Runtime: 80 minutes
Directed by: Sharron Miller
Starring: John Ericson, Ivor Francis, Burr DeBenning, Charles Aidman, Bernard Fox, Richard Gates
From: Myriad Cinema International
The saddest melody is indeed the sound of goodbye.
In the past I have heard of this oddity, a regional horror movie from Oklahoma; please never confuse this w/ Uwe Boll's astoundingly bad movie that almost has the exact same title. After all, not too many horror movies are from The Sooner State; I've never lived there yet it's been driven through plenty of times in my life. That made me interested enough to give this a shot... it was put on Blu by Vinegar Syndrome so I purchased it directly from them during their last Memorial Day sale.
I knew that it was a horror anthology; they are known best to me from all the British ones that the likes of Amicus put out back in the day. Turns out, the filmmakers were obviously inspired by them also as this follows that model slavishly. The wraparound story is that a philandering husband is accidentally dropped off on the wrong street by a taxi... he is a salesman so a few times a year, trysts are able to occur with this lady. He meets up with a mortician, who is as creepy and full of gallows humor as you'd expect. His mortuary is in an abandoned hotel, but... that could be explained away. He tells a quartet of stories concerning the deceased that he has in caskets at the moment.
The tales are... a teacher who ironically hates kids, a creepy guy who films all his deaths with a movie camera (the late 70's version of found footage), two great detectives feuding with each other and a smug uncaring jerk who gets his just desserts. Admittedly, not all of the acting is the best (one performance is best described as “meme-worthy”) although many of the main performances are from experienced actors who you might recognize as “that guy.” Perhaps all the segments could have used more polish... you know, another draft of the script so it could be stronger or end properly. The detective bit wasn't really horror at all yet was at least amusing due to the two leads and their war of wit. None of the stories are bad and like in all genre anthologies I've seen, there is a variety among all the short tales.
In its favor was that it was competently directed by Sharron Miller; this was her only feature film as she otherwise only did television work. It looks nice, has sets were are acceptable and a good musical score which had stinging violin notes (among other things) and also some jazz, including a ditty concerning “the saddest melody is the sound of goodbye”... which is true. As long as your expectations are in check, you may be charmed if you like the old subgenre of horror rather than the ones we get in the 21st century... none of which I liked overall.
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