#williamfruet

We open on our young heroine, Heather, being dropped off by a bus in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in America and definitely not Canada. As she walks over a bridge, she notices a black cat following her. For some reason, this black cat freaks her out so much that she jumps into the next van that comes driving by, because everyone knows that hitchhiking isn’t nearly as dangerous as being in the presence of what appears to be a totally benign cat. Luckily, the driver of the van is Rick, a local good ol’ boy who is more than happy to give Heather a lift. You see, Heather has come out to the country for the summer to help her grandma, Maude Chalmers, run a bed and breakfast. As it turns out, the Chalmers family house used to be a funeral home, and Maude’s husband, James, has been missing for a number of years. I wouldn’t worry about it.

Once we get to the house, we meet Maude, who is your typical holier than thou old broad who disapproves of kids these days with their sex and rock n’ roll and electricity, plus the mentally handicapped handyman who lives in the shed out back and looks just like Donnie Wahlberg. Nearly 45% of this movie is shots of him reacting blankly to things. Cool. We also meet Rick’s brother, Joe, who is a local cop. Joe is investigating a number of mysterious disappearances in town, and of course the stodgy old sheriff refuses to even consider the possibility that these people were murdered, because as he puts it, “You know how many people go missing in the United States every day? Thousands!” Which makes sense, as this movie absolutely takes place in America, and not Canada. Every time Joe is on screen, the movie suddenly tries to become a comedy for no reason. Joe steps in cow shit. Hardy har har. Joe has a hard time backing his squad car out of a driveway. Hardy har har. Joe gets yelled at by the guy at the diner for putting his hat on the counter. Hardy har…nope.

Back at the bed and breakfast, we meet some of the guests. There’s Mr. Davis, a nice old guy who likes to go fishing, and the Brownings, Harry and Florie. Harry is kind of a Leisure Suit Larry-looking schmuck with a mustache, and Florie is an asshole. She’s the absolute worst. She complains about everything, tries to pick fights with everyone, and generally carries herself like she’s the most sexually irresistible creature in all of Canad…I mean America, despite the fact that she looks like a community college earth sciences teacher. She even mocks Donnie Wahlberg by pretending to flirt with him, which makes him angrily chop wood. Could he go from chopping wood to chopping…people?! Oh there’s also a family but we never learn their names and they have no lines.

Maude does some eavesdropping and finds out that Florie isn’t even Harry’s wife, she’s his mistress! Scandalous! That night, the camera does some creepy zooming around the house, going down into the basement, which is filled with old caskets and other spooky stuff, and we hear Maude speaking with someone with a disturbingly raspy voice who says that the adulterers have to go. One thing I will give this movie: it has atmosphere when it wants to. It really captures the dark stillness of rural America, and certainly not Canada, pay no attention to those accents. Oh, and the black cat shows up in a tree outside Heather’s window, and she once again totally flips out. This movie works so hard to convince you that this cat is terrifying, despite all evidence to the contrary. Donnie Wahlberg stares at some stuff.

So the next day, Maude confronts Harry and Florie and is like, you two are godless heathens, and you need to take your naughty fornications to some other, less reputable bed and breakfast! Harry is like, nuts to you, lady, I paid for a weekend, and that’s how long me and my awful side piece are gonna stay! They go off to the town dance to act like douchebags, and end up causing an honest to goodness brawl. Afterwards, they go park at the local quarry for some drunken sexy shenanigans. Suddenly, we see the Chalmers family truck cruising up slowly and quietly, with the headlights off. They love tap the back of Harry and Florie’s car. They do nothing but scream. The truck love taps them again. They make no attempt whatsoever to get out of the car and instead keep screaming. The truck love taps them for a third time, and their car falls maybe less than ten feet into the lake below. Again, apparently they just let this happen, there’s no visible effort to fight against their fate.

This is the first kill in the movie, it happens over a half an hour in, and there’s no blood. Oh, joy.

Heather goes in to clean the Brownings’ room the next day, and finds it totally empty. When she brings it up to Maude, Maude is like who what when never mind, I don’t want you hanging around that boy too late at night leave me alone nothing’s wrong. Oh yeah, I forgot, Heather and Rick are kinda dating at this point. That night, Heather hears the strange voices coming from down in the basement, and creeps down to check it out. But whoops, she knocks over a jar of pickled apples or some shit, oh nooooooo! The next morning, Heather is all like, hey grandma, who were you talking to down in the basement last night, and Maude literally grabs her by the arms and is like never go down in the basement it’s a terrible place and you can’t go down there and I’m not crazy and stop staying out so late with that boy and once again I’m not crazy. Riiiiiiight. So at this point it’s like, ok, grandpa is secretly living in the basement and going out at night to kill people. Speaking of which, can we get some more kills, please? Oh of course, that would leave less time for shots of Donnie Wahlberg staring at stuff.

Maude drives Mr. Davis into town, and tells him all about James. We get the first of three totally pointless flashbacks, in which a family photographs their dead child. When they get into town, we see Mr. Davis walk into the police station. Huh? What’s he doing there? And is that a Canadian flag in the background? But this movie is as American as apple pie and baseball and Pierre Trudeau! I mean Gerald Ford!

