“Every Corpse Tells A Story”: The Charming Morbidity Of The Mortuary Collection

The canon of anthological horror cinema is engorged with myriad entries of all shapes and sizes, each with their own macabre and often darkly humorous tales to tell. With notable examples such as Dead Of Night (1945), Trilogy Of Terror (1975), Creepshow (1982), Body Bags (1993), Tales From The Hood (1995), Trick ’r Treat (2007), The ABCs Of Death (2012), and Tales Of Halloween (2015), the method seemingly preserves itself and stays from wearing out its welcome. 2019 (or 2021, for those of us who waited for the physical copy release), then saw the arrival of an addition which feels both fresh and comfortable whilst being fiendishly fun and ceaselessly charming: The Mortuary Collection.

This particular anthology film, written and directed by Ryan Spindell, takes an immediate unique approach in making the wrap-around narrative the driving force of the feature, rather than just leaving it be the typical cohesive element. It’s in this primary plot that we follow the mortician of Raven’s End, Montgomery Dark, played with equal parts spook and sympathy by the ever-fantastic Clancy Brown, who gives his young new applicant, Sam, played by Caitlin Custer, a tour of the mortuary all the while telling her the tales which make up the rest of the film, though are carefully interwoven akin to the structure of Trick ’r Treat.  

“So these are all stories about how people died?” – Sam

“Not just how, my dear…Why.” – Montgomery Dark

Not only are these segments full of the usual fun, frights, twists, and turns, but Spindell and co. manage to add refreshing depth to every story and character with clever details and incredible performances, making it effortless to feel invested paired with never-ending cinematic eye candy. Characters like Wendell, Sandra, and Dr. Kubler (incidentally, the only character to appear in every part of the film) are infectious and intriguing. And be it the sardonic satire and body horror of “Unprotected” or the bittersweet and gory gut-punch of a love story that is, “Til Death Do Us Part”, the vignettes all offer something compelling where the spectacle of how the deaths come to be is as enjoyable as the well-thought-out purpose of why.

As we return to Sam and Montgomery each time, the two perform little verbal autopsies on the story we’ve just seen wherein the film manages to commentate on storytelling and the nature of anthologies without the awkward social commentary and mean-spiritedness of something like Scare Me (2020), rather keeping it tongue-in-cheek and never too serious. Not to say The Mortuary Collection is the Scream of horror anthologies, but it’s the kind of film that knows what it is, yet keeps its meta notes effectively focused on the plot and character interactions.

“The form may be familiar, but the message is timeless.” – Montgomery Dark

Meanwhile, the film wears its influences on its sleeve, creatively and technically, referencing other works such as Evil Dead II, Phantasm, The Shining, and Halloween, yet it owns these homages and seamlessly stitches them into itself. The look and feel of the film harkens back to classic films, utilizing beautiful matte paintings and transitional cinematography/editing taken from the school of Hitchcock’s Rope. Tom Woodruff Jr. and Alec Gillis’ Amalgamated Dynamics handle the plethora of practical effects, including Clancy Brown’s Angus Scrimm-doppelganger appearance, some crispy demon children, and a tentacle monster which might look familiar to Tremors fans. The score by the Mondo Boys traverses and unifies the various decades in which the film takes place and boasts everything from haunting, classical orchestral arrangements to Californian surf rock, whilst managing to remain authentic, a la Fallout. All of the aforementioned components work intravenously, injecting personality, style, and genuine fun into a tried-and-true form which gives us the rigor mortis romp that is, The Mortuary Collection.

“That’s pretty cool.” – Sam

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?”– Montgomery Dark

I not only recommend one viewing of this delightful anthology, but several as it has incredible replay value atop being a generally entertaining watch. Much like its Trick ’r Treat counterpart, there are countless new, witty, and surprising details to pick up on with subsequent viewings. For example: Every phone number, license plate, and other featured sequence of digits will always add up to 13. Certain characters appear in more than one story (aside from Dr. Kubler). And if you can read Latin, you’re in for a little treat.

And lastly, I know (at the time of writing this) that this film is available on various streaming services, including Shudder, but if you can, I implore you to purchase the physical copy as it comes with several extras you can’t experience with streaming, including a fantastic and sincere commentary from the writer/director as well as fourteen behind the scenes featurettes and a deleted scenes featurette, all equating to roughly two hours of bonus material, which is invaluable to both fans and filmmakers alike. And quite frankly, they’re just very fun, in-depth looks into all the love, work, and fun that went into the making of the film.

