- "The world is not made of atoms; it is made of stories."—Montgomery Darke
The Mortuary Collection' is an anthology horror film streaming on Shudder, starring Clancy Brown.
It takes place during the 1980s in the town of Raven's End where a mysterious, ancient stranger by the name of Montgomery Darke presides over the Raven's End Mortuary. The funeral house contains a vast library, telling the life story of every person whose body has ever been sent there. Darke has concluded a funeral when an attractive young woman named Sam arrives at the mortuary, responding to the "Help Wanted" sign outside. Darke gives her a tour of the building and Sam's interest is piqued by that of a small coffin from the funeral Darke has just performed. Darke goes on to tell Sam a series of stories about those who have died in Raven's End.
- Segment 1: In the 1950s, a woman at a glamorous party goes into a bathroom for a romantic rendezvoux. While in there, she examines the wallets she has stolen. While she waits for her lover, she tries to prize open the medicine cabinet, the door to which is stuck. She eventually manages to pull it open, only to be pulled inside by a tentacled monster that kills and eats her.
- Segment 2: In the 1960s, buff, handsome frat boy, Jake, hands out condoms on campus, preaching the importance of being careful whilst having sex. Upon meeting a pretty girl named Sandra, he discreetly removes his condom before having sex with her. He awakens the next day with a severe rash. Jake goes to see a doctor who informs him that he is pregnant. He phones Sandra and arranges to meet her but is ambushed by his frat brothers who lift him onto an enormous chair and bounce it up and down in a surprise congratulation ritual for having bedded sixty seven women. His waters break, covering them in ooze. Jake manages to get to Sandra's house and admits what he did. She is angered and feels no sympathy. Her parents help him go into labour, informing him that there's only one way the baby can come out: the same way it came in. After Jake's unsurprising death, they take the monstrous mutant baby and lay it in a crib upstairs in a room filled with other mutant babies.
- Segment 3: In the 1970s, Wendell Owens is depressed and weary of the task of caring for his comatose wife, Carol. Although he cares for her, he resents having to plan his entire life around her and miss out on the life he could have had, especially when his neighbour tactlessly tells him about her exotic holiday abroad. His doctor, Dr. Kubler subtly suggests that Wendell euthanase his wife using an overdose of painkillers. Wendell prepares porridge for his wife for dinner, placing the ground up pills in the porridge. He presents her with a pointed statuette of a rabbit of the kind she used to collect. He asks her to give him any sign that she wants to go on living. When she is unresponsive, Wendell serves her the porridge. She grabs his arm and begins to choke. Realising that Carol wants to live and horrified by what he has done, Wendell desperately makes her cough up the poisoned porridge, only for Carol to impale her head on the statuette. Wendell calls Dr. Kubler who tells him to get rid of the body. Wendell begins dismembering Carol's carcass, only for her to awaken screaming, despite the statuette having gone straight through to the back of her head. Wendell manages to dismember her nevertheless, before packing all of the limbs into a trunk which he takes into the elevator, something which he always avoided using. The elevator gets stuck and amidst Wendell's protestations, his neighbour goes to call the police to get the elevator fixed. Blood starts oozing from the trunk and covering the elevator floor. Carol's dead body rises from the trunk in one piece as a vampiric creature which pulls Wendell in for a kiss as the elevator fills with blood. When the police arrive, they find Wendell sat on the bloody floor of the elevator beside the body in the trunk, rocking back and forth and repeating his wedding vows over and over again.
At this point Sam expresses impatience with Darke's stories, saying that they all follow a predictable theme of Laser-Guided Karma and that in real life, often The Bad Guy Wins. Then she tells her story!
"Every corpse has a trope":
- Above Good and Evil: Hinted at in the case of Sam, who has no problem deciding how other people's stories end but boasts to Montgomery Darke that she alone decides how her story ends.
- Alone with the Psycho: Sam the babysitter has been hired by Dr. Kubler and his wife to look after their son, Logan. While she is cooking, she misses the report on the television stating that a cannibalistic Serial Killer known as the Bog Bay Tooth Fairy has broken free of the local asylum and is on the prowl. Shortly thereafter a mysterious stranger turns up at the house. He demands to know where the child is and attacks Sam. Plot twist: He's the real Sam the babysitter. She's the Tooth Fairy Killer and her real name is Charlotte Gibbons. Sam is trying to protect Logan from her.
