The Undertaker and His Pals (1966) User Reviews

Bizarre, but good for a giggle

[kdix · 6/10 · 6 July 2000]

"The Undertaker and His Pals" is bizarre, but good for a giggle. It's a dark comedy -- I'm almost ashamed of myself for liking it, but do indeed like it despite myself because it's so off the wall. Yes, folks, cannibalism can be funny. "Mort" the Mortician goes to great lengths to preserve his business. The puns made me snicker despite myself.

My best friend and I stumbled across this while still in high school. It was at Blockbuster in the comedy section, and the title was so striking we felt obligated to rent it. After we got over the initial shock, we laughed out loud and ignored the gratuitous violence.

Good Fun

[Scoats · 6/10 · 7 October 2004]

What a weird little treat this one is. The cinematography is interesting at times. It starts off on a visually interesting note and held my interest the whole time. The acting is fine. There are some jokes and the thing moves along very fast, too fast to get bored.

Sure it's not Hitchcock, but for low-budget fun, this one makes the grade. The special effects are sometimes a little weak, but all in all they made a very consistent effort in this picture. Give me this over Con Air any day.

I did not at all regret seeing this, and that is pretty high praise as far as I'm concerned. It's a fun relic from 1967, if you like movies and have a sense of humor and the absurd, you'll probably see this as time well spent.

Herschell Gordon-Lewis, is that you?

[Coventry · 5/10 · 22 October 2007]

"Did you ever think when a hearse drives by, that some day you are going to die?" This is the first sentence in the lyrics of the theme song for this film. Subtle, isn't it? Hell no, it's not, and subtlety is probably the very last thing you should expect to see in this grotesquely absurd and downright demented gore-comedy. He isn't mentioned anywhere in the credits, but the crazed sense of humor, the excessive display of (poor & cheesy) gore, the music and the overall amateurish low-budget production values make this feel like a genuine Herschell Gordon-Lewis movie! Undoubtedly he, The Godfather of Gore, influenced many young filmmakers at that time and "The Undertaker and his Pals" is a fine example to prove this statement. It's a tasteless and simultaneously delicious story about the pact between the undertaker and two restaurant owners residing in the same town. They ride out together at night to barbarically slaughter young girls, and while the undertaker makes big money arranging the funeral service, the victims (or at least parts of them) end up on the special menus board of his pals the restaurant owners. The film is as simplistic as it is ingenious, and it's the ideal excuse for an hour of brainless and blood-soaked entertainment. The character of the greedy undertaker is the funniest of them all and, as usual, the investigating cop is too ignorant to figure out the situation. The gags themselves aren't hilarious, but the poor execution is. If H.G. Lewis didn't make this film himself, I'm sure he will have enjoyed watching it. And so did I.

Intriguing, Interesting, Imaginative....and Just Plain BAD!

[BaronBl00d · 28 March 2001]

Wow! Miracles like this film never cease to amaze me that they were ever produced. A trio of motorcyclist killers break into various apartments of beautiful, scantily clad females for the express purpose of butchering them with their knives, amputating legs, beating them to death with chains, and so forth. The film has its tongue firmly planted in cheek and never for one moment takes itself the least bit seriously. This film is more of a comedy(or what is suppose to pass for one) than a horror picture, however, due to the grisly deaths and gory glory splattered about the screen definitely has horror elements in the Herschell Gordon Lewis tradition. The film is an oddity and I can say I have never seen anything quite like it. Despite all the bad acting, complete lack of plot, incredibly bad puns and gags, the violence for the sake of violence attitude, and the general cheesiness of the film, the picture is somewhat entertaining. I admit this with guilt as the entire premise of the film is, using understatement, vulgar. Some of the jokes work while most fail. The use of people's last names for the entrees served in the diner were inventive such as leg of lamb and breast of chicken. The changing picture of the boyfriend sailor in the introductory segment made me laugh as did the pacing of the silent movie music when the undertaker chases Thursday(yes a character named after a day who replaces her missing twin sister Friday). Don't look for any kind of sense, however, for it will be a search in vain. The best part of this whole film for me is the movie's tagline, which has to be one of the best ever!

"Everything was going so well, too!"

