This movie isn't the worst horror film you'll ever see. It comes across as a cinematic version of a middling fill-in story from an old issue of CREEPY or EERIE magazine from the 1960s -- one that isn't too original but would be memorable if it were to be drawn by Bernie Wrightson.Unfortunately despite an acceptable buildup and a pace that goes from decent to over-the-top berserk, this film suffers from not having had the sort of attention given to it that would have made it the equivalent of the Wrightson-drawn CREEPY story. It comes off as having been drawn by one of those artists whose names you don't remember and know they hired because he would work cheap.Actually it looks very much as if cheap was the word for some reason and at some point during the production, for some reason it was decided that no one gave a crap any more about quality and that they needed to finish the thing ASAP which is why the conclusion, and choices and effects used in it, get noticeably further off track as the finale approaches, which consists of 15 seconds of footage that never should have been included at all because it doesn't follow at all logically from what we've just seen happen before it.The film suffers also from some serious "isn't"s: It appears from the opening, which shows a mother of 2 kids apparently delighted to be moving into a filthy windowless house with a lawn full of black septic tank overflow and a back yard full of tombstones, that the film is intended as at least a semi-comedy. But there's nothing really present that makes you laugh, so funny it isn't. Stike one.The actress cast as the mother, familiar to most from her appearances on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, should be scary. -- SLIGHT SPOILER -- Her function in the story is to menace her own children when she is turned zombie by the evil forces in the mortuary-house, and she has a prime opportunity to show off some delightful dark creepy humor in a scene in which she, as the perfect zombie-mom, is to serve the rest of the cast dinner. The actress unfortunately entirely throws the scene away and does nothing with it. It's as if she can't be bothered to affect a scary countenance or give anything to the part at all. Either she doesn't actually know how to act or didn't care to do so in this film. Either way, she was the wrong choice for the part and is chiefly responsible for the feeling that the film jumps too abruptly into high gear all at once about 2/3 of the way through -- she should have been the middle gear and gotten things warmed up for the grand finale but, honestly, her community-theatre level uninvolved performance really sinks the whole central section of the picture -- we don't really accept her transformation because it's performed so poorly which strongly affects our perception that the other zombies yet to come are anything but other people who don't care about their parts. So scary -- she isn't. Actually she is a complete drag and therefore a liability which heavily damages the picture. Martha Stewart could have played the part better, and as far as I know, she can't act at all. And that's strike two.Finally, as others have noted, the "legendary" unseen boogeyman character doesn't get much to do and when he finally joins in the action he does very little, and "the chase" is then rapidly cut to. So, interesting, he isn't, particularly, either, and that's strike three.If this film had had more of a budget or anyone had actually cared about it, it could have been good. The kid & teen actors are fine (even if the young hero does have a sort of Bud Bundy from "Married With Children" quality about him, which isn't really a negative). But there's no time put into the crucial elements here -- it all comes off as very cheap and rushed and "done the quickest, easiest way," which undoubtedly it was. But even with all its flaws it does have at least one good scary moment, which is when we discover the little girl character has disappeared from the hiding place she was placed in and is likely in big trouble. You do genuinely fear for her and what's going to happen next and the atmosphere instantly jacks up 5 notches and becomes briefly scary, for perhaps the only time in the film.MORTUARY is not a bad "Tales from the Crypt" style story, and it's certainly not boring, it's just not what it should have been. It's not what you do in the case of a low-budget horror movie, it's how you do it that matters, and though this movie is never really dull, it's done with so little attention to detail it ends up blowing up in its own face rather than being the "creepy" Wrightson-style fun it could have been.

I was really surprised when I hopped on here and saw this rated so low. I for one had a good time watching it. It's sort of bordering on a kid-friendly scary movie with just enough bad stuff in it to make it like a 15 and up flick. I'm sure it'd be best for adolescent boys with some of it's downright stupid lines and minuscule sexploitation.I see one of the biggest problems is that people don't think this movie is scary. To that I say what movies are ever scary? I haven't been scared by a movie (aside from cheap shocks) for a long time.That aside this is still a good movie, it's interesting, it has a lot of good stuff going for it. Decent acting, decent plot, some comedy (I laughed my ass off when the Sheriff fired off about GB's), some action, some random things I never saw coming.Worst ending in the world though, I completely write off the ending. That did not happen. Without it, I'd say it's a solid 8. Definitely entertaining and nowhere near the garbage movies Sci-Fi channel puts out. This is leagues above a bad movie but it's definitely not perfect.

