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Funeral Home
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (7th August 2024). |
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The Film
 Teenage Heather (Curtains' Lesleh Donaldson) travels from the city to the town of Northampton to help her grandmother Maude (Anne of Avonlea's Kay Hawtrey) turn her husband's former funeral home – locally nicknamed "Chalmers the Embalmers" according to delivery boy love interest Rick Yates (Dean Garbett) who gives her a lift – into a bed and breakfast for the summer. When Rick's deputy brother Jim (My Bloody Valentine's Alf Humphreys) discovers a Porsche under a haystack on the land of farmer Sam (Spasms' Les Rubie), he is the only one who suspects that the disappearance of the owner who had been trying to buy up land for development (including the local cemetery) may be connected to a handful of others; the sheriff (Deranged's Robert Warner), however, thinks Jim is wasting resources on people who want to disappear. The atmosphere of the house is getting to Heather who hears voices through the vents coming from the cellar even though her grandmother claims that no one else lives with them apart from simple handyman Billy (The Journey of Natty Gann's Stephen E. Miller) and that the cellar with its embalming room and coffin storage is off-limits. While Heather is relived to have other people around when the guests arrive, her grandmother is put off by the sinful behavior of Harry Browning (Meatballs' Harvey Atkin) and his "wife" Florie (voice artist Peggy Mahon) and unsettled by the questions kindly guest Mr. Davis (The Telephone Book's Barry Morse) is asking about the disappearance of her husband (Black Christmas' Jack Van Evera). After the Brownings mysteriously vanish without checking out, Heather learns from Rick that her grandfather was not the fine, upstanding pillar of the community her grandmother describes, and Maude is growing more fearful of the threats uttered by whoever is in the basement about intruders including her granddaughter. Although released in the United States until 1982 during the slasher craze, Funeral Home – originally titled in its native Canada and overseas "Cries in the Night" – was shot in 1979 before the formula was in place; as such, it is less of a stalk-and-kill body count film than a TV movie of the week feel with a young protagonist encountering things that go bump in the night with a strongly-Gothic bent thanks to a series of strikingly designed visuals combining the lighting and compositions of Canadian genre regular Mark Irwin (Wes Craven's New Nightmare) and production designer Roy Forge Smith (The Hound of the Baskervilles) underlined by a classy score by Jerry Fielding (Straw Dogs) in his final film. While there are some fairly brutal murders – although nothing requiring special prosthetic effects that would become a feature of the slashers to come, although some similarities in this respect to the later Mortuary have more to do with creative limitations of the setting – the film belongs to a sub-strand of horror films including the likes of Lamberto Bava's A Blade in the Dark (and to an extent his The Ogre) which shares with Funeral Home a certain indebtedness to Psycho but uses the epilogue to both explain the human madness while also dispelling childhood fears of the dark that have followed characters into adulthood. The film does draw subtle parallels between Heather and Jim – who is older but seems even more earnest than his younger brother – the latter of whom is directly accused of having an overactive imagination while the former's concerns are just brushed off by both grandmother and boyfriend; as such, it makes sense that the film opens with Heather being petrified by the sight of a black cat that Jim later affectionately picks up off the hood of his car and cradles for the final freeze frame. Although tamer than expected given the American advertising – which like the posters and trailer for aforementioned Mortuary which suggested a zombie film – Funeral Home remains memorable as a classy Canadian horror film, particularly within the increasingly commercial catalogue of director William Fruet (Blue Monkey). 