[classicsoncall · 2/10 · 14 April 2020]

With a title like "The Undertaker and His Pals", you would pretty much expect it to be a campy horror flick, but this thing is beyond stupid. Riddled with inane sight gags, puns and cliches, the plot consists of a mortician and two buddies who own the Greasy Spoon Cafe going out at night, (and in broad daylight too!), to secure human fodder for the diner's menu board. What's left after the appropriate body parts are confiscated for dinner go to the undertaker for his 'half' of the spoils. About the only thing worthwhile in the picture are those poignant reminders of a time gone by when phone booths dotted the landscape and gasoline was 32.9 a gallon. Oh yeah, and don't let me forget trading stamps, a detailed selling point of the Shady Rest Funeral Home, which also offered seasonal rates, but when did dying become a seasonal matter? In an effort to drum up business from attorney Harry Glass, who just 'lost' his latest secretary, undertaker Ray Dannis insists - "Whether you want to admit it or not, you can't do without me". I've got news for you folks, you absolutely can.

Watchable but terrible

[preppy-3 · 1/10 · 12 June 2021]

REALLY stupid horror/comedy. A gang of bikers break into apartments of beautiful young women. They kill them, dismember them and sell them to a local restaurant. Also a local funeral parlor buries the remains...for a price. The plot makes little sense, the acting is bad, the music even worse and it has dime store gore effects. Still it's only 63 minutes and I kept watching (in disbelief). Also the "comedy" in this is terrible. Still it's kind of fun to watch and I was never bored.

The Undertaker and His Pals (1966) *

[JoeKarlosi · 2/10 · 16 August 2010]

What a load of crap. Three friends who own a restaurant kill women to serve on their menu. This unofficial Herschell Gordon Lewis inspiration is very tongue-in-cheek and supposedly funny, but very little is humorous. It's also badly acted and executed, and is not even enjoyable for the "offbeat exploitation fun" category. Badly acted and plays very much like a "Sweeney Todd" send-up, and features an aged Robert Lowery in a cameo as one of the restaurant patrons. The most interesting thing for me personally was that I've now confirmed that this garbage flick was indeed one that I saw at the drive-in (at least parts of it) which I remembered from being a child peeking from the backseat of my parents' car in the '60s. For decades I've had images in my mind and wondered where they came from. Now at least that mystery is solved. * out of ****

Badly written, badly acted, and badly directed.

[john in missouri · 1/10 · 17 December 2006]

This film does at least have pretensions of having a plot. That's about the best that can be said about it.

Badly written, badly acted, badly directed, and even the video quality (at least on the example I viewed) was blurry and grainy. It looks like it was shot with a home video camera. Hell, it probably was.

I'm looking for bright spots here, and I'm struggling to think of any. I guess one or two of the girl actresses weren't that awful. I guess if you like looking at either the insides of a cow or pig or a clip from a stolen surgical film, you've got that for about 5 seconds. If your sense of humor hasn't progressed beyond thinking that sawing the legs off of a girl named Sally Lamb and serving them up to customers in a diner as "leg of lamb" is totally hilarious, I guess you've got that.

Otherwise, you do have what is pretty much invariably true: those who adopt brutality as a way of life almost always find that sooner or later, it takes them to a bad end.

Unfortunately, this movie isn't even a good kind of bad... it's just crap.

Since IMDb doesn't allow you to specify 0 for a vote, I reluctantly have to give this film a 1.

Terrible but the folks didn't even attempt to make anything but...

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 1 May 2015]

Some movies are terrible in that they're painfully bad and yet the filmmakers tried to make a good film. A few films, like this one, are terrible but the folks who made it KNEW it would be and seemed to want to make a bad film....and I can appreciate that. Because of this, it's hard to give a numerical rating. Yes, it's inept but also a bit fun and perhaps worth watching.

The film is about a group of three weirdos that go out and commit all sorts of violent murders. They are bloody and nasty indeed. Why they do it is bizarre...in order to drum up business for their funeral business! Huh?! But it's all done so tongue-in-cheek that no matter how bad it is, you cannot help but laugh. Additionally, the film is shameless is including LOTS of cheesecake--women who are not naked but who are very curvy and show a lot of skin. But when the film ends, each of the dead cast members come out and show that they really aren't dead and the film has a gentle goofiness that make it worth watching--but only if you are a schlock film aficionado. For them, this is well worth seeing. All others proceed at your own risk.