Bo Burnham’s Inside Offers A Master Class In Existential Dread

This isn’t your average comedy special.

Just a few days ago, I was only mildly aware of Bo Burnham. A vine here, a meme there – I knew him primarily as some kid who got famous on the internet and made fun of my parents. I certainly would never have guessed he would be the one to hand deliver the gut-wrenching, soul-cleansing, out-of-body catharsis I’ve needed desperately since the start of the pandemic.

In Burnham’s new Netflix “comedy special,” Inside, that’s exactly what he does, taking his audience through the exhausting task of creating art in quarantine while trying to resist the urge to kill himself. The classic Existential Crisis is on full HD display here, from early stages of anxiety as Burnham questions a comedian’s role in the modern world (Oh, shit / Should I be joking at a time like this?) to the crushing despair of a man on the verge of finishing the lone project that’s kept him going. We’re invited to watch as the single room in which Inside is shot falls into complete disarray – along with our host – and sing along to the bleak deterioration of the ego in the juxtaposing throes of hyper-stimulation and loneliness.

That’s not to say Inside is without humor. It’s hilarious, just not in the thigh-slapping sense. There are a couple of brief stand-up routines and a few clever sketches commenting on the nature of “woke” marketing and self-immolation by way of YouTube, which are depressingly fun. He also sings upbeat songs about classism and not showering for nine days that are damn catchy. More than anything, though, and especially through the show’s masterful production design and semi-linear format, Burnham taps into the darkest of comedy by offering raw exhibitions of all-too relatable mania loosely woven together with visceral bouts of ambivalence. One has to laugh to avoid total paralysis or an onset of tears.

Thankfully, after each fragment of uncertainty, maniacal laughter, or ennui, comes the catharsis. I can’t speak for everyone, but I personally have never related to anyone as intensely as I relate to Bo Burnham during Inside‘s 87 minutes of runtime. He’s managed to capture the entire pandemic experience in a way that is poignant and devastatingly human, then delivers it in bittersweet spoonfuls (which makes his opening song all the more apropos, as he sings: Look, I made you some content / Daddy made you your favorite / Open wide / Here comes the content).

And it must be said again that a huge contributor to the effectiveness of Inside is its production. Burnham wrote, directed, shot, and edited this entire special alone in one room over the course of a year, utilizing a wealth of everyday objects to create mood lighting, visual effects, shockingly accurate parodies of Instagram photos, and even a subservient co-host. Venetian blinds act as prison bars (a noir staple), patterns of suggestive emojis are projected across his face during a soulful song about sexting, and shadowplay creates the illusion that he has backup dancers as he wails his way angrily into his thirties. If nothing else, Inside is an absolute feast of ingenuity and creativity within its medium.

I’ve used several food metaphors in this review, haven’t I?

Like I said… Apropos.

Whether the wide array of emotions we witness here are sincere or performative, only Bo knows, but I don’t think it really matters. They feel incredibly, painfully real and their impact is deafening. Most of us have, to varying degrees and in myriad ways, been worn down by the pandemic, the political climate in America, systemic racism, cancel culture… We’ve spent seemingly endless months in conference with ourselves, trying to make sense of it all, wondering what will happen – and how we will live – when the madness has passed and the time comes to move forward. We’ve had a lot of time to think. Clearly, so has Bo Burnham.

Through Inside, he’s given voice to those thoughts, asking all the right questions and finding that perhaps there are no easy answers, uniting his audience in solemn deliverance while remaining six feet away.

No rating for this one.

It’s too good for my silly little pink skulls.

Don’t F*CK with the Brotherhood: The Hidden Depth of Black Circle Boys

The year was 1999. I was sitting in the middle of my mother’s living room floor, carrying out my weekend ritual of watching IFC on digital cable until my retinas burned. There were tons of extraordinary films being shown on the channel at that time: Tom DiCillo’s Living in Oblivion, Happiness (which was my first experience with Todd Solondz and, my god, did that make an impression), the criminally underappreciated The Addiction… and then there was Black Circle Boys. This film taught me two things the day it graced my television screen: Firstly, I will always find dudes in spiked belts attractive. Secondly, just because a movie is “bad,” doesn’t mean it isn’t also kind of fabulous.

