Dead & Buried. 1981.
After this was discussed last week...or the week before I gave this one a re-watch and still totally loved it. Set in the peaceful town where the locals really don't like visitors.
All of the actors are solid enough, but Jack Albertson steals the show as the eccentric, big band loving Mortician Dobbs. In one of his final performances, he delivers a character whose unsettling realism and reverence for the dead will make you completely forget his also classic turn as the kindly grandpa in Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. Rather than just play this character, he inhabits his psyche and becomes Dobbs the funeral director and coroner and it shows.
Everything from the low key bits of eerie score music to the often slow and dreamlike pacing of the plot, is dedicated to heightening the viewer sense of disconnection and dread, leading up to a well known sort of twist climax. The pacing can be a hit or a miss, right from the start it goes the way a decent horror should, good build up of how the locals are and then it goes a bit slow and then picks up again. Certainly a classic film.
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