MVD Visual digs up the skeleton in Bill Paxton’s closet MORTUARY for its second bow on Blu-ray.

Young Christie (THE WALTONS' Mary McDonough) has never believed that her psychologist father's drowning death was an accident – we’ve seen the opening credits, so we’re sure of it – and she believes that her mother Eve (Lynda Day George, DAY OF THE ANIMALS) has started dating after only two months of mourning. What she does not know is that Eve actually spends her evenings at a coven headed by local mortician Hank Andrews (Christopher George, CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD). One of their meetings is witnessed by Christie’s boyfriend Greg (David Wallace, MAZES AND MONSTERS) and his pal Josh (Denis Mandel) when they sneak into the mortuary to steal some tires in compensation for the $150 Josh believes Andrews owes him. While Greg is distracted watching the coven, Josh mysteriously disappears with his van (actually he’s been impaled on a trocar by a figure in a hooded black cloak). When Greg’s van turns up at the bus station with no sign of Josh, Greg tells the Sheriff (Bill Conklin, GRAND THEFT AUTO) who disbelieves him. Christie cannot get her mother to believe that a cloaked figure is stalking her and trying to kill her and believes her mother may have had something to do with her father's death and is out to drive her crazy. When she confides in Greg, he tells her that he has seen her mother in Andrews’ coven (the members of which wear the same kind of cape as Christie’s stalker). Andrews’ son Paul (Bill Paxton, ALIENS) has not been right since his the suicide of his mother – who used to lock him in the mortuary when he was bad – and his crush on Christie is more than a bit creepy; but is he the one who has been maintaining mother's preserved corpse and embalming friends to keep her company?

With its cast of TV actors, Gary Graver’s slick photography, and KOJAK/“After School Special”/“Movie of the Week” regular John Cacavas’ score, MORTUARY feels like a TV movie with R-rated elements; and that’s not necessarily a bad thing when one recalls some of the classic 1970s and 1980s made-for-TV genre efforts. The film’s plot has some common elements with the Canadian horror film FUNERAL HOME, as well as the Cacavas-scored TV chiller NO PLACE TO HIDE in which stalked heroine Kathleen Beller is similarly fixated with her father’s death. Although destined for the grindhouse – and marketed for it by distributor Film Ventures – the film has great production value with Christie and her mother living in a conveniently isolated Malibu beachside mansion (the Pepperdine University-owned Gulls Way Estate), and Christie and Greg also get to trail Eve and Andrews along a sunny pier just for the sake of opening up the production). Christie and Greg’s investigation has a bit of SCOOBY DOO feel to it, not helped by Wallace’s helmet hair (and blue van), McDonough’s fashionably styled red hair, but this seems to happen when you take slasher characters out of the woods. It’s really more of a mystery disguised as a slasher. The climax brings to mind both HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME and Ovidio G. Assonitis’ MADHOUSE, and the obligatory shock freeze-frame ending is simultaneously silly and endearing. McDonough’s nudity was body-doubled (and the clarity of the digital presentation is not particularly flattering to the double), but the only other nude is quite bosomy but also dead. Gore is limited to some bloody impalings – one of which goes on for quite a bit and seems disturbingly sexual – some gushing during an axing, and a prosthetic insert during an embalming (the effects are the work of Jim Gillespie who worked on a few early Spielberg blockbusters as well as the slashers SWEET 16, THE FINAL TERROR, DEADLY GAMES, and MORTUARY cinematographer Graver’s TRICK OR TREATS).

