Last Rites

SERIOUS SPOILAGE

I can remember seeing trailers for this on television when it was released, and being interested in all things vampiric, I longed to be old enough to see it. Boy, I didn't know what I was missing, that's for sure!

This is a face-off between vampire and...non-vampire. In the vampire corner, we have Lucard. A. Lucard, to be exact (haw haw). Lucard is a mortician, which is a great business for a vampire to be in, especially when mortician's wax seems to help vampires come out during the daylight. Lucard and his vampire buddies (the sheriff, the paramedics, and a few miscellaneous others) like to rush to the scene of accidents, declare the victims dead when they're not, then whisk them off to the mortuary for some bloodsucking. Immediately after biting them, the vampires stake the victims, for fear of any newly-minted competition getting a leg up on them.

In the other corner is one Ted Fonda. Ted's mother-in-law is the latest in the town's not-really dead but definitely soon-to-be undead category. Mrs. Ted is frantic, especially after they decide they want to have the wake at home and Lucard doesn't want to give back the body. Every shady businessperson's nightmare, Ted Fonda isn't one to be pushed around by any mortician, and he brings the old lady's corpse back home so they can put it in their living room for a few days until the wake--unembalmed, no less!

The match is on when Lucard sends one of his minions to steal the body back, but he winds up impaled on a picket fence in Fonda's yard instead. Grandma rises from the coffin later that same night and wanders the rural countryside looking like Grandmama Addams with Halloween vampire fangs, while the next day the Fondas are sure Lucard stole the body after all.

Meanwhile, there are social problems in the vampire community. The doctor and the sheriff think Lucard is getting too many victims, so some bickering leads to a few bat-fights. Fonda calls the doc over to give his already-sleeping wife a sedative, and he can't resist turning her into a late-nite snack. Fonda is out on his own little stake-out, following Lucard around while they search for Granny vampire before she can cause too much trouble and blow their cover. They find her and hold her down so the sun can kill her, but not before she makes eye contact with Ted, who finally figures out something strange is going on (duh!). Lucard tries to literally hold Ted back, stopping his car with his bare hands and sheer vampire strength, but Ted escapes and goes home to find his lovely wife completely drained.

When Lucard returns to the mortuary he finds the sheriff snacking on a 'drowning victim' Lucard had been saving for himself, so they have a slugfest that finds the town minus one undead lawman, and the town's vampire population dwindles. With only Lucard and the doc left, they employ some vague sort of deduction to guess Ted's whereabouts, while Ted sets a booby trap for them by dousing his car (and his wife) with gasoline and rigging it with an extension cord. The vampires fall for it--they're undead and not too bright--and Ted manages to stake both of them while they wriggle in flames.

In the film's stunning denouement, Ted stumbles away thru a pasture, while a title card informs us that Ted was found guilty on four counts of murder, and that nobody believed his vampire conspiracy theory. Furthermore, the body of his wife was NEVER FOUND! EEEEEEE!

"Last Rites" was probably a real scream to make; it looks a lot like a home movie and seems to have been assembled by filmmakers who were just jazzed about making a vampire movie and didn't really care about having an actual script. Truth be told, some of the 'arty' shots really do work up some atmosphere, and the shamelessly hokey vampire lady is great. Then something comes along and goofs it up, like those long unnecessary shots that track the characters as they drive in their vehicles along endless rural roads, or Ted and his numerous phone calls, or when some stray filming equipment or a Pizza Hut or something enters the frame and reminds us that we're watching a cheesy flick. This movie's imaginary story doesn't even exist within the frames of the film itself. Just like the vampire lady, who wanders around dazed and realizing she's dead, the movie knows it's baloney.

I have seen the review for this movie in the Psychotronic Movie Guide 1983, by the way, mine is split into 4 pieces after 38 years of consulting. I would recommend avoiding all of Canon's releases as always putting out a inferior effort to save money for the next idiot concept. Look at AIP instead who became Orion and you get top shelf movie like fantasy Excalibur which still holds up in our post modern era, smerk. Canon's answer is to make a quick knock off to reach the constant cheesy level and no originality. These movies are often available on free streaming channels and sub channels of your local TV station which is how I watch them

This becomes true for everything they released since 1979, but you maybe able to find something that appeals to you going backwards to 60s and just depends on your preferences, as I developed an interest in Jean Rollin movies from France.

I really do like B movies and with digit media documentary commentaries are often more interesting to how they put it all together. Most of the directors where movie buffs like we are, and had to learn as they went along. Clint Eastwood is the most successful of this type of director, where as film school gave us Coppola, Lucas, and Spielberg.

Low budget horrors about a small-town undertaker who, in league with the town's doctor and sheriff, are secretly vampires feeding off accident victims and other faked fatalities. After vampirising their victims this thirsty threesome stakes the victim to prevent them becoming a vampire too.

Their shady dealings arouse the suspicions of Ted Fonda, the son-in-law of a recently deceased old lady. Then when the woman in question is not staked she escapes to becomes a bizarre comedy vampire creeping around the town scaring people.

The makers of the film tried for some arty shots but overall the film looks cheap. Some footage seems to be missing with a conversation that is yet to occur played over generic driving a car footage. At other times the film seems padded with several establishing shots of farm animals and rural fields.

With its combination of some shaky acting, artistic camera angles, Halloween-style music, talky scenes that go nowhere, disregard for accepted vampire lore, scenes switching from day to night to back again, a few bloody slasher-film type murders plus some traditional style fangings, this film is a delightful must for any bad movie fan.

Marie (Patricia Lee Hammond) and her husband unwittingly expose a vampire cult at a mortuary after they demand her dead mother's body be delivered to the house for a wake. Problem is the vamps have already put the bite on ol' Grandma and she is expected to get up any minute now. This is one of those regional horror flicks prevalent in the late 70s/early 80s. The film is very low budget (the tops of sets can be seen) and features many other problems (like no Dracula, although I suspect distributor Cannon added that as the on screen title reads LAST RITES), yet it is oddly endearing. I like the desolate country location work (Vineland, New Jersey), the cast is decent and director Domonic Paris seems to have a good eye for his shots. In fact, it reminds me a bit of Don Coscarelli's PHANTASM (this flick also bears a 1979 copyright year) but with vampires running a funeral home.

This film essentially starts off with Dracula having changed his name to "A. Lucard" (Gerald Fielding) and operating as the mortician of a small town in the United States where he has successfully turned certain key people into vampires in order to continue his evil ways. So when an emergency medical call is placed he sends an ambulance and the local doctor to the scene where they dishonestly pronounce the victim dead and feast upon the body once they bring it to the morgue. Immediately afterward, they kill the victim to prevent it from turning into a vampire and-after disguising the wounds-bury the body as soon as possible so that nobody will be the wiser. This all changes, however, when a young couple by the names of "Ted Fonda" (Michael David Lally) and "Marie Fonda" (Patricia Lee Hammond) lose their mother "Mrs. Bradley" (Mimi Weddell) to an apparent stroke. At least, that is what they are told. But rather than killing her after their feast, Lucard is shocked to learn that the body has been taken away from him for a burial service to be conducted at another location. And this creates all kinds of problems for everyone involved. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this film started off well enough but it subsequently proceeded at a painfully slow pace afterward. Not only that, but the cast wasn't as well-chosen as it could have been either. For example, having Gerald Fielding play the part of Dracula was rather odd to say the least. He just didn't fit that particular role. Likewise, the low-budget special effects and action scenes were equally bad. In short, this is clearly not one of the better vampire films out there and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.