The Undertaker

The late, superior character actor Joe Spinell (of "Maniac" fame) had his last leading role in this obscure shocker, before dying at 52 of undetermined causes. Joe gives this bargain basement piece of excrement what little value it has, playing the part of "Uncle Roscoe", a mortician in a small New Jersey town. Dabbling in some necrophilia on the side, Roscoe resorts to murder to drum up business for his shabby funeral home. His nephew Nicky (Patrick Askin) develops suspicions about the old man, and relays them to his college professor, Pam Hayes (Rebeca Yaron).

Although fairly brief at an 83 minute running time, "The Undertaker" can be pretty tedious. It's mildly amusing at best, but considering the fact that it was never really completed, that's at least some sort of accomplishment. Still, as written by William James Kennedy (who also plays a supporting role), it relies on padding a LOT. Public domain titles like Roger Cormans' "The Terror" and especially the Bela Lugosi vehicle "The Corpse Vanishes" are showcased ad nauseum, the latter presumably because it helps to inspire Roscoe. There are also extended sequences of sexy young ladies exercising, and one excruciatingly overlong period of Mandy (Susan Bachli) exploring Roscoes' lair.

Overall, this comes off like somebody's bad home movie, and it's just as crudely edited as one could expect. There's some partial female nudity to keep some audience members in their seats, but the gore is quite mild. The music isn't that great but it still manages to be somewhat catchy. Most of the supporting characters and performances are pretty insipid, with Spinell being the only real professional in this bunch. (One might assume that he did this as a favor to someone). The ending is particularly bad.

Devotees of Spinell will want to see this for completions' sake, but they'd better keep those expectations REALLY low.

Five out of 10. (Spinell increases the rating by a point.)

The Undertaker is not very well known to say the least; and I really can't say I'm surprised about that as the film is rather silly and lacklustre. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that this is one of the last films of cult star Joe Spinell, I highly doubt that anyone would remember it at all. As you would expect from a low budget trash film such as this; the plot is not particularly inventive and the writing is even worse. The film starts off with a rather amusing scene that features an attempted rape by a motorcyclist, and it really sums up what you're going to see nicely as the victim must rank as one of the slowest-witted of all time! The plot focuses on an undertaker named Roscoe. He's a sick man and has decided to take his job into his own hands and has begun killing people himself. He slices up his victims and keeps them as his 'friends' inside the funeral home he lives in. Naturally, it's not long before the police find out what's happening and begin to investigate.

Joe Spinell is best known for his role in 1980's Maniac; but anyone hoping for anything like as good as that is liable to be sorely disappointed. This film does feature a handful of murders; but none of them are particularly violent or bloody and mostly we just get to see the killer and his dead victim after the event. I don't know if this was an attempt at 'less is more' or (more likely) the budget constraints meant no gore could be afforded; but either way it's disappointing. As the film is very hard to track down, the copy that I saw was less than great and looks like someone spread Vaseline all over the film stock; but even so it's obvious that the film has a trashy look about it anyway. This does lend itself well to the plot, which is also trashy, but still the film is not very nice to look at. The Undertaker runs for ninety minutes, and even though that's an average running time for films like this; it still feels overlong. The ending is serviceable, but not really worth the wait. Overall, I can't say that this film is worth tracking down, even for hardcore Spinell fans.

Like I'm sure it's the case for every single other reviewer around here, my sole reason for watching "The Undertaker" was because it stars the great (and late) Joe Spinell in a role very similar to the one he played in the legendary gore classic "Maniac" (1980). Joe Spinell may have appeared in several acclaimed A-listed cinematic landmarks, like "The Godfather", "Rocky" or Taxi Driver", but he'll always be most remembered for his role as the perverted, mother-obsessed psychopath Frank Zito. Presumably he was desperate to add another notorious horror role to his repertoire, as he allegedly lobbied intensively to be cast in the titular role, but it didn't quite work out as he hoped. By now "The Undertaker" is a forgotten horror movie from the 80s, and rightfully so because it's really boring, slow-paced and badly acted. Apart from being the local undertaker, Roscoe is also a deranged and megalomaniac killer who keeps the embalmed bodies of his victims hanging around in the basement like there's some kind of everlasting tea party going on! Roscoe and his murder patterns aren't exactly discrete or carefully planned, so there are many people that grow suspicious and attempt to stop him (subsequently his own nephew, a high-school teacher, a sleazy cinema owner and a couple of police officers) but they stupidly get themselves caught or killed as well. It's truly incomprehensible that "The Undertaker" is such a disappointment, as it basically contains all the necessary ingredients for success: a simple but effective plot, a very high body count, some gore, gratuitous nudity and a creep in the lead role! However, the whole film gets ruined due to slow-pacing, too many pointless boring scenes and an endless amount of inaudibly muttered dialogues/monologues. Not recommended, unless you feel the uncontrollable urge to track down and watch literally every 80s horror slasher ever made (which I'd understand if that's the case, by the way).