Goofy, gory, gshort

[Bezenby · 7/10 · 15 December 2014]

Nicely daft horror comedy with a nice dose of gore, straight from the middle of the sixties! Three motorcyclists seemingly select a victim at random, go to her house and stab her with knives before removing her legs. The victim's parents are then fleeced for cash by the local undertaker, but what connection does he have to the killings? And who are the two sinister guys at the local diner who have taken an interest in PI Harry Glass's assistant? It's up to Harry to get to the bottom of things, although in the end he doesn't do too much.

Full of gore (Hatchets through heads, a Fulci style chain whipping way before Don't Torture a Duckling, an acid bath)and bad humour (the 'meals' served at the diner, the Benny Hill style slapstick), plus buxom sixties babes, the Undertaker and His Pals is a prime slice of cheese served up with sly wink and is a treat for bad movie fans. The end credits say it all man.

One of the lamest of them all

[burkhart-3 · 1/10 · 4 January 2003]

This movie is just plain awful. They may be trying for laughs, but there's nothing funny about this movie. It combines the very worst of 60s teen movies with graphic murder sequences that are amateurish at best. Then they top it off by trying to be funny. There's a silent montage near the end where the girl is racing up the stairs in fast motion and the undertaker is pursuing her in slow motion and every time we see a wide shot he's getting closer to her. It's like a really bad homage to Pepe LePew. And yes, this whole movie is what stinks. Stay away from this movie unless you enjoy wasting an hour of your life.

Fun, funny, violent and gory - in a nice way!

[christopher-underwood · 8/10 · 29 July 2010]

I seem to remember watching this years ago on some wretched video copy and barely managing through the modest 63 minute running time. This time, however, and I'm thinking, how could I have possibly misjudged this little beauty. Okay, it is a little uneven, some of the film stock seems not to match and we go from day to night and back within some short sequences but it's heart is so very much in the right place. Oh yes, and another thing I seemed not to fully appreciate way back when, this is a comedy. Fairly black humour and pretty gory but from start to finish this is most amusing. All actors perform well, especially Ray Dannis as the camp undertaker and the film is generally well shot and a good pace is maintained. Lots of little amusing asides and full on jokes and an especially effective routine up and down the stairs towards the end. Fun, funny, violent and gory - in a nice way!

Funniest slasher flick ever

[dunsuls · 7/10 · 19 June 2002]

You gotta love this flick about funeral homes and greasy spoon dinners.I'm sure there's a message here but who cares? Canabalism was never so funny.Maybe I'm sick,but I loved it.What's not to like when a fresh killed victims body part is offered as a daily special at the dinner as the rest is displayed at the funeral home.Sick,yes,but done with flair.

Two stars simply for the audacity.

[mark.waltz · 2/10 · 3 October 2019]

It's obvious from the very beginning of this horror-comedy that it's just plain bad because when a blonde bombshell opens the door to someone knocking, she doesn't even scream when a helmutted figure tries to get in. Then when she sees two men with huge knives coming through her window, she doesn't even scream then! the next thing you know, her bloody legs are being taken out of the window, and that's within the first two minutes!

"She looks lovely lying there", The undertaker says, forgetting to add "with or without legs". Ironically, her last name was Lamb, as we learn from the identification of the hideous non-actress playing her grieving mother. So it's no surprise when she ends up on a menu as, well, you guessed it, leg of lamb.

This "Sweeney Todd" rip-off is one of those wretched slasher films that has to be seen to be believed, and the genuinely wretched acting makes it all the more watchable. Looking like rejects from "A Clockwork Orange", the killers seem to hypnotize all of their victims into not screaming. One corpse is definitely a wax dummy, and there's no sound effects to suggest mutilation. Tge only name I recognized was B actor James Westmoreland. Something tells me that the others were simply pulled out of some film student's other college classes. I also feel certain to say that they cast real undertakers.

What's So Wrong With It?

[RayCharlie · 15 October 2003]

There are so many posts about how horrible of a film this is, but honestly I'd rather watch this cheese-fest than any horror movie coming out today. Yeah, the jokes in this film are stupid. Even the violence is stupid. It's cheap! And that's what I liked about it. Look at the tag line! B Movies from the 1960's should not be taken too seriously and anyone who comments on how terrible this film is obviously did. If you watch this movie for scares, you're not going to get them. If you watch this movie as a fan of 1960's exploitation/horror, you'll probably enjoy it. Just pop it in with a smile on your face and you'll enjoy this so-called "hour of wasted time and life." LOL. Come on people, lighten up!

