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I admit The Hearse is not the last word in brilliance, but there seems to be something about it that kept me hooked. A simple plot centres around 30-something Jane recovering from a bitter divorce and the death of her father by deciding to stay at her aunt's house, which unbeknown to her, is haunted. Strange phenomena starts as soon as she settles in: lights going on and off, windows suddenly opening and closing, and (the main point) a suspicious looking Hearse appearing at her door.....

You obviously wonder what is going to happen next: is the Hearse simply a matter of imagination on Jane's part or is it something a lot more serious? The Hearse as a whole contains very little in the way of gory, blood dripping scenes; it is in fact a movie where the viewer has to go into the mind of the central characters and try and discover their motives as to why certain events happen. Why are the local people against Jane; what is the suspicious nature surrounding a nice young man called Tom that she unexpectedly meets? Many questions arise that are quite (albeit QUITE) addressed come the end of the film.

Lead star Trish Van Devere sets a good example of a strong-minded woman who is understandably spooked and scared by the unusual goings on. You actually feel for Jane! Her co-stars, however, can't be so easily forgiven - atrocious acting in some parts.

What makes this film work in some respect is the sense of coldness and eeriness surrounding the Hearse (despite the driver's constant smiling), and the strange goings on in this house; it is very reminiscent (as another reviewer mentioned) of the 2001 movie The Others. Admittedly, the final 15 minutes or so of The Hearse is a let down; I obviously don't want to give it away, but I'm sure for viewers who have witnessed the film, it could have been done with a lot more style and a lot more vigour. Then again, The Hearse was never meant to be this big budget horror movie in the first place - a typical B-movie flick that does recommend a slightly better IMDb rating than the current 3.3 I feel. 5/10

A woman, Jane, moves to a large house in a small town which she has inherited from a dead aunt. The locals shun her on account of believing her aunt was in league with the devil. Soon, Jane is haunted by the appearances of some ghosts, including a mysterious hearse which constantly menaces her.

This film fits comfortably into the haunted house film bracket, which by 1980 was firmly a popular sub-genre of the horror film with movies such as The Amityville Horror (1979), The Changeling (1980) and The Shining (1980) raking it in at the box office. It would only be fair to say that The Hearse is fairly derivative of some of the big hitters of its day but I have to say I found it to be a pretty good effort on the whole. Trish Van Devere puts in an engaging performance in the lead role, while Joseph Cotton, veteran actor of various classics from the past like Citizen Kane (1941), appears in one of the numerous genre flicks he pitched up in in the last decade of his career. Aside from the ominous black hearse, the sinister events incorporate an odd reverend, a satanic church and ghostly appearances of a woman at a window. By the end of things, it's true that the relevance of everything has not been fully established but when it comes to stories about ghostly goings on, this is not exactly a problem in my book. A bit of ambiguity is not really a bad thing.

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.

The Hearse is a deeply confusing 1980 horror which wasn't even remotely what I expected it to be.

It tells the story of a woman who inherits her aunts house but upon moving in comes to realise the locals don't like her and that the house itself might have its secrets.

The "Hearse" in question doesn't play as much of a role as I'd expected, which is odd considering that's supposedly what the movie is about.

The whole thing looks and sounds the part and the lead does a passable job but the moment things happen she becomes deeply annoying and I found myself scratching my head and not entirely knowing what I was watching.

Even now I'm not 100% on what went down and will chalk it up to being another one of those vague titles that doesn't feel like it needs to fully explain itself. I'm all for things being open to interpretation but this is taking that a tad far.

Confusing, underwhelming and not one I would dream of recommending.

The Good:

I like the hearse concept

The Bad:

Hearse is badly underutilized

Story makes very little sense

The lead actress falls apart when she falls apart

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

You'd think a movie about a hearse would be....you know....about a 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.

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.

I have read reviews good and bad for this film and find that I cannot disagree with any of them, for The Hearse is good in certain respects and not so good in others. Watching this film recently, for the first time in many years, I was reminded of other stories that came both before and after it, 1963's The Haunting and 2001's The Others coming immediately to mind.

There is nothing better than a good ghost story with mood and imagination and The Hearse claims these properties to some degree. That it is an over-cliched film with comic relief that doesn't quite fit counts against it, as does the unlikely and disappointing ending. Trish Van Devere, a competent if not supremely talented actress, and the always pleasing Joseph Cotton are the lead players, although Ms. Van Devere's screen love interest, David Gautreaux as Tom, came close to stealing it from both of them. I did not feel that Joseph Cotton had enough screen time to please his fans, but as they say, `Always leave them wanting more!' The story: Jane, portrayed by Ms. Van Devere, inherits an old house in the country. Jane's aunt had practiced Satan worship in it and the local town folks were not pleased to see her niece move in. In a nice addition to the storyline, we learn that Jane had a nervous breakdown after a messy divorce and her mental stability quickly comes into question. Jane sees images in the house and is convinced that somebody is stalking her in a sinister looking funeral home hearse. Throughout the course of the story she has interesting encounters with such diverse people as the local estate attorney, hardware store operators and their son, an oddball minister and her new love interest. Who was after her, and why did he/she want Jane out of her aunt's house? There are many red herrings and barely enough chills and thrills to attract the younger audiences that were just then, in 1980, two years after Jamie Lee Curtis and Halloween, making their presence felt at the box office and soon-to-be neighborhood video stores. As stated, the ending was a real letdown after it seemed the film had come to a satisfying conclusion.

