Cries in the Night

Also known as Cries In The Night, this little seen Canadian horror film directed by William Fruet arrived at the height of the slasher movie boom. It has a plot that may seem very familiar (especially if you've seen a certain Alfred Hitchcock film), but offers little to satisfy any perspective gorehounds sniffing around drawn in by the macabre set up. A teenage girl goes to stay with her grandmother at the small hotel she runs, which just so happened to once be a funeral parlour. When the guests start disappearing young Heather (Lesleh Donaldson) starts to investigate, and gets a nasty surprise when she looks in the basement. It's obscure but unspectacular stuff, and kind of disappeared from view after the initial home video boom of the early 80's before resurfacing on DVD years later much to the delight of completists.

Every now and then, you want to watch a movie that's just cozy and won't make you think too hard, scare you too much, or leave you too disturbed. One days like that, Funeral Home would make a nice movie companion. It never goes anywhere too dark, there's not any blood or gore to speak off, and it moves along at a reasonable pace, leaving you mostly unmoved, but not feeling like you wasted your time either.

Heather moves in with her quirky grandmother to turn their old funeral parlor into a boarding house and, as soon as the guests arrive, they start disappearing or dying under mysterious circumstances.

Any horror or mystery fan won't find the central mystery of Funeral Home too tough to crack, but that's part of the charm. Sometimes, it's just nice to see a familiar story well told.

An effectively spooky low-budget thriller that takes more inspiration from Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) rather than Carpenter's Halloween (1978), as so many horror films from this era did.

A girl goes to help her grandmother with her new boarding house, a former funeral parlor, and begins to uncover sinister things as the guests start vanishing.

Solid direction uplifts this tight thriller, whose storyline is ultimately not very surprising. A few well-drawn characters do help to keep the story interesting. The rustic filming locations help to add to a chilling summer atmosphere and an air of mystery that works well to the films advantage. The re-occurring images of the black cat are a nice touch. The film is fairly subtle in its horrors, and probably comes off more compelling (and classy) because of it. In short, it's simple but good.

The cast is a strong point. Kay Hawtry is a stand-out as the grandmother, Lesleh Donaldson is fetching as our young female, and Dean Garbett is good as Donaldson's summer love.

All around, Funeral Home is a film that serves well as a thriller. It's not especially brilliant, but it does make for good entertainment.

*** out of ****

I'll give "Funeral Home" a little extra credit, since it was directed by William Fruet, who also gave us the decent revenge pic "Death Weekend." The plot has a young girl returning to her grandparents' home, the former funeral parlor now converted into a bed and breakfast by the grandmother; but who is grandma talking to in the basement every night, and who is bumping off the sinful heathens who stop and stay at the B&B? The typical genre stereotypes are present: Goofy Young Deputy, Mentally Challenged Gardener, Puritanical Parental Figure, and the Sweetly Innocent Girl. The plot itself echoes "Psycho" in more ways than one, but with a fraction of the budget and considerably less talent. The actors are fairly good for this type of low-rent affair, and there are a few cheesily-integrated, yet atmospherically effective flashback scenes, but "Funeral Home" is simply a forgettable affair.

I'm sure I'm in a distinct minority, but I actually like '80's slasher movies more for their atmosphere than for their special effects (which seem to look more cheesy and primitive with each passing year). Unfortunately, the eerie atmosphere of the early slasher movies eventually got overwhelmed, first by out-of-control special effects, then by talentless "scream queens" and softcore sex, and finally by cornball comedy and self-conscious parody. That's why I kind of like this film, even if it's nobody's idea of a great slasher flick or a good horror film. It has no gore and no nudity, but it has a good early 80's slasher movie atmosphere.

A teenage girl (Lesleh Donaldsen) comes to stay with her grandma who operates a hotel that was once a funeral home. Her violent grandfather has supposedly disappeared, but grandma keeps talking to someone in the cellar. Meanwhile, various obnoxious guests check into the hotel, but don't check out, and the girl and her new boyfriend start to investigate. This movie is original in that instead of ripping off "Halloween" like almost all the other slasher movies, it rips off an even older classic horror/thriller. But, as they say,if you're gonna steal, you should at least steal from the best. The ending probably won't surprise you too much, but it not entirely ineffective. The actress playing the grandma is very good and effectively scary. Donaldsen was one of a group of young Canadians that were regulars in these kind of films (Canadian tax shelter production masquerading as middle American films). She wasn't as pretty as Lisa Langlois or Tracy Bregman and didn't fall out of her clothes at the drop of a pay-cheque like Joy Boushel, but she was very good at playing "the girl next door", and this was one of her better roles.

Don't expect any T and A or gore here, but see this if you ever get a hankering for the old atmospheric early 80's slasher films.