The Undertaker (1988)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Roscoe (Joe Spinell) runs a funeral home but there aren't too many people dying so he's losing out on money. This gives him the idea of killing people so that his work will be full and this will bring in money. Soon the police are trying to track down who is mutilating all the people.

THE UNDERTAKER is somewhat of a mystery movie. It never got an official release in America when it was made and for many years it was only available via a bootleg. There were rumors that the film was never completed but that's certainly not true since there are opening and closing credits as well as a music score and so on. I think it might have been possible that the production ran out of money and this might explain why certain scenes end without reason or why other bits and pieces seem to not be complete.

As far as the film goes, honestly, it's pretty hard to judge the film because it just feels like it's incomplete. However, no one involved with the production has spoken up so it's hard to know what's really going on with it. As I said there are many scenes that just stop without reason or cuts off and goes to something else without much of a reason why. There are also countless scenes where people just walk or talk for no real reason other than to expand the running time. I will say that the special effects are decent for the obvious low-budget they were working on. A lot of the effects happen off screen but we get the bloody aftermath.

The main reason to watch the film or stay away from it is for Joe Spinell. The character actor appeared in films like THE GODFATHER, ROCKY and TAXI DRIVER but he will always be remembered for his role in MANIAC. That 1980 slasher was a masterpiece and several producers tried to recapture that film with Spinell. You had THE LAST HORROR FILM and then MR. ROBBIE: MANIAC 2. It's clear that they wanted this to be like MANIAC as we get some very familiar scenes and especially with Spinell talking to his victims and crying because of his pain. The performance is okay but there are some rather obvious moments where Spinell is drunk and having issues with his lines. Some might just wish not to see Spinell in this shape and especially when you considered he died a couple months after this was done filming.

So, it's really going to be up to Spinell fans on whether or not they want to see this film. It's strange that it isn't better known but there are just way too many issues for it to be a complete success.

Talk about having a bad day: in the opening scene for The Undertaker, a woman gets a flat tyre in the middle of nowhere, but hasn't got a spare; a biker stops and offers to take her to a gas station, but instead tries to rape her; she runs away and flags down a car, asking the driver to take her to town, only her 'saviour' is none other than 'maniac' Joe Spinell as deranged mortician Roscoe. Next time we see the woman, she's on Roscoe's slab, throat cut, having her dead boobs fondled. How's about that then, guys and gals?

This exploitative intro perfectly sets the tone for the whole film, which delivers loads of female nudity (all the young women get their tops off at some point), some reasonably gory kills, and a sublimely scuzzy performance from Spinell as yet another greaseball lunatic, all shot in glorious sleaze-o-rama (voyeuristic POV shots, heavy breathing, grainy photography and lots of sweat).

Out to expose the psycho mortician is his nephew Nick (Patrick Askin), who goes to his college anthropology teacher Pam Hayes (Rebecca Varon) for help, asking her to come to the funeral home so that he can show her evidence of his uncle's crimes. Nick is unable to find Roscoe's polaroid collection of his victims, and so Pam remains unconvinced. But when Roscoe gets wind of their snooping, he adds them to his kill list - is that enough to convince you, Ms. Hayes?

While the psycho-killer plot is nothing to write home about, this one scores points for the following: Pam's lecture on necrophilia (luckily, no slide show), the naked chick tied to a tree and sliced open by a whimpering Roscoe, Roscoe pressing a girl's face onto her hot frying pan, Pam's shower scene, the revelation that Roscoe ejaculates over his victim's intestines, Pam's bff Mandy (Susan Bachli) naked in bed, a juicy 'knife in the eye' kill, a receipt spike through the neck, Mandy (in her underwear) being decapitated, a 'machete in the head' gag, the downbeat 'no-one gets out alive' attitude, and for giving Spinell his own catchphrase: 'You moron!'.

6.5/10, which I'll round up to 7 despite the very dumb closing shot in which one of Roscoe's victims, whose body has been hanging in the mortuary cellar for days, turns out to be still alive.

N.B. There are two versions of this film available: the Code Red cut is missing the gore and is padded out with footage from public domain movies; the Vinegar Syndrome release has got all of the gore and none of the padding (this is the version I saw).