Oh Canada.Your horror movies are so strange, so unlike anywhere else, as you remain such a polite country, our neighbor to the north. What strange horrors have you brought to me today? Oh look - it's 1980's Funeral Home, otherwise known by the much better title Cries in the Night.Heather (Lesleh Donaldson, Curtains, Happy Birthday to Me) is spending the summer in a small town with her grandmother, who has turned her home, which was once a funeral home, into a quaint inn. Her husband's been missing for several years, so she also makes ends meet by selling artificial flowers. She even has her own handyman, Billy, who is mentally challenged.The only problem is that when people check in, they end up missing. Like that unmarried adulterous couple. And that real estate developer. And when Heather comes home at night, she hears her grandmother talk to someone who isn't there.Well, it seems like Heather's grandfather was having an affair with Helena Davis, which her grandmother denies to everyone, including Helena's husband (Barry Morse, the Inspector from TV's original The Fugitive) - who is soon murdered with a pickaxe.Heather and her boyfriend Rick start investigating, finally finding the corpse of her grandfather. Now, Maude speaks with his voice and comes after them with an axe. Luckily, the police arrive just in time.As the credits roll, the cops explain all of it to us. It's such a weird ending, with an overly long explanation fighting for screen time with the names of the gaffers.This movie just felt like a slog. I continually kept checking to see how much more time was left. I hate when movies make me do that.

This one took me by surprise... I wasn't expecting the film to be as good as it is. It is Psycho-ish but not a rip off of Hitchcock's classic but the film does share some similarities with the Psycho films.A young girl goes to stay with her grandmother because her grandfather came up missing. While he was around, he ran a funeral home from the house but now that he's gone grandmother needed some money and she decided to keep the house with running a bed and breakfast from it with the help of her granddaughter. Several people have come up missing from the small tourist town and most of the local police don't give it much thought because they are adults and most of the rumors are thought to be idol gossip anyway - but there is one rookie cop that thinks something deeper is going on but is having problems getting the other cops and some of the townspeople to take him seriously. When more people come up missing the investigations go deeper. The granddaughter is becoming frightened from some of the subtle but odd things going on inside grandma's B&B home.Very good film - I really enjoyed this one!! 8.5/10

***SPOILERS*** Maude Chlamers,Kay Hawtrey, was forced to convert the family funeral home into a bed & breakfast after her husband the undertaker & embalmer disappeared a number of years ago leaving her all alone and unable to keep it running. It's when Maude's granddaughter Heather, Lesleh Donaldson, showed up for summer vacation that people or guests at the bed & breakfast started disappearing at record levels. It wasn't until much later we get the drift in what exactly is going on in the place from Mr. Davis, Barry Morse, one of the guest there who's trying to track down his missing wife Helena who, like most of those that disappeared in the movie, was once a guest there herself.It's Heather who soon finds out the secret that her grandmother Maude has been keeping from her and the world and that put both her and her boyfriend Rick, Dean Garbett, lives in mortal danger. As for Mr. Davis his snooping around the bed & breakfast and finding out what happened to his wife cost him his life! But that soon opened up a whole can of worms in unleashing the horror that was soon to come in the film. That with the unseen ax killer losing it and, in his or her uncontrollable murder spree, exposing himself as well as uncovering a number of bodies he hid over the years on the bed & breakfast grounds.****SPOILERS**** What is an obvious re-make of "Psycho" the film "Funeral Home" like "Psycho" keeps the body count, four, low but the tension high giving it time for character development of the killer's victims where you feel that their human beings not inanimate objects like in most slasher films. The final scene where both Heather & Rick find out who's been doing the killings in fact is even more shocking then in the final scene of "Psycho"! Where in this case the two had to fight for their lives not just find out who the killer is as he or she's being apprehended before he can do any damage. There's also the mystery of the mysterious black cat that we see all throughout the film that is never explained by the scriptwriters. The black cat seems to be at the scene of every murder as if it knew, like some kind of premonition, it would happen in advance!

A token little surprise. No great shakes, but it delivers what it promises. "Funeral Home" is a Canadian low-budget horror fare that shares it influence from a Hitchcock classic. No need to say, you'll know. Director William Fruet is no newcomer to the genre with 70s rape-revenge feature "Death Weekend" already under the belt, but "Funeral Home" is a different kettle. Rather minor in its actions, relying on its creepy atmospherics, remote setting and offbeat characters with a southern Gothic touch to it all. Heather heads to a small Connecticut town to help her grandmother Maude with her newly renovated bread-and-breakfast inn, which once was an old funeral home. Heather begins to hear voices' coming from the cellar, as it sounds like her grandmother is having conversations with someone down there. Things get even stranger when guests start disappearing. Sure somewhat creaky (what does the recurring black cat mean?) and imitative, but Fruet effectively set-ups the twisted nature waiting to break out. There were some names behind this production; photographer Mark Irwin showed some imagination behind the camera and provided some visual scope. While Jerry Fielding contributed to the eerily solemn music score. The performances shape up well enough. Kay Hawtrey is memorable as the well-meaning grandmother Maude Chalmers. Lesleh Donaldson is affably potent as Heather. Dean Garbett, Alf Humphreys and Barry Morse round it up.