The Undertaker and His Pals (1966)
(On Cable TV, December 2020) You can see anything on TCM Underground… from the best of cult cinema to the dregs of cinematic history. The Undertaker and His Pals certainly feels like the latter, being an ultra-low-budget attempt to tell a story about women being partially butchered for restaurant meat and the undertaker making money off the rest of the corpse. It’s meant to be a comedy, as evidenced by victims being selected by their last names and the resulting heavy-handed puns (e.g.: “Lamb is on the menu”) But such dark comedy is excruciatingly difficult to pull off even in the most skilled hands (Eating Raoul was terrific, but that’s about it for cannibalistic restaurant comedies) and writer-director T.L.P. Swicegood is far, faaar from being a skilled hand. The comedy is tasteless to the point of feeling alien, the horror material is garbage and the half-hearted investigation plot makes little sense. It doesn’t help that from a technical quality, the film is execrably put together, with inconsistent colours, sound, directing style and acting. It’s terrible in the worst ways – bad enough to avoid recommendation, without any of the qualities that would lead anyone to take a curious peek. Struggling to find something nice to say about the film, I draw a blank. The photo-of-the-sailor gag in the opening sequence is funny? Sally Frei looks cute? The entire thing is weird? I’m out. While I can imagine some so-bad-it’s-good movie reviewers having fun with The Undertaker and His Pals, I’m not going to give it any more attention or time.