Director: William Fruet
Writer: Ida Nelson
From: Chilling
A young woman goes to help her grandmother convert the family funeral home into a tourist hotel. Only guests start turning up dead.
Another movie about a murderous hotel immediately after watching Terror at Red Wolf Inn which itself had echos of the film I'd seen immediately prior to that, Legacy of Blood, which itself had echos of The Ghost, a film I’d watched just two films before.
Am I just watching the same movie over and over?
Not unless I just watched Psycho which, yes, this movie also echos. I'd say, "spoilers," but as I note later in this post, that doesn't really apply to this movie.
Anyway, Heather arrives at the small town where her grandmother lives. Her grandmother isn’t there to pick her up from the bus stop (the truck is broken down), so Heather has to walk. Along the way, she sees a black cat that she’s inexplicably afraid of and then gets a ride from Rick. At the house we get the backstory—grandpa disappeared a while back and grandma is turning the house, formerly a funeral parlor, into a “tourist house,” what we’d call now a B&B. Grandma’s not happy about having strangers live in her house, grandpa wouldn’t approve she says, but needs must.
Meanwhile the police find a car hidden under a pile of hay in a nearby farmer’s field. The car belonged to a real estate man who was talking to people in the area about buying up houses. Officer Joe, the newest hire, asks grandma about the real estate man, but she brushes him off. The chief of police tells him to stop playing detective and just hand out tickets to tourists.
Speaking of tourists, a boorish couple from the city checks into the house and grandma does not approve. He’s a salesman and she’s his mistress. He abandons the mistress for the day to run off to a meeting and she wanders around offending everyone she can regardless of her intentions. You know they’re going to die and the movie, frankly, goes too far in making you think they deserve it.
While all this is happening, Heather hears grandma talking to someone in the cellar, but grandma denies it. The next day, Heather finds the cellar door padlocked. She also sees the black cat again and is really freaked out.
Things go as you’d expect: Heather and Rick start dating and he starts telling her about what her grandparents were really like. The boorish couple is pushed off a cliff in their car and drown. Another guest at the house is making grandma suspicious because he’s visiting the police station in town. And throughout it’s not clear if you’re supposed to suspect grandma, the person she talks to in the basement, the mentally-impaired handyman at the house, or potentially someone else. Also the cat is never explained. It’s essential to the conclusion of the film (in fact is the final shot), but what it’s doing there, why Heather is afraid of it, or why it seems to have a semi-supernatural connection to the murders is never addressed.
And I think I’ll leave things there. The movie has an interesting logic—nearly every element that’s introduced tells you immediately what the payoff will be. The first couple, for example. You know they’re deadmeats from the moment they show up on screen. Only the film moves the situation just a hair’s breadth away from the expected. Yes, they die, but are fleshed out just a touch more before that moment. Likewise the cop investigating everything, the details about the grandparents, the clues people find. Nothing is ultimately surprising, but none of it feels perfunctory either.
The movie felt like a nice Saturday afternoon horror mystery, the kind of thing I would have stumbled across as a kid, not intend to watch, and ended up watching the whole thing. It moved along well enough and kept me interested throughout, so I’d have to say it’s a recommend. As of this writing, it’s streaming through Amazon Prime and less official sources for those looking to exercise their Google-Fu. I’m not suggesting that it’s essential viewing or something particularly remarkable or memorable, but if you’re nostalgic for the less sordid edge of USA Up All Night or Night Flight fare, this is worth a peek.
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