Phyllis Diller cackles all the way to THE BONEYARD on 88 Films' Blu-ray of the 1990s direct-to-video discovery.

The emotional toll of being a police psychic has driven Alley Oates (Deborah Rose, SKI PATROL) to become a shut-in, entombing herself alive with her memories of the child she lost to ovarian cancer. When Lieutenant Jersey Callum (Ed Nelson, BUCKET OF BLOOD) and his young hotshot partner Detective Gordon Mullin (James Eustermann, SPACED INVADERS) try to procure her services to identify the corpses of three children once kept "alive" on cadaver fed to them by mortician Chen (Robert Yun Ju Ahn), she turns them down flat until the mummified tykes invade her dreams seemingly appealing to her for help. Alley views the videotape of Chen's interrogation in which he claims that the children are undead creatures that his family have served for the last three centuries as penance for dabbling in sorcery, not protecting them but keeping them away from mankind. He has confessed because they are becoming too strong for him and he wants help to destroy them. Alley accompanies Callum and Mullin to the understaffed coroner's office during the night shift, but officious desk clerk Miss Poopinplatz (Phyllis Diller, BOY DID I GET A WRONG NUMBER) cites regulations to keep her from coming into physical contact with the corpse. Coroner Shep (THREE'S COMPANY's Norman Fell) find a workaround by sending up a lock of hair from one of the corpses. With Alley left upstairs to get a reading off of the hair, Callum and Mullin are roped into running interference between Poopinplatz and meat wagon driver Marty (Willie Stratford Jr.) when he tries to deliver a suicide to the morgue through the service elevator after finding out that the pneumatic delivery doors are malfunctioning (and unlikely to be fixed since the building is scheduled for demolition as the coroner's office consolidates its branches). The suicide Dana (Denise Young) waking up on the slab is a shock for the coroner and the detectives, but they are in store for more when Alley has a vision and realizes that the corpses of the children are just "playing possum" and are looking not only to feed on human flesh but also recruit new members.

A totally under-the-radar direct to video obscurity from director James Cummins – an effects artist who worked for Stan Winston on THE INTRUDER WITHIN, DEAD & BURIED, and THE THING, Tom Burman on CAT PEOPLE, and Cris Walas on ENEMY MINE before supervising the effects of New World's HOUSE – THE BONEYARD looks like a late eighties or nineties shot-on-film indie horror movie but is far more ambitious and a pleasant surprise. While there is some broad comedy in the supporting performances of Diller and Fell, the antics of her poodle Floofsums (ELVIRA: MISTRESS OF THE DARK's Binny), and Eustermann's squeamishness, the more dramatic aspects of the film from Alley's back-story involving the loss of a child and Dana's suicide attempt are not overshadowed. Rose is an atypical female lead for a horror film, especially a low-budget exploitation one, as a middle-aged and overweight woman but she delivers a moving performance and earns her third act badass turn even as the monsters get sillier. Nelson gets more to work with than the seeming hardboiled detective with a subplot involving burgeoning romance that allows him to express some emotion. The effects – designed by Cummins and Bill Corso, who would then work under Steve Johnson (INNOCENT BLOOD) before moving onto a mainstream solo career with more recent films like DEADPOOL – are creative if not quite matching the technical level of the former's similar contributions to the aforementioned HOUSE entry, but the amusement of the audience is echoed in the stunned outburst of laughter by one of the characters when confronted with a monster poodle. THE BONEYARD is well worth unearthing.

Released direct to video by Prism Entertainment and laserdisc by Image Entertainment, THE BONEYARD languished on the video shelves until Program Power put it out on an unauthorized but extras-packed release as part of their Lucky 13 line that also included SLAUGHTERHOUSE, EVIL LAUGH, and BLOODSUCKING PHAROAHS FROM PITTSBURGH. Mastered from an HD scan of the original 35mm camera negative, 88 Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen transfer is virtually spotless with crisp detail and naturalistic colors. The effects hold up well in HD, as does the economical production design, although it is possible that the credits have been digitally recreated. Optional English SDH subtitles are generally correct without much paraphrasing.

While the UK DVD release from Screen Entertainment featured the interviews from the Program Power disc, it dropped the audio commentary by director Cummins and producer Richard F. Brophy (line producer on the original HOUSE), in which they provide some interesting "what if" production anecdotes like the intended casting of Conchata Ferrell – perhaps best known today as the wisecracking housekeeper on TWO AND A HALF MEN – who elected to work on the Lindsay Wagner series A PEACEABLE KINGDOM instead, Clu Gulager (RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD) having to pull out due to illness and recommending Nelson, approaching Alice Cooper and Warren Zevon for the coroner role before Fell, and the celebrity credits of the dog Binny. Cummins recalls being inspired to use the "kyoshi" after seeing A CHINESE GHOST STORY and MR. VAMPIRE, how the casting of Diller and Fell attracted investments and some scenes were made better by having to be quickly rethought due to the short schedule, and how they ended up getting the same orchestra in Los Angeles performing Andrew Lloyd Webber's PHANTOM OF THE OPERA to perform the score when they realized how rich the score by John Lee Whitener (RAGIN' CAJUN) was going to be.