Written and Directed by Ryan Spindell
Starring Clancy Brown, Caitlin Custer and Christine Kilmer
Running time: 1 hour and 48 minutes

by Rosalie Kicks, Old Sport

“Tell me a story… something dark, something twisted, something awesome.”

I’ve always had a morbid curiosity. As a young child, I was fascinated with graveyards, coffin amenities and the afterlife. Scary stories, despite them often leading to night terrors, were devoured. Like most children of the early nineties, I obsessively read the R.L. Stine Fear Street and Goosebumps series. I recall a specific Goosebumps book entitled, Say Cheese and Die about a young kid that finds when taking a picture of someone with their camera they wind up dead. It sent shivers down my spine. I was reminded of these terrifyingly marvelous tales (and now have obsessively started searching eBay to acquire my entire Fear Street collection back) in watching Ryan Spindell’s spectacularly spooky filled anthology, The Mortuary Collection.

The film opens with a young newspaper delivery boy weaving through the dark, dreary, misty pacific northwest town of Raven’s End. As he slings papers, there are glimpses of various headlines, one being: Boggy Bay Tooth Fairy. With the sound of trading cards hitting his bike spokes, I couldn’t help but get Speilberg in the eighties vibes with a mix of Stephen King atmosphere. One of his final stops on his route is a funeral parlor. The boy has an interest in what's happening inside the Victorian styled home and knocks on the door. This is where the grim and brooding figure, Montgomery Dark (Clancy Brown) is introduced. Montgomery serves as not just the undertaker but the film’s storyteller. When a young woman, Sam (Caitlin Custer) arrives at his doorstep with interest in applying for a position as mortician’s assistant after seeing a help wanted sign blowing in the breeze, Monty cordially invites her in.

Monty conducts the unconventional interview in his office. A study of sorts, surrounded by books of the mortuary arts and stories of how people died. The books spark Sam to request that Monty regale her in scary stories. Monty obliges, which begins the telling of four yarns spanning various decades ranging from what appears to be the fifties up until the eighties. What starts with a simple short, inevitably builds to a finale which makes for a fun movie watching experience.

The first tale is of a woman who locks herself in a bathroom to review the items she has pick-pocketed at a soiree. While in the bathroom, she encounters a sea creature hiding in the medicine cabinet. What makes this simple narrative so thrilling to watch is the awesome backdrop that is utilized. The bathroom has an oceanic theme and vividly painted, along with the character’s fifties style dress, the colors pop. The sensational style is carried throughout the film along with the strong attention to detail.

In the second anecdote, the filmmaker utilizes an old trick of the trade by incorporating social commentary into a horrific and suspenseful story set at a college campus in the sixties. After a young woman has a romping, sex-filled night with a frat guy, he wakes up with quite the surprise… morning sickness. Maybe he should not have removed that condom after all? This leads to quite an amusing, yet gory aftermath that addresses the often disrespectful, harmful and vile actions taken by the male species. It gives a “what if the shoe was on the other foot” type scenario and again is done impressively well with a killer soundtrack.

For me, the third story was the weakest, but by no means a waste of my time. Something I quite enjoyed about the transition from story to story was Clancy and Sam moving throughout the funeral home. By the third tale, they find themselves in the embalming room, with the corpse on the slab being the person of interest in his next fable. A man and wife that find the true meaning of “‘til death do us part”. Once again, this was well crafted from beginning to end, with possibly the only fault being its length. With a bit of a snip, it would make for an even more hauntingly grand tale of married bliss.

In the last installment, the tables turn and instead Sam shares a gruesome account of her own. For this, the writer/director utilizes a former short film that he shot, The Babysitter Murders (also starring Caitlin Custer) to tie it all together. In this impressive miniature horror movie, a babysitter finds themself terrorized by an escaped psychopath. Seems rather formulaic or is it? By the time I got to this point in the anthology, I was prepared for the filmmaker to have a trick up his sleeve and wellll, he did not disappoint. Writer and director Ryan Spindell managed to craft a meticulously eerie setting for his ghastly stories. In viewing this, I basically felt my wishes were fulfilled for what I was hoping to see in last year’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. The Mortuary Collection is not just super stylized but it is an amazingly fun watch with an eclectic mix of original songs (seriously, I want this soundtrack!) and top notch score. Unlike in Scary Stories, where there were moments of awesomeness that inevitably missed the mark, relying heavily on CGI to fill in the gaps and lackluster payoffs. Which brings me to my only complaint about Spindell’s chilling flick… There were some moments that I felt it went a bit overboard with the CGI, but with the same breath I am still in awe of what they pulled off with an indie budget. When this guy gets some serious cash, look out and be ready for the nightmares.

For those in Canada catch The Mortuary Collection on demand during the Fantasia Fest here until September 2. If you’re in the US, The Mortuary Collection will be coming to Shudder in September as part of their 61-day Halloween celebration.

*Listen to Old Sport on the Cinematic Crypt - she goes six feet under to uncover flicks of Hollywood’s past.*