie appearance to date, as well. Paxton shows up in everything from The Terminator (1984) to Aliens (1986) to Brain Dead (1990) and The Dark Backward (1991), before famously scoring roles in major studio flicks like Titanic, Twister, and Tombstone. On the scale, a mostly predictable cookie cutter slasher with more boobs than blood and more chuckles than atmosphere, and as such, it merits a single Wop. Mehhhh...


Dead chicks can't feel it when you insert the tool. Mortician/necrophiliac jokes make the world go around.

"Deadly Blessing"(1981) d/ Wes Craven

The Hit(tite)s just keep a' comin as we'll kick off June and travel to root beer country in examining tonight's minor 1981 cult fave from genre director Wes Craven, an odd blend of religious zealotry and the supernatural with appearances from cult icon Michael Berryman, Sharon Stone, Maren Jensen, and most memorably of all,  perhaps, Ernest Borgnine-in-Pa. Dutch chin. The resulting affair is surprisingly moody and grim and one I sat through several times in the cable box era and re-watched several more on videotape as an aspiring horrorphile in the early eighties, until finally taping over it for some Saturday night MTV concert, you know, back when that channel actually played music? There I go, sounding like the neighborhood wallet-necks I used to get under the skin of back in the day again. Now, thanks to those diamond bastards at Shout Factory, who've lovingly re-released the film in a deluxe edition on dvd and Blu-ray with more extras than you can shake a scythe at,  you can discover this one for yourselves, as well...


"I couldn't help my impure thoughts, father, did you see how plain she was??"
When Hittite leader Isaiah Schmidt's (Borgnine) son Jim is runneth over by his own tractor, things go from bad to worse for his pregnant widow, Martha (Maren Jensen), left to tend their farm alone and shunned by the simple religious townsfolk as a succubus(!),  for luring one of  their flock away in the first damned place. Now, Martha's attractive and all, but it's her buddy Lana (Stone) that's genuine sex vamp material here if you ask me. It turns out that Martha's not the only one the zealots dig pestering, as Louisa's daughter Faith (Lisa Hartman) is often chased around the fields and called a succubus herself by a scripture-spouting slowpoke named William (Berryman). Hold on one butter-churning minute, you Hittites, all these dames can't be succubi, can they?


"I never get to churn the butter!" barks William (Michael Berryman).
When Lana and Vicky (Susan Buckner) show up to lend support to their girlfriend, it all goes to Hell in a horse-drawn buggy. Vicky develops designs on Isaiah's son John (Jeff East), and William mysteriously turns his toes up out in the barn as he's shivved in the back, adding more fuel to the Mennonites' manias. It gets weirder yet when Lana has vivid recurring dreams about being forced to swallow a live spider as it parachutes down into her mouth, held open by anonymous hands.An inquisitive snake turns up in Martha's bathwater, and John's roadside makeout sesh with the Vickster ends with bladed stabwound death for him, trapped gas tank explosion death for her. In the end, Louisa turns out to be nuttier than a Snickers, and Faith turns out to be a maaaan, baby, leading to a knock-out, drag down, ahem... finale.


"Funny, this doesn't taste like a Haplopelma Albopilosum...."
Craven would follow this one up with Swamp Thing(1982), before scoring genre immortality two years later with A Nightmare on Elm Street. Hartman, who had a minor recording career of her own in the late seventies, ended up raising a family with country superstar Clint Black. Pennsylvania native/"Basic Instinct" muff shot, Sharon Stone is still hot, by God . Though Blessing is no masterpiece by anyone's standards, it's packed with enough flair and atmosphere to merit a respectable two big ones on the scale. Check it out.


"Hey lady, why you wearing bikini bottoms in the bathtub??"