Strange undertaking

[farnham1930 · 3/10 · 6 April 2013]

The undertaker Ray Dannis saves what little entertainment there is to be had in this wildly uneven (I use the word loosely) "black comedy." His quirky character was a welcome respite from the dull or exploitation-style scenes he alternated with.

There was much padding of scenes of motorcycles racing back and forth in murky, poorly-lit or filmed scenes...I won't mention their relevance.

This could have been a lot better. The cast were plain vanilla and worse, the script and direction were generally weak. I'm not complaining about bad acting, of which there was enough, since that can add humor. A few scenes were amusing, but too many were just dumb and/or plodding. Substance-wise, this could have been condensed into a half-hour episode of an anthology like the old "Tales from the Darkside," since there was a lot of effort here to pad the running time.

I Gave It A "4" For Effort

[movielover123 · 4/10 · 4 December 2001]

While I really admire the noble effort of this very primitive 1966 dark comedy, unfortunately it falls flat on it's face. Sort of a cross between the films of Russ Meyers with busty women being murdered in their bras and, albeit loosely, the wackiness of John Waters' efforts. What it comes down to though, is that the funny parts aren't funny and the horror is pure cheese. However, being a reluctant fan of slightly bad cinema, I don't regret having seen it.

Very much askew

[KDWms · 3/10 · 26 March 2003]

A few of us watch the entirety of such movies because we can't believe what we're seeing. It's like - what's gonna happen next that's even more extreme than the earlier events of the film? I'll say one thing: there's no unevenness to this flick. It's consistently gross from beginning to end. Dismemberment right off the bat, by the funeral home operator and his two accomplices who run a dive. And that's basically the plot for slightly more than an hour of killings. You see, it's a way for the undertaker to assure bodies (or parts of them) for his business. And the pieces that don't make it to the mortuary, reduce costs at the diner by becoming the menu. It helps that one of the restauranteurs is a med-school wannabe. One-by-one, however, the three are done-in, allowing for a merciful conclusion to this epic. To find anything positive about this croaker, it's true - you gotta be somewhat sick and feel guilty and/or ashamed for so doing. It tries to combine comedy with the horror. But you better be one of those people who finds humor in everything if you're gonna attempt this.

Leg of Lamb

[morrison-dylan-fan · 5/10 · 21 October 2015]

Talking to a family about Horror movies that I've recently viewed,I was happily caught by surprise,when he passed me a Grindhouse double bill.Checking the running times,I found out that one of the titles was only 63 minutes long,which led to me deciding that it would be the perfect time to meet the undertaker.

The plot:

Breaking into her apartment,a biker gang kill Sally Lamb.At the funeral the undertaker reveals to the Lamb family that he had to give Sally plastic legs,due to the gang having chopped her legs off.As the funeral is taking place, detective Harry Glass visits a local café,where the special of the day is "Leg of Lamb."Finding the meat to taste odd,Glass starts to investigate the café,which opened shortly after the funeral parlour started to have a sudden rush in booming business.

View on the film:

Cut down from its original running time,writer/director T.L.P. Swicegood cooks up a bonkers mix of grisly splatter and Silent-Movie style skits.Made on a very low budget, Swicegood gives the screenplay a deep[ Black Comedy cut,as modern day Sweeney Todd's slaughter any dame that catches their sight.Whilst he stacks the bodies high, Swicegood gives the splashes of blood a washed-up,dry appearance.which gives the movie a rather strange Kitsch atmosphere,which is joined by very funny, wooden performances,as Glass meets the undertakers pals.

Worth watching!

[hemisphere65-1 · 5/10 · 20 June 2021]

Awful, but fun to tear apart!

Hardly any real continuity or plot, as everything just happens because it is time to shoot the next scene.

Fantastically bad!

Great shock film from the 60's

[helpless_dancer · 7/10 · 2 February 2000]

This was a big favorite of mine back when it came out. I loved the corny gaglines like "leg of lamb" for the murdered woman named Lamb, whose body parts were served up in the Greasy Spoon Cafe. Crafted mostly for shock appeal, it came off, to me anyway, as a very funny comedy. Wish I could see it again.