Perhaps that is why this film generates strong emotions; it tries to be too much to too many. That it has something for everybody and, for the most part, succeeds in putting it all together is one of it's major strengths. The fact that this also causes it to be disjointed and somewhat awkward at times is the downside of this, but remember, The Hearse was never intended to be a summer blockbuster. That a film such as this can still generate intelligent discussion 22 years after its release is remarkable in itself.

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.

I only had seen this film once before as a child so I hardly remembered anything about this flick. I saw it in a collection of Drive in Cult Classics with 31 other films, and I have to admit it...I bought the collection mainly for this film. I simply wanted to see what this film was about again as my recollection of it was spotty at best. As it turns out, it was a bit more interesting than I remembered, I seem to have gotten this film mixed with others as I remember a more vague ending than the one here. One film, I know for sure I got this one mixed up with is Burnt Offerings, mainly the scene involving the chauffeur in that one. This film is a bit reminiscent of that one, add in some of The Car and a dash of any film from the 70's involving Satan. This has all that and more! It also has a couple of bland and pointless plot points and tries to make you think all of the crap happening may not be happening! The story has a woman who has recently lost her mother and gone through a divorce going to live in her aunt's house out in a more country environment. She has had a nervous breakdown and feels that a bit of time out in the country will do her good. Well, things start off on a bad note as one guy seems to think he should be the rightful owner of the house, the townspeople seem to think poorly of the lady and the house she is staying at and a strange hearse seems to be stalking the lady. Still, a strange man comes into her life that she begins to fall for. However, as she reads her late aunt's diary, things become clearer as to the town's disdain for the house and strange nightmares begins to occur as she is stalked by a strange scarred hearse driver.

The film has some things going for it, but it also has a bunch of things going against it. It is a bit slow paced at times thanks to a very pointless subplot of a young man trying to woo the older lady. Sure it made for an interesting scene later, but one could of still had a scene like that sans the scenes of the boy and his friends talking about what he did or didn't do. I also thought it was a bit too obvious that there was something not quite right with the Thomas character. However, I really liked the Reverend character as I could never get a read on him until near the end.

So, this film had some interesting moments...I was never quite sure how the film would end. I kept trying to remember the thing, but as I said, I had only seen this film one other time when I was a kid so I only remembered a few tidbits here and there and a bit of the imagery. It is not a great horror film by any means, but it was a bit more entertaining than a few other horror movies that were similarly themed and made during this time frame. A lot of those were even rated R, but were even slower paced than this one was! So, interesting flick, just nothing all that great.

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.

When Jane Hardy's late aunt leaves her a house in the country, she decides to spend the summer there to get over a nasty divorce and near-breakdown. There she begins putting the pieces back together with the help of a new romantic interest named Tom. But the town people are curiously less-than-friendly to her. Jane soon finds a reason why in her aunt's diary--the mysterious man her aunt fell in love with, who drew her aunt into darkness. Then strange things start happening--and the hearse begins showing up in the middle of the night.

This movie is wonderfully creepy without being camp, and has some scenes that are particularly unexpected and unnerving. More suspense horror than gore, it's guaranteed to keep you awake at night. The love story between Jane and Tom will keep sentimental people glued, and the terror gets all the rest. The piano-oriented title music is haunting, and suits the seriousness of the film well. This movie clearly had a low budget, yet it still ranks as a first-class movie. All in all, something worth watching and worth owning.

"The Hearse", is a horror movie isn't quite taken lightly, but it has an interesting storyline to it. Here you got a woman (Trish Van Devere) who going through a divorce, gets a house in the country whose late aunt used to live. However, when she got there, the people in town give her a cold reception. When they find out who her aunt was, they act very hostile towards her. Only the son of the hardware store owner and the preacher of a local church has been kind to her. The reason for the hostility is obvious, the aunt who lived in the house practiced witchcraft. All because of the man she met years earlier before her death. What's worse is a strange, black hearse that roams the highway at night. And the woman nearly loses it when it comes st her. They said that the hearse crashed off the bridge, and exploded before hitting the bottom. She meets a third kind person in town. But he has a big secret of his own. The house was apparently haunted by the ghost of her aunt, and the highway by the hearse. She was the verge of a serious breakdown. With an relative with a dark secret, you would not honor them for their dark deeds. You cut them out of your life, forever! This could have used more detail to it, but it was mildly interesting. 2 out of 5 stars.