Black Circle Boys tells the story of troubled teen Kyle Sullivan (played by a very surly Scott Bairstow) who tumbles down a destructive path after the death of his best friend. Transferred to a new school in a new town, Kyle falls in with a group of self-professed Satanists led by the quasi-charismatic Shane Carver (Eric Mabius) and their lives rapidly devolve into chaos. On its surface, it seems like your average low-budget “drug-addled kids on a warpath” film, following Kyle and his new friends as they bond and wreak havoc a la petty theft, breaking and entering, trying – and failing – to wail like Deicide and, in many ways, that’s exactly what it is. But impressive camera work, some very smart writing from Matthew Carnahan and a couple of bang-up performances make this a surprisingly moving journey of loss and a haphazard quest for fraternity. 

Sure, the film paints a frustratingly grim picture of goth culture at times and does nothing to help eradicate misconceptions about Satanism, which, frankly, pisses me off. There are also several scenes that feel better suited for a homespun afterschool special than a horror movie and Kyle’s hippie girlfriend being permanently clad in bright, light colors to represent the angel on his shoulder is a little on the nose for my taste. Despite these problems, however, the movie delivers refreshing realism thanks to cinematographer Geary McLeod and Mabius’s awkwardly emotional Shane. In fact, I enjoy Eric’s foray into edgy teen psychosis so much, I’m able to forgive – albeit laboriously – the fact that he was quite obviously twenty five years old when they shot this.  

Even more than Mabius’s clear devotion to the role, Shane Carver is brilliantly written, both as a liberal homage to real life teen murderer Richard Kasso and as the embodiment of youthful arrogance colliding with pain and ignorance. Shane wants desperately to feel validated and loved, to rise victoriously above the suffering he’s experienced at the hands of his father, but his methods are as misguided and abusive as one would expect and he fails at… well, basically everything. He tries to be cool, but no amount of black clothes and spiked jewelry can mask his sentimentality. He forms a “kickass” thrash band, but has no idea how to play the guitar and refuses to take lessons. He works hard to foster a deep relationship with Kyle, but his persistent intensity and lack of sound judgment ultimately push his new friend away. This is all endlessly frustrating for Shane, of course, but he’s unable to express that constructively, so he acts out more and more violently until things come to a fatal head. Simply put, Shane Carver is one of the more well crafted angsty-turned-murderous teenagers I’ve ever seen depicted on screen.

In addition to Shane, about whom I could probably rave for another six paragraphs, we also have his lackey Rory, played perfectly by a young Chad Lindberg (fresh out of community theater, no less). Rory is timid, unconfident and eager to please, seeing in Shane everything Shane wishes the rest of the world saw, but because Shane hates himself, he has no respect for his one true fan and treats him like garbage. It’s a dynamic that tugs at my heartstrings increasingly as the story goes on. Additionally, we get a poignant performance from Dee Wallace as Mrs. Sullivan, Kyle’s distraught mother, who reaches a breaking point with her son in a way that feels all too real for those of us who were prone to brooding rebellion as children. The film also features a couple of fun cameos from 90s sweetheart Lisa Loeb and X frontman John Doe, so… yeah, if I haven’t stressed this enough, it’s worth a watch for the cast alone.

Is it a scary movie? No, not really, unless you’re afraid of a pot-bellied gothed-out Donnie Walbergh with boundary issues, which is more than a little unsettling at first glance, let’s just air that out right now. What it lacks in terror, though, it makes up for in the aforementioned angst and a moderate amount of manic energy, culminating in a memorable second-to-last scene that I still think about from time to time after all these years. There’s also a fair amount of dark humor sprinkled throughout the film, found in moments like the boys’ one and only band rehearsal or at the dinner table, when Mrs. Sullivan asks Kyle how school was:

Mrs. Sullivan: How was school today, Kyle?

Kyle: Fine.

Mr. Sullivan: Answer your mother in complete sentences.

Kyle: It was fine. 

All in all, I feel Black Circle Boys is a bit of a hidden gem – deeply flawed, but charming in a way that seems to swell with repeat viewings. It has a depth I wasn’t expecting to find when I revisited it so many years later, most of which rests on the shoulders of – appropriately – the boys.

What I love about it: Mimi Melgaard’s refreshingly accurate wardrobe choices, an engaging story that hits on some pretty hard truths, Eric Mabius Eric Mabius Eric Mabius.

What doesn’t quite work for me: It’s obvious that our two main characters are fully grown adults, which diminishes the impact of some of their angst.

Overall rating: