[Fantasia 2020 Review] The Mortuary Collection is a Fantastic Anthology Film Ripped from the Pages of EC Comics

I knew The Mortuary Collection was instantly going to be “my shit,” as the kids probably don’t say anymore from the very beginning. A narrator drawls that the world is not made of atoms, “it’s made of stories” as a book, The Mortuary Collection, plops on a table and turns to a story about a town called Raven’s End. And as the book opens we’re transported to this fantastical world, swirling through the sky over a storybook fishing hamlet that is...a little off.

And I’m instantly hooked.

The camera follows a paperboy and it helps establish this village that looks like a mix of 80s nostalgia filtered through a Gothic Horror story. A town that feels a step removed from Dunwich, with fishermen who pull up crab cages with creatures that look decidedly unlike anything I would like to munch on. Newspapers with headlines like “The Boggy Bay Tooth Fairy” or a “Riot in Kirksdale Asylum” or “Creature Spotted in Local Waters” set the scene that’s Pacific Northwest meets Lovecraft, with a timeless feel of a fairy tale. 

And on the outskirts of town is Raven’s End Mortuary, run by Montgomery Dark (Clancy Brown) who himself looks like a mix of Lurch and Christopher Lee by way of Angus Scrimm’s Tall Man. After officiating a funeral for a young boy, he meets Sam (Caitlin Custer), a young woman looking for a job. But when she sees his library, filled with stories of the lives and deaths of all the people he’s tended to, she wants a story. Something dark, twisted and awesome.

And so Montgomery obliges.

The Mortuary Collection is an anthology film, presenting four stories and a wrap-around. As Montgomery takes Sam on a tour of the facilities, from the funeral parlor to the embalming room and into the sub-basement, he tells her a range of macabre stories that feel ripped from the pages of EC Comics and Tales from the Crypt. 

The first is more a gag than a story about a woman at a party who discovers something evil and filled with tentacles in a bathroom at a party. It’s a short little gag that Sam critiques as needing a twist or an ironic comeuppance. So Montgomery obliges and the second story is a hilarious little twist on safe sex and the patriarchy of the 60s. It focuses on a frat boy who offers condoms and safe sex platitudes, but really just wants to get more notches on his bed post and a woman who is more than his match in a story that’s literally “fuck the patriarchy because it’s not going to fuck itself.”

The third story is about a young man anchored to his very sick wife and is probably the weakest of the bunch. It feels a little bit like The Tell-Tale Heart...but with more dismemberment. And finally we get the centerpiece of the film, a short film that’s had its own festival run called The Babysitter Murders. What seems like a well-tread story of an 80s babysitter, a murderous escaped lunatic and a dark stormy night takes a darkly comedic turn that not only surprised but left me howling.

When done right, anthology films are fantastic, particularly when they take inspiration from the mix of dark comedy, ironic humor and twisted expectations established by the original EC Comics. Writer/director Ryan Spindell takes these inspirations and a million more and still surprises by creating a fantastical world to set them in. Raven’s End feels slightly out of step with time, even though the four stories clearly move through the decades from the 50s to the 80s. There’s a care to the world-building that brought to mind the timeless/out-of-time thoughtfulness brought to It Follows.

Even though there’s a good amount of green screen, the set design is immaculate and everything flows from a hyperreal 50s bathroom to 60s frat house to the ominous and haunting apartment building of the 70s and into the prototypical 80s home. It’s gorgeously filmed and a lot of heart obviously went into every frame of the production. It oozes style and opulence that belies the presumably small budget. I wanted to live in those frames…monsters, be damned.

Even though each film could stand on its own--particularly the absolutely stunning The Babysitter Murders that anchors the production--at almost two hours in length, it does feels a little overlong. The middle story about the sick wife drags a bit and by the time we get to the final story, I found myself ready for a resolution. Luckily it ends as strongly as it begins and the wrap-around not only feels connected to the stories but continues to give the world of Raven’s End a feeling of place. Morbidly dark and caustically funny, The Mortuary Collection sits alongside Trick ‘r Treat and Tales from the Darkside: The Movie as one of the anthology film greats.

At the end of the day, I found myself wanting to know more about the little fishing hamlet of Raven’s End. These four stories are mostly well-realized and I hope there’s more to tell in The Mortuary Collection. I hope this is merely the first volume.