The Hearse

The Hearse is a deeply confusing 1980 horror which wasn't even remotely what I expected it to be.

It tells the story of a woman who inherits her aunts house but upon moving in comes to realise the locals don't like her and that the house itself might have its secrets.

The "Hearse" in question doesn't play as much of a role as I'd expected, which is odd considering that's supposedly what the movie is about.

The whole thing looks and sounds the part and the lead does a passable job but the moment things happen she becomes deeply annoying and I found myself scratching my head and not entirely knowing what I was watching.

Even now I'm not 100% on what went down and will chalk it up to being another one of those vague titles that doesn't feel like it needs to fully explain itself. I'm all for things being open to interpretation but this is taking that a tad far.

Confusing, underwhelming and not one I would dream of recommending.

The Good:

I like the hearse concept

The Bad:

Hearse is badly underutilized

Story makes very little sense

The lead actress falls apart when she falls apart

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

You'd think a movie about a hearse would be....you know....about a hearse

A woman, Jane, moves to a large house in a small town which she has inherited from a dead aunt. The locals shun her on account of believing her aunt was in league with the devil. Soon, Jane is haunted by the appearances of some ghosts, including a mysterious hearse which constantly menaces her.

This film fits comfortably into the haunted house film bracket, which by 1980 was firmly a popular sub-genre of the horror film with movies such as The Amityville Horror (1979), The Changeling (1980) and The Shining (1980) raking it in at the box office. It would only be fair to say that The Hearse is fairly derivative of some of the big hitters of its day but I have to say I found it to be a pretty good effort on the whole. Trish Van Devere puts in an engaging performance in the lead role, while Joseph Cotton, veteran actor of various classics from the past like Citizen Kane (1941), appears in one of the numerous genre flicks he pitched up in in the last decade of his career. Aside from the ominous black hearse, the sinister events incorporate an odd reverend, a satanic church and ghostly appearances of a woman at a window. By the end of things, it's true that the relevance of everything has not been fully established but when it comes to stories about ghostly goings on, this is not exactly a problem in my book. A bit of ambiguity is not really a bad thing.

Anyone who used to watch Mr. Show may recall that sketch. It basically puts several stereotypical characters in a spooky old house. They quiver as noises crash all around them. But what are they supposed to be afraid of? The creature? It's ghost? The curse? The return of the creature? What then? It's pretty funny. Check it out on youtube. Anyway, this film is kind of like that. Which cliché are we supposed to be afraid of here?

The Hearse is simply a dull collection of about every old horror film cliché you can think of. A recently divorced woman moves into her late aunt's spooky old house in the countryside. On her way into town, and on several other occasions, a big old black hearse seems to be trying to run her off the road! A bad omen. The locals are outwardly hostile, since they hated her aunt and know the house is haunted. The only local who seems to like her is a horny teenager whose parents own the hardware store. And then, there's this weird gentlemanly dude who shows up to court her in an old-fashioned way...

The plot thickens (kind of) when the woman finds her aunt's diary and learns that she was about to marry a preacher, but then dumped him for a Satanist! Yikes. And then the spooky old house seems to come to life. Windows break for no reason. Pipes clang together. Music boxes play on their own and move around. And all the while this old hearse keeps showing up on the roads or in her driveway. What does it want? Who is the mysterious "Tom" who wishes to win her over? Honestly, you'll figure it all out pretty quick.

The film just can't decide what is at the center of all the strange happenings. All the writers seemed to want to do is add a bunch of supposedly spooky elements into a pot and stir until something watchable came out. The acting is passable. Trish Van Devere isn't bad at all. Joseph Cotten needed more screen time, but they likely only got him for a few days of shooting. The film borrows heavily from other horror films such as The Car, Let's Scare Jessica to Death, The Amityville Horror, and maybe even The Fog. There really isn't an original idea to be found. The hearse itself is just a plot point that isn't really explained. It looks menacing, but almost seems like an afterthought that could have been written out altogether. Not a drop of blood, or any real suspense to be had. Really no reason to see this one. I'm frankly amazed it ever got a DVD release. 4 of 10 stars.

The Hound.

I have read reviews good and bad for this film and find that I cannot disagree with any of them, for The Hearse is good in certain respects and not so good in others. Watching this film recently, for the first time in many years, I was reminded of other stories that came both before and after it, 1963's The Haunting and 2001's The Others coming immediately to mind.

There is nothing better than a good ghost story with mood and imagination and The Hearse claims these properties to some degree. That it is an over-cliched film with comic relief that doesn't quite fit counts against it, as does the unlikely and disappointing ending. Trish Van Devere, a competent if not supremely talented actress, and the always pleasing Joseph Cotton are the lead players, although Ms. Van Devere's screen love interest, David Gautreaux as Tom, came close to stealing it from both of them. I did not feel that Joseph Cotton had enough screen time to please his fans, but as they say, `Always leave them wanting more!' The story: Jane, portrayed by Ms. Van Devere, inherits an old house in the country. Jane's aunt had practiced Satan worship in it and the local town folks were not pleased to see her niece move in. In a nice addition to the storyline, we learn that Jane had a nervous breakdown after a messy divorce and her mental stability quickly comes into question. Jane sees images in the house and is convinced that somebody is stalking her in a sinister looking funeral home hearse. Throughout the course of the story she has interesting encounters with such diverse people as the local estate attorney, hardware store operators and their son, an oddball minister and her new love interest. Who was after her, and why did he/she want Jane out of her aunt's house? There are many red herrings and barely enough chills and thrills to attract the younger audiences that were just then, in 1980, two years after Jamie Lee Curtis and Halloween, making their presence felt at the box office and soon-to-be neighborhood video stores. As stated, the ending was a real letdown after it seemed the film had come to a satisfying conclusion.

Perhaps that is why this film generates strong emotions; it tries to be too much to too many. That it has something for everybody and, for the most part, succeeds in putting it all together is one of it's major strengths. The fact that this also causes it to be disjointed and somewhat awkward at times is the downside of this, but remember, The Hearse was never intended to be a summer blockbuster. That a film such as this can still generate intelligent discussion 22 years after its release is remarkable in itself.

"The Hearse" is a low-budget, bottom-of-the-barrel little shocker. It's uninvolving throughout, and never terrifying. The hopelessly cliched story, with all the familiar "haunted house" tricks, would be enough to sink this movie, but the job is completed by the poor direction and the murky look of the film, which often makes it hard for us to understand what's happening onscreen. The ending leaves almost everything unexplained and is just as arbitrary and nonsensical as the rest of this film. The good performances can't save it by any means.