Mortuary (2005) ** (out of 4) Being a teen is hard but it's even harder when your mom is a mortician and moves you into a creepy house with a cemetery attached to it. That's what happens to Jonathan (Dan Byrd) who learns that the house is apparently not only haunted but stalked by a deformed maniac. I think it's fair to say Hooper has been a disappointment ever since his debut even though every fan keeps hoping his next film will be one worth writing home about. This one here, like so many in his career, isn't a terrible movie but at the same times there's really nothing special in it. This film mixes THE SHINING, NIGHT OF THE CREEPS and a little bit of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD but it can't hold a candle to any of those films and in the end you can't help but feel you've wasted your time. Right from the start you can't help but think the mother is stupid for keeping her children there but the reasons behind the "hauntings" is quite silly and doesn't work by the time they pop up at the end. The movie is never scary which doesn't help matters when it doesn't have much gore either. The special effects are poor CGI that look so obviously fake so here's yet another negative. The cast aren't too bad as they deliver the type of performances you'd expect to find in this type of film. Hooper manages to keep the film moving at a nice pace but the screenplay really doesn't give him too much to work with.

After the great "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" I've been trying to find another good horror movie from horror legend director Tobe Hooper and it's pretty hard to do."TCM 2" was really good but other than that I'm kinda realizing that Hooper may have been a one hit wonder.In this movie a single mom and her two kids move cross country to start a new life.Supposedly the mom has went back to school to be a mortician.They buy an old funeral home where she does her work.The funeral home is old and run down and decrepit and has a graveyard beside it.So we start out okay but then the movie goes quickly downhill into a typical Tobe Hooper jumbled up mess of disjointed action and unexplained happenings.The family soon learns of a local legend that involves the old funeral home and some deformed kid who was abused and locked up when his parents ran the funeral home.In the meantime some weird mold is creeping around the funeral home and then somehow the dead start coming back to life and get into the mix .So we got this deformed freak and the mold and the living dead who all may be linked somehow but I'm not sure how exactly.All these evil villains and still not a good movie ! I was waiting for a werewolf and vampire to show up.So anyway the family is sort of overwhelmed by all this weird stuff.I felt so underwhelmed when this movie was over.The screenplay was pretty weak....a lot of the stuff was never really explained as to how or why it was happening....the dead just start popping back to life,maybe because of the mold,I dunno, and get this....they can infect you but they have to puke in your mouth to spread the infection or whatever you want to call it.Or the mold can crawl into your mouth and do it at least I think that was possible cause I saw the mold shooting into a girl's mouth for some reason.The acting was pretty good.The lead guy, played by Dan Byrd, kept distracting me cause he looks like the result if Topher Grace and Michael J. Pollard had a kid.(You young'uns will have to Google Pollard.....it'll be worth it).But Byrd was pretty good anyway.The special effects were limited but some were done well.One shot gun blast was startlingly cool.What didn't work,and I'm not sure why director's still use it, was the cartoonish look of the mold when it moved.Whatever you call the process,it looks like the old stop action special effects only done in cartoons.There were a couple of sets of big wobbly breasts briefly shown but sadly they were on zombie chicks.All in all this movie was a jumbled mess of unexplained events and numerous evil entities which I'm sure were all connected in Tobe Hooper's mind into a sensible story somehow, but he just doesn't seem to be able to get the story in his head to make sense on screen any more.His disjointed scrambled film making style was perhaps what gave "TCM" some of it's appeal and it seems like Hooper may have realized that and ever since has been forcing this style trying to make it work again.Oh this movie is as good as most horror films released today.But that ain't saying a whole lot.