Product Description

A Tobe Hooper Film. DVD Features include: Theatrical Trailer, Unrated Director's Commentary, Unrated behind the scenes featurette with Tobe Hooper, "Inside the Graveyard". When the Doyle family moves to a small town in California, they plan on starting a new life...perhaps a strange choice, seeing as this new life entails running the long-abandoned Fowler Funeral Home and cemetary. The locals fear the place, and there are whispers around town that not only are the grounds haunted, but that the Fowler boy, who wore a burial shroud to hide his hideously deformed face, still lives in one of the tombs there. The Doyles discover all too soon that the gossip is true. Someting lurks beneath the Fowler estate--someting that raises the dead from long-forgotten graves...something that feeds upon death itself.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #38909 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-04-11
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, NTSC, Surround Sound, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 93 minutes

Review
"Mortuary is one of Tobe Hooper's best films! The man is a horror genius!" --Michael Hein, Director of the New York City Horror Film Festival

Customer Reviews

forgettable waste of a tasteless mess....
I picked this movie up quick on a Friday nite,(in a hurry, big mistake) a Tobe Hooper flick with
a little horror to it, right from the start I could tell this one was
going to be a struggle. I love B movie horror flicks, I love tacky, low
budget but I just wasn't very impressed with anything from "Mortuary", from the house(mortuary), the characters, the black spreading growth, the diner, the graveyard, the police, the pit, the dead
and worst the living, they all were rotten. God, I hope I didn't give
anything a way to spoil. I've seen most of this
in one movie or another, they just threw it all together. Cheap, lame and not recommended.

Discounted Hooper. Fun, but not his best by a long shot.
`Mortuary', directed by the acclaimed horror master, Tobe Hooper, and written by Jace Anderson and Adam Gierasch, seems to be pronounced dead at the scene. I have reviewed several horror movies lately by lesser-known directors such as `Saw II' and `Hostel' which showed a lot more originality and spark than this rather routine piece of filmmaking. Both these other movies exhibit a welcome modern trend in horror which relies on no supernatural agency, just as Hooper's classic `Texas Chain Saw Massacre' is so great because all the horror is done with no recourse to monsters, ghosts, goblins, witches, vampires, werewolves, green slimes, or even aliens from outer space! That is not to say that supernatural, alien, or paranormal effects can't be scary. `Alien', `The Exorcist', and `The Shining' are ample evidence of that; however, it is probably no accident that the scariest movie of all time (per American Film Institute list), `Jaws', involves not one wit of supernatural or extraterrestrial agency.

The writers for this scarefest rely on at least two easy devices to enhance the scariness of their story. The first is the mortuary setting and the second is putting a young girl at risk. This second ploy has been done by even some of the greatest filmmakers such as James Cameron in `Aliens' and Stephen Spielberg in `Jurassic Park', where he goes even further and endangers two subteenaged children. But then, these are great movies by great directors, so they carry it off, even if it makes the viewers a bit queasy rather than just scared.

The only thing for which I give the filmmakers credit is that they set the scene not in an artificially remote village or town, but in the heart of suburban California, just a few stones' throws off the freeway. Otherwise, the behavior of the characters just doesn't make a lot of sense in many places. The biggest problem seems to be that the characters commit the biggest gaff, of doing things that are patently stupid to the film's audience. It also does not really explain very well the origin and survival of the primary source of evil. While it seems to need constant feeding, there is no lore in the town about disappearances among the townsfolk. And, while the mortuary seems to provide a wealth of fresh bodies, the evil entity seems more interested in turning them into zombies than in turning them into lunch.

The `making of' featurette goes so far as to liken the primary agent of evil with the character of `Boo' in `To Kill a Mockingbird'. I think this is really a stretch, as there is absolutely nothing sympathetic about this movie's primary mysterious human. The actors in this featurette praise director Hooper and are happy to be working with him, but I sense they know their project is not up to the level of `...Chainsaw...'

Cheap thrills, but otherwise not very interesting.

Texas chainsaw slumber party
This is an intensely boring story of a possessed mortuary, and a family that take over its operation. The initial scenes are the best, as the old owner hands over the keys while slowly pointing out the hidden flaws of the old house he has just sold them. There is no more of this over the top sick humor though, just mundane teens getting killed for being sexually active [a timeless subtext of horror].

More than a few scenes seemed designed to remind of audiences of Poltgeist, an 80s classic. People dont remember that film was also Hooper, and his best work, since Spielberg took all the credit for it back in 84 as producer.

Tobe Hooper directed Tx Chainsaw Massacre, the original, using a then clever device: make it look like a documentary/real life events. It is hilarious that people thought the new Chainsaw was based on real events, simply bc the 70s version was a bit deceptive.

Wow, this film just does not seem worthy of the director when looking at his early and middle works.