Paxton’s early performance is the most amusing thing about this film – outside of the Roller Boogie footage and “Hey boogeyman! Let’s boogie!” – and he goes all out, skipping through the cemetery and conducting a classical music record with a trocar. Although one is never in doubt about his guilt, the script at least gives him a scene where he explains to another character that he hates being an embalmer because no one will date him and he knows people think he’s creepy. Paxton also has a prior slasher credit with a supporting bit in William Asher’s NIGHT WARNING aka BUTCHER, BAKER, NIGHTMARE MAKER. McDonough – whose Catholic mother refused to let her audition for THE EXORCIST – is an attractive and sympathetic final girl, and Wallace plays the same kind of All-American good guy he essayed in HUMONGOUS and the TV movie THE BABYSITTER (actually, it might have helped if the film cast some suspicion on him during the whole “they’re trying to drive me crazy” part of the plot). Christopher George isn’t really given much to do here but be gruff and suspicious for most of the running time (George died shortly after the film was completed), but Lynda Day George gives a warm performance even as she too is required to be suspicious long after the audience has guessed who’s really responsible. GREEN ACRES’ Alvy Moore appears in a single scene as Greg’s florist father (Moore did four films for Avedis, and had previously appeared in Byron Quisenberry’s mind-numbing slasher SCREAM/THE OUTING).

MORTUARY was the second of three Cacavas’ scoring assignments for Avedis – which also included SEPARATE WAYS (a Crown International sexploiter with Karen Black and Tony Lo Bianco) and the Sybil Danning cult item THEY’RE PLAYING WITH FIRE – and his stylish work here easily rivals his well-regarded score for HORROR EXPRESS and easily outclasses his work on Hammer’s SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA. Al Adamson regular Graver’s cinematography features some atmospheric lighting with red gels accenting the backgrounds of several scenes, as well as some neat tracking shots in the mortuary warehouse and Steadicam work by Randy Nolan (who also worked on HELL NIGHT, FRIDAY THE 13TH parts 4 and 6, as well as THE PREY before moving onto high profile assignments). Although Howard Avedis only helmed eleven titles between 1972 and 1987, his work was distributed by some of the more memorable exploitation companies of the period: Film Ventures (THE SPECIALIST, THE FIFTH FLOOR, SEPARATE WAYS), Crown International (THE STEPMOTHER, THE TEACHER), Dimension Pictures (DR. MINX), Cinema Shares (TEXAS DETOUR), New World Pictures (THEY’RE PLAYING WITH FIRE), and of course American International (SCORCHY). Avedis co-wrote and produced the film with his wife Marlene Schmidt (who also plays Greg’s mother).

Released on VHS by Vestron in a typically dark transfer, MORTUARY made its HD-mastered DVD debut from Scorpion Releasing in 2012 as part of the "Katarina's Nightmare Theater" line with a dual-layer, progressive, anamorphic widescreen (1.78:1) transfer mastered from the film’s original internegative. This master got a Blu-ray bump-up in 2014 from Scorpion as part of a 1,200-copy limited edition sold exclusively through DiabolikDVD, and MVD has utilized the same master – licensed through Film Ventures library owner Multicom – for their Rewind Collection edition. The remastering breathes new life into the film with bolder colors – particularly the greens and reds (take a gander at that title card as well as the red gels in the backgrounds of some sequences) – and improved shadow detail (important for a film with a black-cloaked killer lurking in the shadows). While the Scorpion edition had a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track and MVD states on the cover that they have the same, MVD renders the same track in uncompressed LPCM 2.0, revealing the full range of Cacavas’ score from the busy electronic and individual plucked strings. There is some crackling and hiss – as well as some distortion in the high ends – that is more evident during silent passages, but doing any more digital clean-up on this might have reduced the impressive presence of the score. MVD also adds English SDH subtitles lacking on the Scorpion edition.

The sole extra is an interview with composer John Cacavas (15:02) which is a bit of an endurance test since he admits that he remembers nothing about the film or any of his other horror film scores (or several of his higher profile assignments), admitting that his scores all “run together.” He usually recalls the scoring budget and the size of the orchestra (perhaps understandable given the film budgets and his need to assemble orchestras of various sizes out of session musicians rather than the symphony orchestras that some of his better-known contemporaries got to work with during this period). Cacavas did an interview for Severin’s HORROR EXPRESS Blu-Ray/DVD combo release and he does discuss his collaborations with Savalas, but the piece probably could have been shortened.