Worth watching but don't take it seriously

[duckman_079 · 5/10 · 19 August 2020]

People are too serious when reviewing this movie. It's dumb, silly, a little funny, and entertaining. There's no deep meaning, nor is it a tragedy that the creators didn't take movie making more serious. It's not that funny, but it looks like they had fun making the movie. I think it's worth seeing at least once, especially at the end of the day and you just want something light to see before bed.

"good night,.....miss poultry"

[tommywilley47 · 9/10 · 13 January 2011]

This movie is awesome. i love old school cinema. i love the absolute cheesiness of this film and how it is proud to flaunt it with no shame at all. My only problem with this movie is i wish it was a little longer. if it were an hour and a half instead of just over an hour they could have added some more gore or some extended funeral home scenes which were really funny in a really mean way. i also found it amusing how two of the girls who were killed and cooked up at the diner happened to have the last names "lamb" and "poultry". I know a lot of you are going to rip on this movie and its too bad cause i find it to be a really unique film for its time or any other time for that matter.give it a shot. if you like it you do and if you don't then you don't.

Here's what a budget of $1.37 can get you

[Zbigniew_Krycsiwiki · 6/10 · 15 April 2003]

The film begins with several minutes of sepia-tinted motorcycle riders going through the rain-soaked city streets late one night. These scenes are probably stock footage, but are still the best looking scenes in this thing. Enter a young and cute, barefoot girl in her apartment, who exists just long enough for the bikers to kill her, and then cut the legs off a mannequin being passed off as the same girl. Didn't the filmmakers notice that the mannequin had shoes on, but the girl was barefoot? From here on, the film switches to colour, except for nighttime scenes of the bikers riding from place to place. A random song begins playing, for no apparent reason. "Did you ever think when the hearse drove by, that someday you are going to die?" Chickie was killed so that Mort, the mortician (I'm not making that up) can paint her up like a clown and charge a fortune for her funeral, and he presents the bill to the girl's family at the funeral, to "take their mind of their bereavement".

Random office-worker, who seems to do little, other than sit in his office reading paperwork all day and night, and his girl go to eat at a diner, before the girl becomes the next victim of the three goofball bikers and mortician, with her remains being served up at the diner. Lame cop-talk follows, and then incredibly lame slapstick routines left over from the 1930s, involving slipping and falling, and pie fights, to the accompaniment of muted trombones. Wah- waaaahhhhhh.

Identical twin ladies named Thursday and Friday work into things, somehow. So does the undertaker wearing a tux, a hardhat, and playing with dynamite.

More black-and-white stock footage of bikers. I think the rest of the film should have been made in black-and-white, as this footage looks better than the rest of the film. It still would have sucked, and the the cardboard sets would still look abysmal, but at least the filming of it wouldn't have looked quite as technically inept.

It seems like the makers of this thing got drunk and said "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if we filmed (fill in the blank) next? And then, wouldn't it be funny if he said (fill in the blank) after that?" So many of the scenes here were obviously filmed on one take, with one single unedited wide angle shot. Even at only 63 minutes long, the film still seems to have a lot of padding: footage of people driving around town, and people running up the same flight of stairs multiple times in a foot chase which seems like its musical score, left over from the 1920s, was put into the film by a deaf person, all just to pad out the film's short running-time. Nudie cutie pretending to be a slasher movie ends up being inept and unfunny, not to mention unfocused: the character we are lead to believe will be the hero just simply disappears before the conclusion, and the barely mentioned cop ends up killing the last of the three "villians", after the first is killed for being a traitor, and the second is killed in an accident!

watch it for the women

[aaronmocksing1987 · 1/10 · 31 October 2010]

This movie is one to see when you're bored, and your pornography stash is just about dry and gone. Not that there is any of this here at all, except for the scenes where the women are stripped down to their skivvies. Everything else is pretty much a brave and bold attempt to bring the horror gene into Beach Blanket Bingo; you'd sware Roger Corman had a hand in this. Surprisingly, this is not true at all. On the other hand, this matches Rog's style and film machismo so well it's too hard to tell.

If you're like me, I didn't even watch this. I just let it play until something else on the EastWest DVD came on. Of anything else here, I only glanced over to see the women show off their bosoms; I never knew, as a kid from the 80's and 90's, how hot women looked back then! These boobies literally jiggle in every frame! Some are pointed! Oh man, so hot.