crabapple
08-04-2006, 11:01 PM
There's an evil "Thing" out there! Everyone in town has a theory but no one KNOWS what it is! It chases people around, kills a few just to prove that it's serious, and then it gets blown up in the end! And that's THE HEARSE--if you analyze it, it doesn't deliver big on story. But does it scare? You betcha.
This was one of several movies I saw as a kid in the early 80's, and this particular one I came back to see a second time, dragging a friend along to share the popcorn fun. "The Hearse" doesn't really make much sense, and there's very little point to it (what exactly DOES happen in the end? how do those characters wrap up? does it matter?), but somehow it does a great job of generating heavy atmosphere and scares. Seeing this in a theatre was amazing--imagine yourself going to see a PG-rated
film in the early 80's, and watching the audience around you literally jumping out of their seats, over and over again.
For all of the pointlessness, the film established a very unnerving vibe, and made the audience worried about the vague "evil forces" that were lurking out there in the darkness. And when the creepy hearse driver finally showed up and started doing his menacing thing, the audience was primed up and ready to scream. And scream they did.
There is also the strong feeling that the sleepy, secluded town the story takes place in is REALLY far away from everywhere else in the world, and that these strange supernatural-ish events could really happen here without too many people even noticing.
Things have changed, and maybe this movie wouldn't work so
well if you screened it today (especially on home video--this was really a theatre experience), but it worked fine then. Nice musical
score, too. Trish Van Devere and the rest of the cast are uniformly
excellent. An inexpensive, non-gory horror movie that does its job. It was worth the $2.50 and popcorn money.
This was one of several movies I saw as a kid in the early 80's, and this particular one I came back to see a second time, dragging a friend along to share the popcorn fun. "The Hearse" doesn't really make much sense, and there's very little point to it (what exactly DOES happen in the end? how do those characters wrap up? does it matter?), but somehow it does a great job of generating heavy atmosphere and scares. Seeing this in a theatre was amazing--imagine yourself going to see a PG-rated
film in the early 80's, and watching the audience around you literally jumping out of their seats, over and over again.
For all of the pointlessness, the film established a very unnerving vibe, and made the audience worried about the vague "evil forces" that were lurking out there in the darkness. And when the creepy hearse driver finally showed up and started doing his menacing thing, the audience was primed up and ready to scream. And scream they did.
There is also the strong feeling that the sleepy, secluded town the story takes place in is REALLY far away from everywhere else in the world, and that these strange supernatural-ish events could really happen here without too many people even noticing.
Things have changed, and maybe this movie wouldn't work so
well if you screened it today (especially on home video--this was really a theatre experience), but it worked fine then. Nice musical
score, too. Trish Van Devere and the rest of the cast are uniformly
excellent. An inexpensive, non-gory horror movie that does its job. It was worth the $2.50 and popcorn money.