The Coroner

This has got to be the worst film of the new millenium, demonstrating loads of miserable acting, spontaneous boob- and sexshots with no meaning whatsoever and a script treat so bad it almost hurts. Best thing about the movie: It's not very long...

This opens in a strip joint, with several bare pairs of breasts, just when you thought it might turn out to have class. The titular coroner, Leon Uraski(Dean St. Louis who gives it his all both when psychotic and when pretending to be innocent), kills young, attractive women who've tried to commit suicide. One night, he traps and tortures Emma(Jane Longenecker), the unconventional lawyer, but she may just prove to be in excess of what he can handle. Can she take him down, and how(maybe with her martial arts training, that doesn't at all look choreographed and underpracticed?)? And is she certain that he's the one, and that she isn't losing her mind? That one aspect not only shifts this the rest of the way towards being a psychological thriller than a horror(it was already far away from that, with its gore, blood and deaths few and far between, and how much we see the villain as opposed to his victims), it's the only potentially interesting element(and the decent ending does live up to that somewhat, though it could have been more ambiguous). At 70 minutes(not counting the short closing credits), it's unsettling just how much this needs to stretch its nothing of a plot to fill that time. Characters are introduced to be fodder or foils... and to add sex scenes(complete with complete female nudity), because with this little violence, that's the only common denominator left they can use to keep our attention. Did I mention our leading lady spends the majority of this in a short skirt, at times downright wearing a school girl uniform? The sad thing is that it's just not quite crap enough to be fun. Acting, writing, dialog, it's all rather inferior. The way this is shot screams direct-to-DVD, and the editing is sophomoric(you can show us those "grisly" images as many times as you want, since we have no connection to the dead bodies, it never increases the intensity). I feel the music in this would have benefited from them checking if there were disgruntled cats in the studio before recording. I recommend this solely to fans of B-movies. 1/10

Okay, as pointed out by the other writer, there are ALOT of flaws with this movie. There are ALOT of flaws in MANY movies, and I could spend the length of a book on just the ones that I know of. That point passed, this movie, serious or not, does make a serious statement: The rich and famous, even locally, can be given special treatment, and even overlooked or dismissed as suspect of a crime. Note the infamous Ramsey case which has been botched from the beginning, and instead of being the prime suspects, the heads of the house were not really investigated until the trail to the killer was dead cold. This movie gives you a look at this. A respected female lawyer, who was a victim of the Coroner/Serial Attacker, brings the police to his doorstep. Because they know him, they treat him like an old buddy, not a suspect, and try to get her out of the house rather than listen to her. They do not obtain a search warrant, they don't question his answers, in short, because of his status with the Coroner's Office, they immediately look the other way. Yes, it does have its flaws, but it does makes its statements. There plenty of movies that offer less, and even more that offer more. A viewable movie if you're in the mood to be angered over "special treatment", or laugh at a less than perfect flick. Have a couple of beers and enjoy.

A bad movie. The coroner thinks he's "World's Greatest Chef", then a god then he thinks he's "SuperDad". This guy has some funny aprons. Besides the aprons that are being worn by a naked overweight gentleman who is not the least bit attractive, this movie is not very amusing. The lawyer woman looks more like a kindergarten teacher or maybe a babysitter and she has a really awful sex scene where she flings her hair around and arches her back and it makes her looks really stupid. Who acts like that when they have sex? I just don't understand the whole head-flinging thing. anyway, the coroner goes after women who have tried to slit their wrists in the past. He thinks they were "Teasing" him by acting like they were gonna die when they actually survived. So he kills them so he doesn't have to go through the agony of waiting for them to die naturally. It's an ok idea, but it's not played out very well. I really hate lawyer movies.

In this 90's slasher film a demented coroner is responsible for a series of murders of young women. All the victims are suicide attempt survivors because the coroner wants to 'recreate their moment of denial'. Or something.

Opening with scenes in a strip club with a great deal of gratuitous boob action, it has to be said, the film starts out at least entertainingly. But it isn't long before its story kicks in and things go downhill. The serial killer angle is half-hearted at best and there isn't really even much in the way of horror violence to perk things up either. What we are left with is a very cheap looking production with a tinny 90's soundtrack. Pretty clearly a bargain basement example of a serial killer movie with little in it to recommend. Perhaps its main factor of note nowadays is that its director went under the infamous alias 'Alan Smithee' which was used by film directors to hide their identities when the film they were involved with turned out embarassingly bad - this method of subterfuge went out the window with the advent of the internet age, given that there was no longer any hiding place. As a consequence, The Coroner was one of the last films Mr Smithee ever made.