The Movie:

Joe Spinell will always be remember in horror movie circles for his amazing performance in William Lustig's Maniac, arguably one of the greatest and certainly one of the nastiest slasher films ever made. Though he appeared in plenty of respectable films, from The Godfather to Cruising to Rocky and obviously worked with some talented name directors, he also made some questionable choices and appeared in oddball titles like Karate Kids USA and this title, The Undertaker. Directed by Franco Steffanino in 1988, the film was never finished as Spinell passed away before it could be completed. A bootleg VHS release made the rounds in grey market circles, but it never got an official home release because, well, it's not really done - this hasn't stopped Code Red from digging it up and giving it a DVD release, however, marking the movie's first official video release ever.

The storyline, such as it is, follows an undertaker (no surprise there) named Rosco (played by Spinell - again, no surprise there) who is annoyed at the fact that his business is taking a hit. See, since the government started trying to get people to stop smoking and since people have started taking an interest in healthy foods, they're not dying as quickly as he needs them to and so he decides to take matters into his own hands. He starts randomly murdering various townspeople and, to add insult to injury, has (off screen) sex with their dead bodies.

While Rosco is slicing and screwing his way across town, a kid named Nick (Patrick Askin) is complaining to his college professor (Rebecca Yaron) that her courses in necrophilia aren't quite clicking the way he wants them to and so he tells her he'd like to show her something that she just won't believe unless she sees it with her own eyes. She thinks he's a pervert and wouldn't you know it, he's Rosco's nephew so she might be right. At any rate, he eventually talks her into going to the funeral home with him one night and she tells her friend that she thinks he has 'cute buns' but the movie never really tells us what happens after that, though we know they're afraid of running into Nick's aunt. Complicating matters is the presence of a movie theater worker who realizes that the rash of killings Rosco has secretly been committing around town are based on those seen in the old Bela Lugosi movie, The Corpse Vanishes, and so he takes it upon himself to track down the killer since the local cops are proving to be pretty useless in this regard. Soon enough, the townsfolk start figuring out what's happening and who has been making it happen, so it's looking like Rosco's reign of terror is coming to an end - but yeah, the ending... well I won't spoil it here. Needless to say, you won't see it coming as it doesn't really make any damn sense, in fact, very little about this film makes any damn sense.

A genuine cult oddity if ever there was one, you have to cut The Undertaker some slack as it's very obviously unfinished. The movie cuts to different scenes for no reasons, camera shots are recycled ad nausea, and if you were to cut out the countless clips from The Corpse Vanishes and the countless clips of women in leotards doing aerobics you wouldn't really have much of a film left. And yet, as awful as this movie is (and it is a terrible, terrible film), you can't help but try to keep up with it. Sure, it's unfinished, so we cut it some slack for that but it is edited with such haphazard lunacy that it almost becomes an exercise in surrealism. Spinell doesn't get as much screen time as some might like but he makes the most of what he does get, sleazing it up and looking as greasy as greasy can be. Bonus points for throwing in some gratuitous nude scenes, those who like big haired eighties ladies will no doubt appreciate this aspect of the movie. It all builds to such an amazingly ridiculous finale that, like whatever it was that Nick was trying to show his teacher at the funeral home, you just need to see it with your own eyes or you won't believe it.

NOTE: THIS REVIEW IS BASED OFF OF A TEST DISC THAT MAY OR MAY NOT REPRESENT FINISHED RETAIL PRODUCT.
Video:

Considering the history of the movie and that it was essentially a lost film until Code Red got it, The Undertaker looks decent enough. Source from a tape source, the fullframe image is as soft as you'd expect but it sure beats the pants off of the bootlegs that were making the rounds before this release was available. Those were basically unwatchable, so dark that you couldn't make out what was going on - and while this disc won't take home any awards for its video presentation, it presents the film in much better shape so that, for the first time, it's quite watchable - just know that since it is from an old tape source that sometimes the colors look goofy and that there are minor tape rolls here and there.