Heather and Rick do some snooping around the house, where they find the old hearse, along with a necklace that has the initials H.D. Heather talks about how she wishes she knew her grandpa, how her grandma always talked about what a kind, upstanding man he was. At which point Rick is like, well actually your grandpa was a mean drunk piece of shit who locked me the crematorium with a fresh corpse one time, queue pointless flashback number two, and Heather is like, psssh whatever, and leaves in a huff. The next day Heather and Rick drive into town, and Heather is like, my grandma is so weird, she’s so old fashioned, and it’s like she has no opinions of her own, they’re all my grandpa’s (uh huh), it’s like he’s still there with her (UH HUH) and she’s hiding him from everyone (UH HUUUUUUH). To which Rick replies, well, everyone in town knows that your grandpa was screwing around with another woman, and your grandma had a nervous breakdown because of it. Once again, Heather totally loses it, and is like, nuh-uh, you’re full of bullcrap, my grandparents are saints, what do you know. Ummm, Heather? A minute ago you were having your doubts, and all Rick did was confirm your suspicions. Don’t shoot the messenger, girlfriend. Save that energy for the spooky black cat. Also, Donnie Wahlberg stares at some stuff.

But that night, Heather overhears a strange conversation: Mr. Davis is like, oh hey Maude, I’m gonna go do some night fishing now, by the way, I’ve been snooping around town, and I think my wife was having an affair with your husband. At this point, I was hoping the movie was going to turn into In the Mood For Love, and just be about Mr. Davis and Maude falling in love, but refusing to act on it. No such luck. Also, his wife’s name was Helena! Helena Davis! H.D.! Cue the third totally pointless flashback, in which James watches some woman in a nightie dance around the kitchen. That’s how affairs work, right? Maude once again pulls her totally convincing I’m not crazy everyone else is crazy act, so Mr. Davis is like oh well I tried, just goes about his night fishing business. Then the movie has almost the exact same kill from the first Friday the 13th involving a flashlight and a first person camera. Mr. Davis is beaten with a pickaxe and buried in a shallow grave.

Kill number two, with less than half an hour left in the movie, and once again no blood. Super duper.

Down by the quarry, a swimming girl that the movie tries to pretend is a real character finds the bodies of the Brownings. Joe the cop is like, see?! The sheriff tentatively admits that ok, maybe all of those missing people didn’t just up and leave for the big city, and ok, maybe the fact that all of them were last seen at the Chalmers’ place wasn’t a coincidence. So Joe goes to see Maude and is like, hey, I need to look at the Brownings’ room. Maude is like how dare you I’ve known you since you were in short pants and I’m seriously not a crazy person, to which Joe is like, uh huh, well I’m the police. He of course finds nothing, then leaves. Donnie Wahlberg, meanwhile, stops staring at things long enough to follow our notorious black cat down into the basement, where he is stabbed a bunch of times by someone wearing a flannel shirt.

And that is the grand total of kills in Funeral Home. Three. No blood. Whoopee.

Now, at this point, I started to get worried. Are they really going to make it so Maude was the killer all along and James is like a split personality sort of thing? Are they really going to make it a Norman Bates situation? They wouldn’t, I thought to myself. They couldn’t, I thought to myself. Well, guess the fuck what? Heather and Rick go down in the basement, find Donnie Wahlberg’s dead body, Rick gets knocked unconscious, and none other than goddamn Grandma Maude chases Heather around with an axe, while screaming in that disturbing raspy voice. Great. But the bullshit doesn’t stop there! Heather runs into a dark room, Maude finds her, knocks into a hanging lightbulb, and reveals the corpse of Grandpa James Chalmers, sitting upright in a chair. Holy balls. It is almost literally shot for shot the reveal of Mrs. Bates at the end of Psycho. I couldn’t fucking believe the nerve of these filmmakers. Then, we cut to a shot that shows us that Joe and another cop happen to be outside the house for no reason, and Joe is like, well, time for this movie to end, so lets run in there. Oh, OH! And why doesn’t Maude chop Heather up into tiny little pieces? Because the black fucking cat runs by and distracts her. UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH.

As the credits roll, Joe explains the plot twist that was stolen from Psycho to some journalist, as if we were all too stupid to understand. Then he finds everyone’s favorite black cat on the hood of his cruiser, and picks it up. The camera zooms in and freeze frames on this dumb cat that it desperately wants to be meaningful and important to the plot, despite assigning no real meaning or importance to it whatsoever. You know, like how movies work.

Look, I’m going to be blunt: when you sit down to watch a film like Funeral Home, having read that it’s an 80s slasher film, you expect two things: creative, gory kills; and naked breasts. This film delivers on neither of these things. The three measly kills that we get are basically bloodless and shot so poorly that they’re almost Avantgarde, and there’s nary a nipple to be seen for the entire running time. Oh, and guess what, movie? You don’t just get to borrow from Alfred Hitchcock, okay? You really truly don’t. You have to earn it, which you do by making a film that can stand on it’s own artistic merit outside of it’s Hitchcockian overtones. Brian De Palma did this. Curtis Hanson did this. Funeral Home, you did not do this. By the way, I know a lot of people like this movie, ok? People seem to think it skates by on atmosphere alone. Furthermore, the lady who played Heather was actually nominated for Canada’s equivalent of a Best Actress Oscar. Good lord, I can only imagine the sorry state of Canadian cinema in the early 80s if this performance was deemed award-worthy. Which is weird, because obviously this is an American movie and…oh fuck it, this thing was shot in Canada, by Canadians, starring Canadians, and it is mind-boggling that the filmmakers thought that they could try and convince us otherwise. What a bunch of hosers.

So pay your last respects, because it’s time to lay Funeral Home to rest, where it belongs.