Video
Released in the United States by Motion Picture Marketing under its popular title – the film went direct to pre-cert video in the United Kingdom under its original title – Funeral Home was most accessible in DVD era as increasingly poor-looking digitizations of Paragon Video Productions' dark, fullscreen VHS transfer, and an official release seemed unlikely given the tax shelter status of a lot of Canadian films and the difficulty of tracking down elements and tracing ownership when rights reverted from distributors. It seemed like the only materials might be in the Canadian film archive until Shout! Factory debuted a Blu-ray stateside earlier this year from materials in the possession of Barry Allen Productions. 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray is derived from the same master which restores the original "Cries in the Night" title card despite the cover and menus using the better-known title. It does not tout of coming from a 4K scan but it is a major upgrade over what has come before – and 88 Films does mention in their specifications that they did additional restoration but no specifics – not only restoring Irwin's light levels and shadow detail but also show just how much the film benefits from 1.85:1 framing in some striking compositions that demonstrate how meticulously-composed the film really was when it once looked like a seventies TV movie. Although the analogue streakiness has been scrubbed from the dark scenes, there are moments in the night-for-night scenes like the opening crane shot or the studio set low-angle cat POV tracking shots where shadows vary from gray to inky black, but this may be due to the photography (in the interviews, Irwin does look back on his relative inexperience just five years out of film school) or the processing. 
Audio
The original mono track is presented in uncompressed LPCM 2.0. Dialogue is always intelligible, effects are not particularly dynamic apart from some cat screeches – the murder scenes are supported more by the scoring than foley work – and optional English HoH subtitles are also provided.
Extras
Ported from the Shout! Facotry edition is an audio commentary by film historians Jason Pichonsky and Paul Corupe in which they discuss the importance in Canadian film exhibition up to this day of the Allen family, Barry Allen's decision to go into production with this film, the Canadian tax shelter filmmaking program, the reputation of director Fruet and the critical abuse he got when he decided to go into exploitation films and noting that Fruet and his writer wife Ida Nelson did conceive the film for audiences too young to get into the likes of Halloween, hence the Nancy Drew feel. They also reveal that a lot of the crew had just returned from Puerto Rico where they shot the Canadian production Tanya's Island. New to this edition is an audio commentary by The Hysteria Continues in which they recount how they first encountered the film on video, their youthful expectations of the film as a slasher and how their appreciation of it has evolved (with reference to their podcast on the film nearly a decade ago). They discuss the tone of the film including its Nancy Drew aspects and use of humor in contrast to the broader spoofery of Fruet's later Killer Party as well as noting cinematographer Irwin's description of this pre-template slasher as "Ontario Gothic" and likening it tonally to the more po-faced Delusion (itself recently debuting on from Vinegar Syndrome). Also ported from the U.S. edition is the isolated score selections & audio interview with music historian Douglass Fake that plays over the first fifty-odd minutes of the film as an alternate audio track. Fake reveals that the once-lost score was found in the possession of Barry Allen productions in its original two-inch 24-track master tapes which had never been mixed down to stereo for a soundtrack release so he was amazed at the quality of the track and instrumentation lost in the mono mix while mastering the tracks for the 2011 Intrada CD release; as such, it is unfortunate that 88 Films and/or Shout! encoded the track in Dolby Digital 2.0 rather than LPCM. Fake discusses Fielding's career highlights, recurring elements in his scoring represented in this score, and his death while still in Canada after finishing the recording. The remainder of the track features the entirety of the mastered score one track after another rather than synchronized to the film before reverting to the film's regular audio track. Also ported from the U.S. edition are a trio of audio interviews with actor Lesleh Donaldson, first assistant director Ray Sager, and production assistant Shelley Allen conducted by Red Shirt Pictures' Michael Felsher. Donaldson discusses her beginnings as a child actress in television commercials and her early film roles, having auditioned for Fruet for a film before Funeral Home and doing a short film with him, working with Hawtrey, the location, her rediscovery via Terror Trap, and her reputation along with Lynne Griffin (Curtains) and Lisa Langlois (Deadly