- Ambiguously Evil: Montgomery Darke. If the ending is anything to go by, he must have done something to end up as curator of the Raven's End Mortuary.
- Ambiguous Time Period: The music implies that the stories take place during different decades, but Dr. Kubler is the same age in all of them. Furthermore, in the "60's" story, Jake talks about "the relevance of Mesopotamia in the 21st Century." He could be referring to the future but seems to mean the present day.
- Babysitter from Hell: Sam turns out to be arguably the ultimate example of this. She's not the actual babysitter. She's taken his place so that she can kill little Logan and add one of his teeth to her collection.
- Badass Boast: Charlotte comes out with one of these towards the end, after her true nature is revealed. "I decide how my story ends.". Although Darke does fire back almost immediately.
- Badly Battered Babysitter: Sam. Specifically, the original Sam. Charlotte, who took his place, is later revealed to be the Babysitter from Hell.
- Better than a Bare Bulb: The framing device of the movie consists of Montgomery Darke telling Sam stories and both parties discussing the various tropes found in them. The final story dips straight into Meta Fiction with the slasher film-esque segment being propped up in parallel with a slasher film in the story itself.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Both Jake and Sam/Charlotte. One preaches the importance of using protection during sex but does so in order to convince women he's a Nice Guy so that they'll sleep with him. They do but he doesn't use protection. "Sam" is a beautiful, eager-to-help young woman who seems kind and friendly, but is in fact a sadistic serial murderer of children.
- Black Comedy: The film oozes violence and sardonic wit at several points, namely with Darke's commentary over the stories. The second segment in particular treats the chilling Body Horror of a young man getting pregnant with a very acerbic tone.
- Body Horror: Jake gives birth to a monster baby... through his penis. Also after Carol Owens falls forwards, having vomited up poisoned porridge, she impales her head on a statue. Her husband then cuts her apart with an electric carving knife and piles the limbs in a trunk, which she later apparently climbs out of as a monstrous ghoul. Finally after Charlotte is torn apart by the ghosts of the babies she has murdered, Montgomery Darke reassembles her and when she awakens, she resembles the Bride of Frankenstein and screams as she looks at her reflection.
- Caretaking is Feminine: The final segment consists of Logan's babysitter Sam fighting off a murderous psychopathic home invader intent on killing Logan. The film exploits this trope to preserve the reveal that the seemingly kind blond angelic-looking girl we've been led to believe was Sam was really the invader, and the man she'd been fighting was actually Sam. Not long after it's revealed that the man is Logan's babysitter, a news reel reveals the monster that the fake Sam, Charlotte Gibbins, really is.
- Cassandra Truth: When Jake jokes that he only comes to orientations to get laid, Sandra quips “me, too”, startling him. Given the collection of children seen at her parents’ home, she may have been 100% sincere.
- Collector of the Strange: Montgomery Darke and, as we later learn, Sam as well.
- Cool Old Guy: Darke is a sinister example of this. He has a dry sense of humour, seems friendly to kids even though they're scared of him and is happy to tell Sam his stories.
- Contraception Deception: Jake takes the condom off as soon as he can get his partner to look away.
- Deadpan Snarker: Darke himself. Sam often gets into this as well, as both are Lemony Narrators.
- Death by Childbirth: Jake's fate. A bit more likely than usual when one is giving birth to a huge mutant baby through one's penis.
- Decoy Protagonist: "Sam". It turns out she's the Big Bad.
- Devoured by the Horde: The carcasses of all of the infants and children whom Charlotte has tortured and killed crawl out of the books containing their stories to tear her apart.
- Dismembering the Body: Wendell Owens reluctantly cuts his wife apart using an electric carving knife.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- The Socialite at the start of the film is a thief but as far as we know, she didn't do anything to deserve getting killed and eaten by an Eldritch Abomination.
- Arguably Jake. Throwing away a condom before having sex with a girl is undoubtedly a very shitty thing to do -and is in fact considered rape on some jurisdictions - but did he deserve to die as a result of giving birth to a demon baby that made his penis explode?
