The Undertaker (1988 film)
5.4 /10 1 Votes
Director Franco Steffanino Duration Country United States | 5.2/10 IMDb Genre Horror Language English | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Writer William James Kennedy Release date November 1988 Similar movies Mortuary (1983) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The undertaker trailer joe spinell 1988
The Undertaker (also released as Death Merchant) is a 1988 slasher film starring Joe Spinell and directed by Franco Steffanino. The film was completed in November 1988, but was never released for the public and existed only in an incomplete form. The Undertaker was later reedited for a DVD release by Code Red in 2010. The film is considered a cult classic, due in part to both Joe Spinell's involvement and its troubled production. This was Joe Spinell's last film before his premature death in 1989.
Contents
Plot
The mortician Uncle Roscoe (Joe Spinell) attends community college by day and murders women for his personal use. His nephew Nicky, his professor Pam (Rebeca Yaron) and her roommate Mandy (Susan Bachli) begin to suspect Roscoe, unaware that the undertaker has now taken a special interest in them.
Cast
Production
The film was made on location in New York, New York and was produced by Double Helix Films. Filming for The Undertaker was completed in November 1988.
Release
The film was never released to theatres or to video, and the only known copy belonged to Joe Spinell, who died not long afterward. The film circulated as a bootleg for years, before Code Red released an edited version of the film on DVD in October 2010. The release was padded with other public domain films to increase running time, was titled Death Merchant in the opening titles, and scene were both cut and rearranged from the bootleg version.
In 2016 Vinegar Syndrome released the Undertaker in a blu-ray/DVD combo pack limited to 3000 copies. Unlike the Code Red release the Vinegar Syndrome version doesn't include the public domain films edited in to pad the running time. The blu-ray is a brand new 2k scan with a few video sourced inserts.
References
The Undertaker (1988 film) WikipediaThe Undertaker (1988 film) IMDb The Undertaker (1988 film) themoviedb.org