Eyes) as Canadian scream queens. Sager discusses his interest in magic, getting into production, and having given up acting when Herschell Gordon Lewis recruited him to work on his films and taking over the role as the The Wizard of Gore when it turned out the original actor was on day leave from a mental hospital to play the part. When his own company had to be disbanded due to tax issues, he went to Canada in search of work and discovered how different the Canadian industry was from the American with Funeral Home as his first film. Of the film, he provides some anecdotes including securing the Brownings' car and the crash car double which had to be drained of all fluides due to environmental concerns for the gorge (an oil slick nevertheless emerged from the car). Allen recalls traveling with her father as he visited theaters around Canada looking for exhibitors, getting to see horror films at a young age (and being scared by The Ghost and Mr. Chicken), meeting various people with futures in the industry like Ivan Reitman, working on the film as a production assistant with her siblings, along with Fruet's CV, his clashes with Hawtrey on the set, and concerns about Donaldson's age and how far to to onscreen with the romantic aspect.  New to the U.K. edition are a quartet of interviews starting with "House of Death - Lesleh Donaldson on Funeral Home" (16:01) covering her early career, her love of horror from a young age and feelings about the film as more of a fairy tale or a whodunit than a slasher, as well as working with Fruet and the Allen sisters on the set. In "Photographing Horror Films - Mark Irwin on Funeral Home" (16:41), Irwin recalls first meeting Fruet and bonding over both renovating their homes at the time, walking by the location shoot of Fruet's well-regarded Wedding in White (shot in a real Victorian home with furniture sitting out in the show while rooms were being used), describing Funeral Home script as "Cuisinart writing" in its mixture of elements from other films, his memories of the shoot, as well as his criticism of his own work on it in retrospect. In "The Art of Misdirection - Stephen E. Miller on Funeral Home" (22:44), Miller recalls coming to Vancouver from the states to take creative writing and getting into theater where his Southern accent was a novelty, working on the film, being a horror fan, and his own attempts with fellow actor Tom Braidwood (The X-Files) to get horror films off the ground in that period. "Cries in the Night - Lesleh Donaldson in Conversation with Ray Sager" (19:49) features the pair who were friends on social media and reconnected in person recently. It covers some of the same material as the audio interviews but it worth watching since both seem interested in each other's pre-Funeral Home experiences in the industry. Sager also recalls hating "Mitten" the trained cat which would not perform on set with the trainer, necessitating shooting all of those bits as second unit.  Ported from the Shout! edition is "Dead & Breakfast" (13:39) in which art director Susan Longmire (Class of 1984) recalls being mentored by production designer Smith who designed the sets before moving onto another production leaving her to work on the actual shoot while set assistant Elinor Galbraith (eXistenZ) recalls researching funeral homes and sourcing period-specific hardware for the sets, along with discovering that the jars of preserves she created for the basement set became bombs when the fruit rotted under studio lights. "Family Owned & Operated" (12:34) is an interview with interview with Brian Allen, president of Premiere Operating, LTD. and son of producer Barry Allen who provides some background on his family in film exhibition, the production on which his sisters worked, visiting the set for a day, and the distribution woes with Motion Picture Marketing in the United States compared to sales in other territories where it was popular like France and Germany. "Secrets & Shadows" (15:46) is another interview with cinematographer Irwin, but this one feels more expendable if you have already watched the newer one since his memories seem more refined here. "Filming Locations" (6:34) is a visit narrated by Michael Felsher which includes shots of the house location around which the land has been radically redeveloped in the years since. The disc also includes an image gallery (4:53), "Cries in the Night" radio spots (2:18), "Cries in the Night" TV spots (1:05), the "Funeral Home" Paragon VHS trailer (1:44) – seen at the start of Paragon's tape of "Gates of Hell" (the U.S. theatrical title of Lucio Fulci's City of the Living Dead) – and the "Cries in the Night" theatrical trailer (1:50). 
Packaging
The disc is housed with a reversible cover while the first pressing includes a matte slipcover.
Overall
Although tamer than expected given the American advertising, Funeral Home remains memorable as a classy Canadian horror film, particularly within the increasingly commercial catalogue of director William Fruet.
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