After her nutty Aunt Catherine takes a fatal swig of strychnine, Helen (Lorin Jean Vail, 1986’s The Patriot) learns she’s the sole survivor of the family — and, therefore, sole beneficiary of an estate worth $8 million.
With husband Bob (Scott Thompson Baker, 1987’s Open House), Helen moves to Spain to occupy her aunt’s property in the hoity-toity neighborhood Eight Mannors [sic]. The only thing about the home stranger than the kitchen’s trapdoor is the collection of oddballs among the house staff and neighbors, from a hot maid and a blind man (The Panther Squad’s Jack Taylor) to a priest and a guy whose wardrobe is Nazi garb.
As the requisite strange occurrences begin — e.g., a piano playing on its own, carbon monoxide poisoning, suffocation by shower curtain — Helen and her many fashionable ’80s sweaters believe these hangers-on may be after her inheritance and, by extension, her life. The group murder of a violinist hired for a private performance lets viewers know early that despite Bob’s you’re-just-paranoid protestations, Helen’s suspicions couldn’t be more spot-on.
But the movie sure could be. Never as fun as it inches toward, Rest in Pieces is only as clever as its punny title, which is to say the film from José Ramón Larraz (hiding behind the Joseph Braunstein pseudonym he used for Black Candles and Edge of the Axe) is an undistinguished shocker. His horror films of this era play like comfort food to former lurkers of video-store aisles, yet not every Larraz sticks to the ribs.
Sure enough, this one passes right through, with the big takeaway being its casting coup of honest-to-God Academy Award winner Dorothy Malone as Aunt Catherine — her final role if not for the résumé-saver Basic Instinct. Heroine Vail, however, is in no danger of getting near an Oscar, for several reasons — stopping acting in 1988 being the least of them. —Rod Lott
