Yes, it's often tacky and somewhat offensive and filled with eye rolling moments that will either disgust you or make you roar with guilty laughter. What else would you expect from a film written by, directed and starring Paul Bartel? He's joined by another paragon of non-virtue, Mary Woronov, delightfully dead pan and looking like the 70's and 80's version of Christine Baranski, made to look very sophisticated and yet simultaneously tough and vulnerable. The story surrounds a school for morticians where the grandson of the founder is none other than Christopher Atkins and featuring an oddball class of freaky young people, most notably Perry Lang, Stoney Jackson and Richard Kennedy.
Then there's the deliciously feisty secretary Nedra Voltz, a stout old woman obsessed with memories of her period, greeting callers with "You stab em', we slab em', as well as cameos by Wolfman Jack and Cesar Romero, a young actress as a corpse whom Bartel has a thing for and a dead dog brought back to life to look like a Muppet dressed up as a gremlin for Halloween. There's a bizarre innocence to how this film comes off, even with obvious acts of necrophilia that couldn't be done today in any medium. It isn't a good film in any way, but with the right frame of mind, you'll be able to laugh mostly at it and some times with it. The credits with a Beach Boys song rank as a 10/10.
Then there's the deliciously feisty secretary Nedra Voltz, a stout old woman obsessed with memories of her period, greeting callers with "You stab em', we slab em', as well as cameos by Wolfman Jack and Cesar Romero, a young actress as a corpse whom Bartel has a thing for and a dead dog brought back to life to look like a Muppet dressed up as a gremlin for Halloween. There's a bizarre innocence to how this film comes off, even with obvious acts of necrophilia that couldn't be done today in any medium. It isn't a good film in any way, but with the right frame of mind, you'll be able to laugh mostly at it and some times with it. The credits with a Beach Boys song rank as a 10/10.