Let us talk about horror anthologies. This is a classic kind of horror movie built out of three or four short films. There are more of these than I could possibly count between Creepshow, V/H/S, Trilogy of Terror, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, Tales from the Hood, XX, and etc. etc. etc. Those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head.
I think these kinds of movies are so popular because horror as a genre is great for short stories. There are countless urban legends or campfire stories that can become 5-10 page stories which can then become short films or episodes of a TV series like The Twilight Zone. Short horror is the form at its most primal and most classic.
Anyway, since horror anthologies have not gone away or even slowed down, here's a brand new one: The Mortuary Collection, which was just released on Shudder this weekend. This is a movie aiming for good old-fashioned spooky thrills. The whole movie is set in some indeterminate mid-20th century period, maybe the Fifties or early Sixties. The kind of horror is almost Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark-vintage. The kind of creepy stories passed down for generations so that kids won't sleep tonight. It is so classic and even camp it could be family-friendly - except for all the gore.
The Mortuary Collection has a frame story involving an old, most-likely haunted house which serves as the funeral home for the town of Raven's End. The mortician is Montgomery Dark, played by everybody's favorite Kurgan, Clancy Brown in a ton of age make-up and thin yellow teeth. He is visited by Sam (Caitlin Custer) who claims she is here for the "Help Wanted" sign out front. But really Sam is more interested in Monty's collection of books and the stories within. Monty keeps trying to impress her with his best ghost story, which he claims really happened to the corpses he tends to, but Sam has a story of her own, which she thinks can top them all.
So then we watch the short films that make up the anthology of The Mortuary Collection. There is also a much shorter one at the beginning that Monty tells as something of a warm-up, I am not really counting that. (That one is also clearly inspired by the opening of Deep Rising.) All the stories are riffs on the usual kind of thing you'd need in a book of haunted tales or an episode of Tales from the Crypt.
You have the usual suspects here: a sexual encounter that goes disgustingly wrong, a murderer who meets supernatural justice, and a babysitter all alone on the night a psychopath escapes the asylum. I think all you needed was the hitchhiker that gets picked up the long-dead trucker and the family that brings home a Mexican rat as a pet to complete the set. It is familiar territory. But also, The Mortuary Collection has its own twisted edge to all of them.
I won't spoil the twists in any of the stories, but there is a place these stories usually end. The Mortuary Collection goes way beyond all of that. It isn't exactly a French Extreme movie in terms of blood and guts. But it is a movie that goes places. I was left so shocked after the first story I could not believe The Mortuary Collection could ever top that. That was some truly wonderful perverted and disgusting justice. Take that, patriarchy!
My only real complaint is that I think the digital color correction is way overdone. I get the old-timey ghostly atmosphere the filmmaker's want. But it is a bit much for me.
All in all, The Mortuary Collection is the perfect kind of movie to watch around Halloween. Everybody can love this kind of horror. It is fun and creative, while featuring some really memorable final images. The filmmakers did not have the world's largest budget, but they sure make the big effects land when they need them to count. The Mortuary Collection would be a great double feature with Trick'r'Treat or add the wonderful and underrated Ghost Stories to make it a triple feature. And who doesn't love Clancy Brown hamming it up as a creepy old man?
Next Time: The Conjuring 2 (2016), another Conjuring movie.
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