- Neither Dr. Kubler, his wife, their son, nor Sam the babysitter (the actual babysitter, not Charlotte calling herself "Sam") deserve what happens to them in the last story.
- Eats Babies: Charlotte cooks and eats the children she kills, taking a tooth from them as a trophy.
- Eldritch Location: The mortuary itself has some mysterious power. The keeper of it is incapable of leaving and it seems to have a sort of malevolent presence unto itself. All of Raven's End is strongly implied to have something very, very strange about it as well.
- Evil Laugh: Darke comes out with one of these as Charlotte is attacked by the spirits of the babies and children she has murdered. She lets out one before the ending credits.
- Extremely Short Timespan: The framing device of Darke telling Sam the stories, as well as each story itself, all mostly take place over the course of one night (segment 2 starts the afternoon before the party, and ends the morning after, while segment 3 takes place over a day or two at most).
- Faux Affably Evil: Charlotte/"Sam". She's beautiful, charismatic, charming and seems determined to find justice for the murder of the child she was babysitting on the night of his death. Until it turns out that she was the one who killed him. She just came to collect the tooth from his carcass as a trophy.
- Fold-Spindle Mutilation: In Segment 1, the socialite is clearly too big to be dragged through the bathroom cabinet door in one piece...so whatever is pulling her through breaks her back to get her to fit. Thankfully we don't see too much of her being folded in half as she's finally pulled in.
- Foreshadowing: Sam is uncharacteristically startled when Darke brings up the local asylum, and when Darke asks why she brushes it off with "everybody knows the asylum". This detail proves to be very relevant in the third act.
- The headline of the newspapers the young boy is delivering during the opening credits speak of the "Bog Bay Tooth Fairy" killer still being at large.
- Formerly Fat: Jake admits that he is, as part of his Freudian Excuse. Sandra is unmoved.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: During the final fight sequence between the intruder and the babysitter Sam, the girl bites off the man's ear and spits it onto a picture of the kid Logan and another person. Pause it at the right moment, and you'll see that the person in the picture with Logan is Sam. As in, the real Sam who's babysitting Logan, the same man who's fighting the girl.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Wendell Owens does this after killing his wife and seeing her seemingly rise from the dead.
- Groin Attack: Jake is on the receiving end of possibly the worst version of this ever put to film. He gives birth. Through his dick. You probably feel in pain thinking about it, don't you.
- I'm a Humanitarian: The Tooth Fairy Killer eats their victims.
- Jerkass: Jake and his beta male buddies who present themselves as chivalrous feminists but actually only care about scoring with girls via almost any means necessary.
- Karma Houdini: Charlotte. Although she suffers one heck of a Karmic Death and is brought back to life covered in scars marring her beauty, now a prisoner of the Raven's Hill Mortuary, she's still attractive, being covered in cracks notwithstanding and is now the curator of the Mortuary, making her the mistress of her prison with access to all of the knowledge within it. She's even found a new victim by the end of the film.
- That said, if Darke's demise is any indication, karma isn't done with her yet.
- Karmic Death: Giving birth to a baby, not only destroys Jake's penis; it kills him. Your mileage may of course vary on whether or not he deserved it. Played straight in the case of Charlotte, a Serial Killer who is devoured by the ghouls of her victims.
- Large Ham: Montgomery Darke. Hardly surprising given that he's played by Clancy Brown.
- Laser-Guided Karma: The main theme of the film; people in the stories get a dark fate they've earned for themselves. Darke and Sam actually discuss the validity of the trope at several points.
- Jake in particular suffers exactly what he almost certainly inflicted on one or more of his sixty-seven victims: pregnancy (and symptoms of an STD, but that's the least of his problems). And while it's not as certain that any of them suffered Death by Childbirth, it's always a risk, and he was glad to let them take it.
- Life Imitates Art: In universe. An eighties movie about a babysitter being stalked by a maniac is playing on the television while Sam looks after Logan and later gets into a fight with an intruder who is looking for him.
- Madness Mantra: When Wendell is found by the police with the dismembered remains of his wife, he's just repeating his marriage vows over and over again.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Had whatever illness that had rendered Carole comatose also turned her into some kind of vampire? Is that why she wouldn't die? Or did she actually die when she impaled her head and everything after that was Wendell hallucinating due to having gone mad with guilt?
