In 1988’s The Undertaker, a small college town is rocked by a serious of viscous, sexually-charged murders. While the professors and the students deal with their own dramas on campus, the bodies are piling up at the local funeral home. Who could the murderer be?
Well, Joe Spinell’s in the film. That really should be the only clue you need.
Spinell plays Roscoe, the town undertaker who has issues with his mother, cries at random, talks to dead bodies, watches movies featuring sacrifices, and occasionally performs what appears to be some sort of a ritual with his victims. This film was Spinell’s final film and he gives a performance that alternates between being perfunctory and being fully committed. On the one hand, there are plenty of scenes where Spinell appears to be making up his lines as he goes along, In the scenes in which he appears in his office, it’s appears that Spinell is literally reading his lines off of the papers on top of his desk. Then there are other scenes where Spinell suddenly seems to wake up and he flashes the unhinged intensity that made him such a fascinating character actor. In the 70s and 80s, there were many actors who frequently played dangerous people. Spinell was the only one who really came across like he might have actually killed someone on the way to the set. Spinell was in poor health for most of his life and he also struggled with drug addiction. In The Undertaker, he doesn’t always look particularly healthy. Even by Joe Spinell standards, he sweats a lot. And yet, in those scenes were actually commits himself to the character, we see the genius that made him so unforgettable.
As for the film itself, it’s basically Maniac but without the New York grit that made that film memorable. Instead, it takes place in a small town and Spinell, with his rough accent and his button man mustache, seems so out-of-place that the film at times starts to feel like an accidental satire. Roscoe is obviously guilty from the first moment that we see him and yet no one else can seem to figure that out. Only his nephew suspect Roscoe but that problem is quickly taken care of. Whenever anyone dies, their body is brought to Rosco’s funeral home. Roscoe puts on his black suit, plasters down his hair, and tries to look somber. Roscoe spends a good deal of the film talking to himself. When a victim runs away from Roscoe, Spinell looks at a nearby dead body and shrugs as if saying, “What can you do, huh?”
If you’re into gore, this film has a lot of it and, for the most part, it’s pretty effective. In the 80s, even the cheapest of productions still found money to splurge on blood and flayed skin effects. If you’re looking for suspense or a coherent story, this film doesn’t really have that to offer. It does, however, offer up Joe Spinell in his final performance, sometimes bored and yet sometimes brilliant.
Through the Shattered Lens 