Académie mortuaire

Ripping off the Police Academy movies, Mortuary Academy is about a pair of witless brothers named Grimm who inherit from their uncle both a large funeral home and a training school for morticians. I wasn't crazy about The Loved One which is always cited as THE film about the funeral business but it's Citizen Kane next to this one.

Christopher Atkins and Perry Lang are the brothers who inherit, but they're not licensed morticians and those pesky state laws require a license and a bit of training. So the brothers have to go to their own school where the current ones running the home want to see them fail.

That would be Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov who like things as they are where they are looting the business and pushing it to bankruptcy. Bartel also has a nice taste for necrophilia and his scenes cross over into the gross as he thinks he found the woman of his dreams, a teen virgin who died accidentally. Cross over quite a distance I might add.

I'm not sure Police Academy movie fans will even like this one.

It's one thing to try and rip off "Police Academy", but it's another thing to put a spin on your rip off that concerns a very delicate subject - death, corpses, and the mortuary business. Oh, it's possible to generate laughs with those subjects, but it takes a lot of careful thought and execution, which is entirely missing from "Mortuary Academy". What will strike most viewers is how drained of energy most of the movie is, generating instead a sombre and grim feeling that doesn't exactly induce laughter. It doesn't help that the whole package feels unfinished - there are a number of confusing moments that suggest linking footage was never filmed for one reason or another. The movie has a somewhat interesting cast, but all the participating actors seem as weary and dejected as the movie's atmosphere, so even they can't milk any humor out of the material. It's no surprise then that the movie apparently spent several years on the shelf after being completed before being dumped on video and instantly forgotten.

MORTUARY ACADEMY is another wacky movie starring the irrepressible duo of Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel. Their running the titular establishment, while Bartel's character attempts a love affair with an overripe cadaver.

Meanwhile, two new enrollees stand to inherit the academy if they graduate. Bartel and Woronov do whatever they can to stop this from happening.

This is a humorous look at the funereal arts with heavy doses of goofy dialogue and zany characters. If you enjoy deceased, robotically resurrected rock bands, and aren't offended by the lighter side of necrophilia, then this movie will set in on you like rigor mortis. In a good way...

Mary Woronov had (and probably not coincidentally) a habit of showing up in a number of strange b-grade (and sometimes lower) cult classics. Some good (Eating Raoul, Rock N' Roll High School), some so bad they're good (like Terror Vision), and some that were just out and out awful. Mortuary Academy is laden with obvious jokes and puns, mostly tasteless humor, and unfortunately was hard for me to wade through patiently until at least the last forty minutes or so. But understandably, this is the kind of material that makes a cult classic, appreciated by a few who find something pleasing enough about it to watch it ad nausea. I'm not quite sold on it as much, but I do like quirky films like these, and at least for this one, a horror comedy to some degree with emphasis on lame jokes and pure corniness (but certainly not in a family-movie kind of way).

Mortuary Academy is the story of two brothers who are written as the next-of-kin to inherit their late uncle's mortuary, but only on the condition that they pass Mortuary Academy in order, at least as their lawyer explained it, develop an appreciation for the craft of a business which they may soon be running themselves. Of course, they are imbibed in an odd selection of classmates (naturally) and rebuffed by the two current heads of the mortuary (Mary and Paul, not coincidentally played by Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel), who initially plot to keep the brothers Grimm (for real) from successfully completing the conditions of the will, sure that if they did, Mary and Paul would be no longer be in charge.

Regular fans of b-movie cult classics are advised to at least give this one a try. Besides b-movie cult regulars Mary Woronov and Paul Bartel look for Tracey Walter (of Repo Man fame) as Mortuary Academy's 80s variation on Dr. Frankenstien (which made for at least an more interesting ending to an otherwise relatively lukewarm movie overall).

My review was written in May 1988 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

"Mortuary Academy" is a genuinely amusing feature, getting a lot of laughs from black humor involving necrophilia. Specialized nature of this poor taste material naturally will limit audience saturation, but pic works very well on its own terms.

The "Eating Raoul" acting team of Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov adapts quite comfortably to similar roles as the manage and top lecturer at Grimm Mortuary and Academy, which has just been inherited by brothers Sam and Max Grimm (Perry Lang, Christopher Atkins) on the condition they graduate as morticians.

Rambunctious group of oddball students gets up to antics that would do the "Carry On" team proud, climaxing in the mechanical whiz in their midst (deadpan Tracey Walker) reanimating a dead heavy metal band to perform one last gig with the aid of animatronics, and thereby earn enough money to save the academy, which Bartel has bled dry.

Hilarious running gag has Bartel falling in love with a young cheerleader who choked on popcorn at a drive-in movie (corpse played by Cheryl Starbuck). This love affair goes far beyond the reaches of bad taste, but is a hoot, climaxing with an indescribable scene of the students using Tracey's mechanics to blackmail Bartel as he makes love to Starbuck. Coda has Bartel and his corpse honeymooning on a cruise ship with grotesque results and a tagline homage to "Some Like It Hot".

Aided by a very funny romantic score by David Spear, director Michael Schroede and writer William Kelman deliver fresh, uncensored material. Pacing is just right and Bartel's unctuous delivery (a la Vincent Price) hits just the right note of campiness without exaggeration.

Woronov's arch delivery again is the perfect foil for Bartel, supported by a solid ensemble. Of special note is the familiar saturnine-faced Anthony James, getting maximum laughs out of some of the script's best lines in his role as a parolee on a rehab program at the academy.