Okay, I admit it: I’m not perfect. I’ve done some pretty lousy things in my life. But I have never done anything, wanted to do anything, or even thought of anything to make me deserve this movie. If Stalin were in Hell watching The Morgue, I’d think, “the poor bastard,” and shuffle sadly away.
In the first place, the setting isn’t even a morgue. It’s a mortuary and mausoleum. After closing, only two people remain on the premises: janitor Margo (Lisa Crilley, Annapolis) and night watchman George (Bill Cobbs, Night at the Museum). Margo, who naps in coffins, allows just anyone in and George vanishes for hours at a time. It’s a terrible thing that Cobbs’ career has this lousy bump in it. It may turn out to be a high point for Crilley.
So on this night of nights, Margo is interrupted by a family of three that comes in because they ran out of gas. (Mom is played by Heather Donahue, she of the enraged nostrils in The Blair Witch Project.) Then a few minutes later, a couple of banged-up jokers show up and bust through the French doors. And, oooh, the ghost of Horace, a former employee who committed suicide in the restroom by slitting his own throat — sing with me, “Bleedin’ in the boys’ room” — is wandering the halls seeking people to kill because, hell, why not?
The movie is so bad it took two directors to do the deed, Halder Gomes and Gerson Sanginitto. Remember their names. That way, if you ever forget the names of the characters in Dumb and Dumber, you can just call them Halder and Gerson. With a twist ending that’s about as twisty as the shortest distance between two points, this is the kind of flick that results when guys watch movies like this and think, “Hey, I can make a movie as good as that.” And then do. —Doug Bentin