The Undertaker and His Pals

You gotta love this flick about funeral homes and greasy spoon dinners.I'm sure there's a message here but who cares? Canabalism was never so funny.Maybe I'm sick,but I loved it.What's not to like when a fresh killed victims body part is offered as a daily special at the dinner as the rest is displayed at the funeral home.Sick,yes,but done with flair.

Wow! Miracles like this film never cease to amaze me that they were ever produced. A trio of motorcyclist killers break into various apartments of beautiful, scantily clad females for the express purpose of butchering them with their knives, amputating legs, beating them to death with chains, and so forth. The film has its tongue firmly planted in cheek and never for one moment takes itself the least bit seriously. This film is more of a comedy(or what is suppose to pass for one) than a horror picture, however, due to the grisly deaths and gory glory splattered about the screen definitely has horror elements in the Herschell Gordon Lewis tradition. The film is an oddity and I can say I have never seen anything quite like it. Despite all the bad acting, complete lack of plot, incredibly bad puns and gags, the violence for the sake of violence attitude, and the general cheesiness of the film, the picture is somewhat entertaining. I admit this with guilt as the entire premise of the film is, using understatement, vulgar. Some of the jokes work while most fail. The use of people's last names for the entrees served in the diner were inventive such as leg of lamb and breast of chicken. The changing picture of the boyfriend sailor in the introductory segment made me laugh as did the pacing of the silent movie music when the undertaker chases Thursday(yes a character named after a day who replaces her missing twin sister Friday). Don't look for any kind of sense, however, for it will be a search in vain. The best part of this whole film for me is the movie's tagline, which has to be one of the best ever!

This very well may be the first slasher film ever made, and the really weird thing, it is also the first parody of a slasher film ever made.

Therein lies a real social-historical problem: how can the film effectively creating the genre at the same time parody the genre, which doesn't come into existence until the film is released? First, a qualification: What makes a slasher film is extremely graphic gratuitous violence against helpless women, using a long knife as preferred weapon.

Arguably, the real "first" of the genre may have been "Psycho"; but "Psycho" was an exceptional film, and stands out from most of the rest of the genre. And it's in black & white, while a true slasher film requires blood-glaring color (which "Undertaker" has, and remarkably well-kept for its age). I prefer to think of "Psycho" as a precursor.

But "Undertaker" is, first of all, nothing special as a film. (It's just low-budget drive-in fodder, intended to be ignored by the teen-agers necking in the back seat.) Secondly, it takes sadistic-voyeur pleasure in showing us the violence and the blood. Finally, it shows self-consciousness concerning the sadistic-voyeurism, meaning that it is intended to appeal to the very worst instincts in its target audience.

And that makes it pure genre film - well, almost.

As I said, it is also a parody of this genre - in the most outrageous way. The sales pitch the undertaker offers potential customers is genuinely amusing, and the killers repeatedly debunk themselves as silly mad-scientist types that only happen to run a failing diner. What's going on here? There can be only one answer, logically: the film-makers here are actually parodying another genre film.

Perhaps "Psycho" can help us out here, after all. It must be remembered that a major influence on Hitchcock's's film was the motel sequence in Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil". That episode was itself influenced by the '50s "JD" (juvenile delinquent) films that frequently had middle-class suburban families found suddenly in the grip of a punk or a gang of young punks (the most famous being Brando's "The Wild One"). And the JD film was itself a clear off-shoot from the standard B-movie crime-thriller of the early '50s, which is simply a sub-genre of the "police procedural" (e.g., "Dragnet").

So, what "Undertaker" is really spoofing here is the police procedural.

So the indirect progenitor of the slasher film is - Jack Webb's "Dragnet". That's a little unsettling, but true.

At any rate, I'm not a big fan of slasher films, and I only watched this film a second time because it is, so clearly, an historical oddity. And it's real weird that directors like Welles and Webb (who have nothing else in common but this) should, in trying to explore the social significance of socio-pathic crime, point the way for audiences to enjoy such violence voyeuristically in the slasher film. That's cause for reflection.

Which makes "Undertaker", if only for history's sake, a very, very weird little film.

Not recommended for enjoyment, but a must-see for film-history buffs.

What a weird little treat this one is. The cinematography is interesting at times. It starts off on a visually interesting note and held my interest the whole time. The acting is fine. There are some jokes and the thing moves along very fast, too fast to get bored.

Sure it's not Hitchcock, but for low-budget fun, this one makes the grade. The special effects are sometimes a little weak, but all in all they made a very consistent effort in this picture. Give me this over Con Air any day.

I did not at all regret seeing this, and that is pretty high praise as far as I'm concerned. It's a fun relic from 1967, if you like movies and have a sense of humor and the absurd, you'll probably see this as time well spent.

"The Undertaker and His Pals" is bizarre, but good for a giggle. It's a dark comedy -- I'm almost ashamed of myself for liking it, but do indeed like it despite myself because it's so off the wall. Yes, folks, cannibalism can be funny. "Mort" the Mortician goes to great lengths to preserve his business. The puns made me snicker despite myself.

My best friend and I stumbled across this while still in high school. It was at Blockbuster in the comedy section, and the title was so striking we felt obligated to rent it. After we got over the initial shock, we laughed out loud and ignored the gratuitous violence.