The House of the Dead 1978

On a rain-soaked night, an adulterous man named Talmudge, John Ericson, hurries back to his hotel, but the storm leads him to seek shelter inside a quiet house where a mortician, Ivor Francis, awaits. The mortician runs a curious operation: he preserves and embalms the bodies of people who died in remarkable, unusual ways, and he invites his guest to hear the stories behind each sealed coffin by recounting the fates of their occupants. The encounter unfolds like a macabre gallery of deaths, each tale more singular than the last, all tied to the idea that life can end in the strangest circumstances.

The first coffin belongs to Miss Sibiler, Judith Novgrod, a schoolteacher who harbors a deep dislike for children. In her home kitchen, she turns on a radio and hears a strange static or noise from another room. When she investigates, the radio has inexplicably shut off. She climbs to the upstairs shower, glimpses a silhouette behind the shower curtain, and bolts the doors and windows in fear. Three masked children enter, then remove their disguises to reveal sharp teeth. The scene escalates as more children arrive, and they close in on Miss Sibiler, ultimately mauling her to death in a chilling, systematic attack.

The second coffin holds Growski, Burr DeBenning, a man with a passion for cameras and photography. He is shown in his own home filming himself and hosting a dinner for a woman named Julie, Linda Gibboney. He persuades Julie, unaware that a camera continues to record, to remove her stockings for what he calls a “magic trick.” Instead, he uses them as a tool of harm, choking her fatally. The camera then moves on to a woman named Carol, whom he also subdues, choking her with a cable as the recording continues. Finally, he is with Mrs. Lumquist, Elizabeth MacRae, whom he stabs when she tries to summon a taxi to take her home. In a grim coda, the mortician notes that Growski was executed a year later, and that the state did not permit photographs to be taken at his execution.

The third story centers on two famed sleuths: Detective Malcolm Toliver, Charles Aidman, regarded as the best criminal investigator in the United States, and Inspector McDowal, Bernard Fox, the greatest in England. Over dinner, Toliver receives an unsigned note warning that someone he knows will die in three days, and that he alone can prevent it. McDowal insists on shadowing Toliver to learn his methods, and Toliver agrees. The pair eventually visits Toliver’s home, where Toliver reveals his startling conclusion: he himself is the intended victim and McDowal is the killer. McDowal shoots Toliver, but Toliver, wearing a bulletproof vest, quips that he solved the case two days earlier and activates a blade that impales McDowal. Toliver then opens McDowal’s briefcase to reveal a timed explosive. The mortician then takes possession of McDowal’s body and discloses that Toliver’s own body was too fragmented to be buried properly.

The fourth tale follows Cantwell, Richard Gates, an office worker whose callous disregard for a homeless man marks him. He steps into an empty store but cannot open the doors to leave. He wanders through the building, nearly falling into an elevator shaft, and becomes trapped, subjected to a harsh blend of mental and physical torment with only alcohol to sustain him. After a long, painful series of misfortunes, an exit eventually appears and Cantwell stumbles back into the street, filthy and bloodied. A later moment shows him meeting a businessman who dismisses him, and Cantwell eventually dies in a gutter from a rotten liver, a fate the mortician uses to illustrate the grim arithmetic of cruelty.

As the night unfolds, Talmudge notices a fifth casket, mysteriously empty. The mortician explains that it belongs to someone who practiced infidelity, hinting that the patient’s name is known to him. He then shocks Talmudge by revealing that he already knows the adulterer’s name and labels him a client. Fear floods Talmudge’s face as he realizes his own indiscretions have not gone unnoticed. He bolts, runs into an alley, and is cornered by the husband of a woman with whom Talmudge had an affair, John King III. The husband shoots him, and Talmudge is loaded into an ambulance with the mortician seated in the passenger seat, the last image a stark breath between life and death.

Throughout these interwoven tales, the mortician maintains a pale, calm, almost ceremonial demeanor, guiding the viewer through the stories as if conducting a quiet, inexorable verdict on human folly and the fragility of life. The atmosphere is thick with moral undercurrents and clinical detachment, leaving the audience to weigh the weight of every decision, every secret kept, and every life ended in the shadows of a stormy night. The collection of fates—each as precise as a photograph, each ending in tragedy—serves as a haunting meditation on consequence, guilt, and the quiet, inexorable pull of vengeance.