- Mister Seahorse: Jake’s punishment, complete with childbirth via penis. What happens to Jake is probably the worst physical thing a man can imagine happening to him.
- Murder by Cremation: Dr. Kubler and his wife comes home to find their son cremated in the oven.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Wendell again. When his wife starts choking and grabs his arm, making him realise that she doesn't want to die. He makes her cough up the poison but then she impales her head on a statuette.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Montgomery Darke is it? Lampshaded by Sam. He tells her it's an old family name.
- No Ontological Inertia: The years catch up with Montgomery Darke when he leaves the mortuary and he explodes into dust.
- Nothing Is Scarier: We never actually see "Sam"'s dinner, just a silhouette with visible ribs. Based on Dr. and Mrs. Kubler's reactions, she's not exactly Hannibal Lecter when it comes to meal prep.
- Out of Character: The intruder of the Kubler home is an escapee from a mental asylum, and a cannibalistic psychopathic child murderer. And yet, during the whole fight with Sam, he never moves to kill her despite all his chances to do so, because he's not the psychopath in question. He's the real Sam, and the girl we've followed as Sam the whole time is actually Charlotte Gibbons, the psychopathic child murderer who escaped.
- Perpetual Frowner: Darke again.
- Psychotic Smirk: Charlotte, aka: Sam gives one of these, having proudly revealed that she was the Tooth Fairy Killer.
- Recurring Character: Dr. Kubler makes a cameo appearance in all the stories. His wallet is stolen by the Socialite in the first story, he is the doctor whom Jake visits the morning after sleeping with Sandra, he gives medical advice to Wendell in the third story, and finally he is the father of the young boy whom Sam is babysitting in the last story.
- Retired Monster: Montgomery Darke reveals he was once "very much" like Charlotte Gibbons and it eventually led him to the Mortuary. He seems fairly harmless in present day regardless.
- Samus Is a Girl: Sam is a man! He's the actual babysitter who was supposed to be looking after Logan but the Charlotte Gibbons, the Tooth Fairy Killer attacked him, having escaped from the local mental institution, leaving him with some kind of head trauma so that she could kill Logan.
- Serial Killer: Charlotte, a.k.a. Sam, is one of these. Of children, no less!
- Sequel Hook: At the end of the film, Montgomery Darke has exploded, having walked out into the sunlight, thereby leaving the resurrected Charlotte Gibbons as the new funeral director of Raven's End Mortuary. The boy who taunted Darke at the beginning has turned up and it seems as though she's now about to kill and eat him.
Word of God also says that the sequel will explore Darke's dark past. - Shout-Out: Charlotte Gibbons, the escaped psychopath from the local lunatic asylum is known as the Tooth Fairy.
- The noisy zoom-in shots in the second segment are very reminiscent of Sam Raimi.
- Montgomery Darke, with his balding head, corpse-like appearance, penchant for elegant suits, and embalming fluid for blood, bears more than a passing resemblance to another sinister (and much less polite) undead mortician.
- Darke's summation that he was once "a explorer in the further regions of experience" is taken from Pinhead's introductory scene from Hellraiser.
- Smug Smiler: Sam gives a wickedly proud smirk after revealing that she is really Charlotte Gibbons, the Tooth Fairy Killer.
- The Sociopath: Charlotte again. Superficially charming, charismatic, grandiose and a remorseless murderer of children.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Whilst her horror movie is playing, Sam cooks herself a delicious meal whilst playing a jaunty, sexy song on the radio. It turns out that the meat she's cutting and cooking is the boy she's "babysitting".
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: The real Sam was unwilling to kill Charlotte Gibbons, which she uses to gain an advantage over him and ultimately prevail.
- Walking Spoiler: "Sam", or rather, Charlotte Gibbons, the Tooth Fairy Killer.
- Wham Line: Dr. Kubler identifying the dead man as Sam, the babysitter in the final segment.
- Would Hurt a Child: Sensing a pattern here? Charlotte again. What more needs to be said?
- Your Head Asplode: The real Sam has a television thrown on his head by the fake Sam, resulting in his head being splattered.
