Huutoja yössä

"Funeral Home" is very entertaining and traditionally morbid early 80's horror movie directed by the underrated William Fruet, who also made the top-notch revenge flick "House by the Lake" and the goofy slasher "Killer Party". Fruet obviously hadn't much of a budget available here, so he splendidly emphasizes the horrific atmosphere and makes full use of the eerie settings. A lot of great movies use a bed & a breakfast motel as horror location and the residence in this movie is actually a former mortuary turned into bed & breakfast, so creepiness is definitely guaranteed! Heather, a young girl with an unexplained phobia for black cats, travels to a remote little town to help her grandmother run the newly opened vacation resort. Her grandfather, the local undertaker for decades, mysteriously vanished a couple of years ago and the villagers still spread nasty rumors about him. During the night, Heather hears strange voices coming from the basement and, shortly after, the first guests begin to disappear. The plot offers almost no surprise elements or twists; also since it's clearly a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", and the amount of bloody make-up effects is kept to a minimum. Still the tone of the movie is constantly ominous and several sequences are downright creepy, notably the handful of flashbacks referring to the times Mr. Chalmers still ran the funeral home. The acting and music are also very good and the predictably grotesque climax is a lot of fun to watch. Creepy stuff, vintage 80's horror!