This very standard early 80's haunted house/possessed souls chiller does feature one ingenious and genuinely creepy gimmick, namely the titular vehicle that mysteriously drives around at night. Barely recovered from personal problems in the big city, Jane Hardy moves to an inherited mansion in a small and very superstitious village. The locals treat her like dirt, especially when they learn Jane is the niece of the previous resident, who worshiped the devil and whose dead body mysteriously vanished when the hearse ran into a bridge and caught fire. It doesn't take long before Jane herself begins to suffer from nightmares and the antique hearse even begins to stalk her! "The Hearse" is very slow but occasionally atmospheric and well-acted. Unfortunately however, the script is full of holes, too predictable and the total lack of spectacle is pretty hard to forgive. I respect the fact there were obviously financial limitations to this production, but to deliver an entirely bloodless film is a tad bit exaggerated. Class actor and horror veteran Joseph Cotton ("Baron Blood", "The Abominable Dr. Phibes", "Island of the Fishmen") is totally wasted in the role of obnoxious attorney. Crap ending, too.

Tiresome alleged thriller concerns a recently divorced woman (Van Devere) who takes vacant possession of her deceased aunt's stately house in a town where the locals are about as welcoming as a desert sauna. Gradually, a series of unexplained events begins to make Van Devere doubt her commitment to the new location, but her resolve is galvanised by the appearance of a handsome stranger (Gautreaux) who persuades her to stay in spite of the paranormal activity and discouragement of locals, Joseph Cotten in particular.

While there's undeniably moments of suspense and spine-chilling thrills, the momentum is pedestrian and the film is overlong and underwhelming with a disappointing climax. Van Devere is an assured actress and her characterisation is assertive and realistic, acting royalty Joseph Cotten has a supporting role of some purpose as the local attorney making life difficult for her, while giant Med Flory features as the town's redneck sheriff. Before they were better known Perry Lang, Donald Petrie and Christopher MacDonald all appear in early roles as the small-town's hormone-charged young male community.

All the usual haunted house gimmicks are on display, but how many times can a window shatter before it gets old? Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the film is Donald Hotton as the quirky reverend, whose up-beat optimism is against type for his role in the context of this satanic inspired horror film. Suitable for a popcorn night-fright rental (if you're hard up), but not a keeper. There's a scene where Van Devere chides Cotten's obstructiveness "why don't you climb into the back of that hearse of yours and drop dead" my sentiments exactly with regard to this dull picture.

Jane Hardy (Trish Van Devere) is moving to a small town in order to take possession of an aunt's house that's been sitting vacant for many years. Oddly, almost everyone in town is very nasty to her...and she has no idea why. The only ones who are nice are a young guy who is secretly infatuated with her and Tom, a sexy guy who loves her almost at once. The portion of the film involving the town hating her and the finale seems to last a very long time. Oddly, after going on a killing spree, the evil spirit comes after her and it all ends in a car chase...which is kind of weird considering it's a ghost.

The problems are the pacing and the finale...both of which left me cold. It's a shame. I wanted to enjoy the movie much more than I ultimately did. At times, it's pretty good. At other times, it looks like the script could have used a re-write.

I saw this film as many did back in the early '80s and I was never that impressed with it...but I was about 16, as well. I thought thrillers needed to carry the punch of a "Halloween" and had to be TERRIFYING.

I don't think I had patience or the introspection to appreciate a good ghost story back then, and when you consider it, they are some of the trickiest types of horror to pull off successfully, as they're most about mood and subtlety (think "The Haunting" or "The Legend of Hill House"). When done badly (think "Ghost Story" and "The Changeling" ---which also starred Trish VanDevere) these yarns come off as creaky, ridiculous and (at their absolute worst)...boring! I revisited "The Hearse" last night at 1 AM, in a dark house, and I was shocked to find it was a moody little piece of melodrama that was actually...dare I say it, well acted. When I think of "bad" acting, I think of over-the-top hammy histrionics. "The Hearse" is actually filled with nicely low-ball, unaffected performances but notably by Ms. VanDevere, whom I never considered much of an actress before last night.

It could be that her lack of pretension caught me off guard the first time I watched it, but on second viewing, it's very well-suited to the character of Jane Hardy, who is coming off a bad divorce and an emotional breakdown. She leaves San Fran for a remote rural town, to claim a house left to her by her mother---one that her reclusive aunt lived in until she died.

