The Hearse

"The Hearse" is a low-budget, bottom-of-the-barrel little shocker. It's uninvolving throughout, and never terrifying. The hopelessly cliched story, with all the familiar "haunted house" tricks, would be enough to sink this movie, but the job is completed by the poor direction and the murky look of the film, which often makes it hard for us to understand what's happening onscreen. The ending leaves almost everything unexplained and is just as arbitrary and nonsensical as the rest of this film. The good performances can't save it by any means.

Anyone who used to watch Mr. Show may recall that sketch. It basically puts several stereotypical characters in a spooky old house. They quiver as noises crash all around them. But what are they supposed to be afraid of? The creature? It's ghost? The curse? The return of the creature? What then? It's pretty funny. Check it out on youtube. Anyway, this film is kind of like that. Which cliché are we supposed to be afraid of here?

The Hearse is simply a dull collection of about every old horror film cliché you can think of. A recently divorced woman moves into her late aunt's spooky old house in the countryside. On her way into town, and on several other occasions, a big old black hearse seems to be trying to run her off the road! A bad omen. The locals are outwardly hostile, since they hated her aunt and know the house is haunted. The only local who seems to like her is a horny teenager whose parents own the hardware store. And then, there's this weird gentlemanly dude who shows up to court her in an old-fashioned way...

The plot thickens (kind of) when the woman finds her aunt's diary and learns that she was about to marry a preacher, but then dumped him for a Satanist! Yikes. And then the spooky old house seems to come to life. Windows break for no reason. Pipes clang together. Music boxes play on their own and move around. And all the while this old hearse keeps showing up on the roads or in her driveway. What does it want? Who is the mysterious "Tom" who wishes to win her over? Honestly, you'll figure it all out pretty quick.

The film just can't decide what is at the center of all the strange happenings. All the writers seemed to want to do is add a bunch of supposedly spooky elements into a pot and stir until something watchable came out. The acting is passable. Trish Van Devere isn't bad at all. Joseph Cotten needed more screen time, but they likely only got him for a few days of shooting. The film borrows heavily from other horror films such as The Car, Let's Scare Jessica to Death, The Amityville Horror, and maybe even The Fog. There really isn't an original idea to be found. The hearse itself is just a plot point that isn't really explained. It looks menacing, but almost seems like an afterthought that could have been written out altogether. Not a drop of blood, or any real suspense to be had. Really no reason to see this one. I'm frankly amazed it ever got a DVD release. 4 of 10 stars.

The Hound.

Moving into her old house, a woman trying to restart her life grows increasingly convinced a driver-less Packard hearse is haunting her and her house and tries to stop it from consuming her life.

Overall this was quite the disappointing effort. One of the film's few good points centers on the titular vehicle and the eerie, ominous air that really works effectively in this sort of effort, as not only is the moments where it appears quite impressive but also manages some decent moments here. The early scenes of the car appearing only for it to be unresponsive to her yelling at it before driving off makes for quite effective build-ups to the centerpiece sequence of it abducting her and dropping her off at the funeral which is quite chilling in concept before the disturbing idea of whether it's a dream or not as this one isn't clear wither way which makes it work. Likewise, the film really works in the final half when it finally lets itself go and features a lot to like from a tense chase through the house and eventually into the car chase in the finale all coming together quite well which really works for this one. That's about all that really works here for this one as there's a few rather challenging parts to hold this down. The main factor here is the fact that there's hardly any action whatsoever in the first half here which really makes the first half incredibly tough to get into. Consisting mainly of drawn-out and lame scenes around the town, a rather trite and lame romance and endless scenes of her around the house slowly succumbing to the presence in the house, all of which is insanely dull and just not that interesting. Scenes of her arguing with a lawyer trying to settle an accounting error in the estate, trying to secure a local handyman or just generally being harassed for living there don't make for all that exciting times which is basically all that's featured here. There's a few small haunting thrown in to confuse this as a horror film, yet none of them last nearly as long as the seemingly endless and overlong drama scenes that don't do much of anything for the pace or storyline here. The other big flaw here is the fact that there's hardly any motivation for the romance which tends to come in from out of nowhere and further bog down the pacing here with some really tired and lame scenes that don't have any real impact on the film itself. These here are the film's big problems which hold it down quite heavily.

Rated R: Violence, Language, Brief Nudity and a mild sex scene.

Before watching it, I decided to give the trailer a look and liked what I saw. But when it came to actually watching the feature. Well that was another story. Even with such a novel idea, it couldn't escape its roots that hang heavily in this old-hat haunted house format. No surprises or shocks here. The pallid story never grips or inserts much interest, as it becomes a wearisome tale of never-ending, suspicious tedium. The slow grinding pace doesn't help matters either. It seems to be all build up, but director George Bowers' predictable touch can't seem to raise much in the way of suspense and really overuses the usual scare tactics with miserable results. This even goes for Webster Lewis' generically telegraphed score. One or two effective surreal set-pieces (involving the hearse and its driver) and Mori Kawa's nicely atmospheric photography, just can't make-up for the lame, weak and overly boring presentation. Performances feel wooden and terribly uninterested, and it seems to show. Trish Van Devere fluffs about, and Joseph Cotton adds his two bobs worth. Put it under the very forgettable files.

As much as I admire Trish VanDevere, this 1980 movie-of-the-week just doesn't cut it. A recently divorced woman moves into her late aunt's old house in the woods, only to be haunted by eerie figures and an old black hearse that appears to want to kill her. As she tries to figure out what's what, the lonely woman meets several locals, including a less-than-friendly general store proprietor, a hulking, horny sheriff, a nasty real estate agent and a guy her age who seems too good to be true. This low-budget effort, slightly reminiscent of a ghost flick VanDevere shot the same year with husband George C. Scott, apparently started out as a slasher flick but was turned into a haunted house/witchcraft thriller. A muddled plot and sloppy editing doesn't help. For genre fans only.