Alien Zone (1978)

House of the Dead

Cast:

John Ericson is Talmudge
Ivor Francis is The Mortician
Judith Novgrod is Miss Sibiler
Burr DeBenning is Growski
Charles Aidman is Detective Malcolm Toliver

What the box says:

A man in town for a convention gets lost while trying to return to his hotel room, after seeing a woman, and ends up being taken in by a mortician to wait out a storm. To pass the time, the mortician shows the man four recently deceased people and begins to tell him how each person ended up as an occupant of one of his coffins.

Plot:

A taxi drops a Talmidge off on the wrong street. Talmidge, this plumbing salesman, is having a hard time finding any place that would let him in. Well, a mortician does and gives him a tour of the place and with a story of several of his newest clients.

The first story is about a spinster teacher, Miss Sibiler. Apparently, she doesn't like kids. When at home one night while taking a shower, "someone" is running around her house.

Shouldn't have watched Psycho before...
She checks the doors and finds the locks closed. Getting more and more nervous, the door opens and masked kids surround her.

Trick of Treat better be good or we'll sick the Rob Zombie's Michael Meyers' Halloween on you...

Proper dental care is an important task for every young maniac...

Back to the mortician who explains how disfigured she was left, etc... Now to another tale...

Mr. Growski is a camera fan. He sets cameras up to make a "movie" for some woman he invited to his apartment. He does some magic tricks and chokes her. He readies for another victim and another one. The mortician explains how Growski's punishment endures, etc...

On to the next tale, the police investigate a scene of a hanged man. Detective Malcolm Tolliver walks on the scene and explains the entire case. Scotland Yard detective McDowell walks on the case and wants to study Tolliver's skill.

I just flew in from the playing dodo polo...
Later, Tolliver gets a note warnig him of a killer sooning to strike. Tolliver and McDowell keep up investigating. However, Tolliver is getting more and more agitated by McDowell.

Finally, Tolliver figures the note. He explains that he realized that McDowell is the killer. He shoots Tolliver who revealed he figured it out 2 days earlier. Removing the bulletproof vest, Tolliver thinks everything is dispatched. He opens McDowell's briefcase and realizes it's a bomb that blows him up.

The mortician lectures the 4th tale about business. This business guy thinks everyone hassles him, and he thinks lowly of everyone. Somehow, the building gets locked up. The business guy falls and finds himself trapped in an elevator shaft. Every turn is a trap. He's almost crushed by a trash compactor. However, finding a bottle and starting to drink, the door opens.

The mortician lectures his guess how the business guy eventually dies. Plumber salesman runs off terrified by the mortician who obviously is more than just a creepy guy. Running down an alleyway the husband of the Talmidge's girlfriend is obviously mad and shoots him. An ambulance takes him away.

What I say:

It is false advertising when the movie title is Alien Zone. I don't remember any aliens in this movie. It is trying to do more of the 1970s Tales from the Crypt and the Vault of Horror movies. Horror anthology movies aren't normally noticed as quality movies. Most of them are nothing more than putting a few stories together with some narrator like the mortician and a twist ending.

One of the strange things about having anthologies like this, you have to know automatically that the narrator must be more than just a simple character. The CryptKeeper from the Tales from the Crypt series always had the grim puns for the ironically punished victims.

The teacher is in some sort of version of Trilogy of Terror. She is almost being chased into a little evil doll story. However, the masked kids were after her for no reason why. The plot had about as much sense as saying lightning struck her because she's a bad person.

Growski is more of some sort of a Peeping Tom except the story does absolutley nothing. He hides a camera to make some home movies of his murders between the alternates of the reporters watching the police drag him to jail where his ironic punishment endures that brings him to the mortician.

The detective story is almost a forensic criminologist solving the case just by walking on the scene almost faster than Sherlock Holmes could. The Scotland Yard detective has to be recognized, Bernard Shaw. He's probably better known as Dr. Bombay from Bewitched tv-series.

2, 3 random episodes of Outer Limits or Twillight Zone are at least better than the stories of Alien Zone. The tales for the anthology don't even have the characteristic snarky comments we've been spoiled on from years of TV criminal procedure series.

Quotable Dialogue
"The rain's a deceiver...."
"So you lost your hotel?"
"What are you interested in?"
Morals of the Story
Morticians are genetically predisposposed to be tourist guides.
Police love to smell white glue.
Pseudo-officle cubicles existed in the 1970s.