- DIRECTOR:
Don Coscarelli
- ACTORS:
Angus Scrimm, A. Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, Reggie Bannister, Kathy Lester
- PLOT:
A boy suspects that the creepy local mortician is up to no good, putting it mildly.
- EVALUATION:
It would be difficult to describe this as a great movie, but it is certainly an impressive and influential independent effort that paints the neighborhood ice cream man as the real hero of the story.
- WRITING:
The movie is much better when maintaining its air of mystery (what are those noises, what is the tall man doing) than when answering those questions (making corpses into dwarfs and sending them to another planet).
- FILMING:
Honestly, surprisingly good, given that Coscarelli rented equipment on weekends to create that truly eerie mortuary, the wonderful animated photograph, and of course the ball.
- BEST PART:
The ball killing that guy is pretty memorable, which is no doubt why the sequels ("The ball is back!") really latched on to what amounts to a relatively small part of this film.
- TRIVIA:
This movie has a few things in common with Dune (the novel), ranging from that pain box to the ball, which resembles a hunter-seeker drone. Plus, Dune's cafe features prominently in the film.
- STINGER:
Random unknown character Myrtle shows up for a jump scare.
