Even though I liked the same movie[1] better when Christina Ricci was in it, Mortuary[2] was better than it had any right to be on paper. Like, the first twenty minutes are a bloody fonted title card splashed over a sunny Los Angeles backyard pool, a high school chick who is pissed at her mom for not caring (also: not believing) that her dad was murdered, some dudes playing grabass before picking up a pair of tires and then spying on the local mortician holding a Satanic[3] ritual in the same warehouse for some reason, a completely gratuitous roller rink, and Bill Paxton hitting on the original chick by inviting her over to listen to his new Mozart record.

It is important to remember at this point in the narrative that, being 1983, Bill Paxton is also in high school for these purposes.

Anyway, my point is, that’s a lot to recover from, for me to be saying favorable things at the end of the flick. I don’t want to give anything away, so I’ll stop here except to add I just watched one of the most memorable wedding scenes ever committed to film, and that I regret the sequel that will never be.

[1] Note: not actually the same movie. In most ways, they are extremely different movies.
[2] Not to be confused with the pre-Bollywood Indian film also released that year.
[3] I mean, I have no direct evidence that the ritual was Satanic, but they all had black hoods and five of them were regularly forming the points of a pentagram, and also this was made in 1981, so.