From here on out it's the usual ghost story trope----but not in a bad way. I think it's a lot harder to be genuinely "creepy" than scary (as in "Picnic at Hanging Rock," for instance) and while "The Heerse" isn't on a par with that Peter Weir masterpiece, the location of the house, the low-grade low-fi effects, and VanDevere's naturalistic reactions really come together to create a mood of tense suspense. And her performance is so good (as is Joseph Cotton's, as a slimy lawyer out to grab her land) that you get invested in her story, as she meets a too-good-to-be-true beau and begins reliving the events of her aunt through a diary.

One last thing I'll say about the low-budget quality of this movie: I haven't jumped watching a movie in about five years. most of what I watch is so violent, I find myself becoming desensitized by the more emotional shadings of the smaller pictures. But like "Carnival of Souls," another zero-budget B-flick, "The Hearse" will get to you if you allow it to suck you into it's own torpid, languorous, claustrophobic universe.

A year or so after George C Scott was spooked by a cadaverous child in 'The Changeling', Devere decides to try and keep up with her ex-husband's career by inheriting an Old Dark House from her deceased aunt. This affords sundry opportunities for neighbours to give her dirty looks, a priestly Joseph Cotten to pop up and proffer ubiquitous blarney, and the titular carriage of death to keep turning up outside the front door heralded by mist-machine overkill.

In terms of supernatural 80s horror movies this is acceptable enough for undiscerning nostalgists; though purists may balk that the central things-going-bump-in-the-bedroom sequence between Trish and her resident toyboy handyman Gautreux sets the whole picture at odds with the otherwise PG-compliant avoidance of physical horror and narrative suspense. And just when you thought it was safe to go back into the shower... it is.

Whilst it is fair enough comment to make that no-one (probably rightly so) took Devere seriously again after her split with Scott, she at least here proves herself a capable enough genre screamer for the undemanding. What is more interesting however, is how suspiciously similar this film is in terms of plot and style/construction to the soon-after 'The Nesting' - in that it misses most of its most crucial horror 'cues', but nevertheless burns independently down its own vaguely self-stylised 'fuse' to an incoherent, unsatisfying 'explanatory' climax. This also, but slightly more exclusively, involved a has-been actress ignominiously doing very little for the money (Gloria Grahame in that particular instance).

**SPOILERS** The movie "The Hearse" seems to hit all the wrong notes at all the right times to make it look more like a comedy then a horror film. This eerie black hearse with a creepy and scare-face driver behind the wheel is always stalking and trying to run down poor Jane Hardy, Tris Van Devere, who's spending the summer at her late Aunt Rebbecca's house, the Martin Place, in the town of Blackford.

Jane trying to get over a very stressful divorce left the big city of San Francisco to the quite country town of Blackford in order to get over her depression, how wrong she was. We find out that this weirdo hearse driver is actually the man she falls in love with at Blackford the strange eerie and unearthly Tom Sullivan, David Gaulreaux. Who also turns out to be the ghost of Robert who was Jane's Aunt Rebbecca's lover, back some thirty years ago, who turned her on to Satanism.

You notice right away that this guy, Tom, is not of this earth, he looks and acts more like he's come from under it. Nobody in the town of Blackford sees him but Jane who doesn't see what we all see that's the obvious about him, that Tom is Robert's evil spirit. Were later told by the drunken Walter Pritchard, Joseph Cotton,who's Jane's lawyer and real estate agent that her Aunt Rebbecca did practice Satanism with her lover Tom. Later after she died Tom was burned to a crisp when the hearse taking her body to the cemetery exploded into flames leaving nothing to be buried. There's a weird dream-like sequence in the movie where Jane goes into the hearse and ends up at the local church attending aunt Rebbecca's funeral. Then she gets up from her coffin and scares the hell out of Jane as well as the theater audience.

At the town everyone is very cold and avoids Jane because of her living in the Martin's house except young Paul Gordon,Perry Lang. Paul is very much in love with her Jane even though she's much older then him and looks at him as a friend not a lover. Jane is in love with the weird Tom Sullivan who's trying to get her, like her Aunt Rebbecca, in league with the Devil.

Pritchard later tries to scare Jane out of her house as he smashes the windows of the Martin Place in a drunken rage. Only to get himself killed by the runaway hearse and ending up hanged in the shower , by his tie, in the Martin Place's bathroom. Paul is also killed when he goes to the Martin Place to save Jane from her crazed and demonic lover Tom with Jane running for her life from Tom and his deadly hearse.

Late in the movie there a scene where the local preacher Reverend Winston, Donald Hotton, runs to the Martin Place and does an exorcism on it in what looks like a wind tunnel. The exorcism is so funny that it comes across as an episode straight out of Mystery Science Theather 3000.

Tom chasing Jane with his handy hearse ends up being slammed, by Jane's car, and knocked down a cliff and burned to a crisp like Aunt Rebbecca was some thirty years ago. The ending of the film "The Hearse" calls for a sequel but luckily for us the movie wasn't that successful to warrant one.