Overview: A family moves to a small town in California where they plan on starting a new life while running a long-abandoned funeral home.

The locals fear the place, which is suspected to be on haunted ground.

'Mortuary: Special Edition' [Blu-ray] is out May 14th, 2019 via MVD Visual.

Blu-ray Verdict: [** SPOILERS AHEAD **] Leslie Doyle, (Denise Crosby) moves her family, Jaime (Stephanie Patton) and Jonathan (Dan Byrd) to a new mortuary and are given a tour by Eliot, (Greg Travis) who owns the establishment.

After settling in, Jonathan doesn't want anything to do with the mortuary business and goes to work in a nearby diner, where he overhears a local legend about the previous owner of the mortuary from Liz, (Alexandra Adi) and her boyfriend Grady, (Rocky Marquette).

The three bond and form a friendship, and love hanging out in the mortuary. While over one day, the dead rise from the basement mortuary and the outside graveyard. Jonathan and his friends have to survive the onslaught of the living dead and get out of the house alive.

The Good News: I thought this was a great and original way of getting to a zombie movie. Rather than the usual radiation leak or voodoo curse, we get an entirely new motive to get them around, and it was pretty original.

I'll admit to never thinking of it, and with the shortage of originality today in the genre, this was sorely needed. Even the method to get rid of the zombies was pretty clever, and the reasoning behind it sounded valid for once.

That could actually happen in real life, and it gave a small touch of realism to it that was also needed in the film. It didn't rely on the over-used bullet-to-the-head that is so common for zombie movies.

The zombies themselves, when they are on-screen, are pretty gruesome looking, and several have the customary rotting and decayed look to them. I was even surprised to find a bit of humor in here as well. I laughed at it a couple times, so it earns points for that as well.

The Bad News: The film is really slow, and it takes forever for something to happen. The first twenty minutes features no real action at all, and even the zombies don't appear until well into the movie.

The beginning is just maddeningly slow, and those wanting an all-out zombie film are gonna be really disappointed with this one as it's hardly got any of the tradition zombie film parts. The Final Verdict: Over-coming a slow beginning is key to enjoying this one. Let it play out, it gets far better. There is a bit more to this some may think, so give it a shot.

Zombie fans should be more patient than others, though, as it's pretty long into the film before they come out into the film. Regardless, proceed with caution. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.85:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs and comes with the Special Features of:

Audio Commentary from Director Tobe Hooper
Inside the Graveyard Featurette
Behind the Scenes Featurette with Director Tobe Hooper
Original Theatrical Trailer