cult film freak: TRISH VAN DEVERE AND DAVID GAUTREAUX DRIVE 'THE HEARSE'

Title: THE HEARSE Year: 1980 Rating: ****

Crown International Pictures was the place for 1970's teenage-hangout sex-comedies, and in 1980 their crowning achievement was basically a hangout vintage ghost story/horror that went beyond just the suspense-filled haunted house, or that titular HEARSE stalking Trish Van Devere's Jane Hardy the minute she goes from the big city (as a schoolteacher) to a rural town...

Where half of the movie has her completely unwelcome, ranging from the sheriff to goading children to handymen to veteran icon Joseph Cotten as a curmudgeon realtor, who, providing the paperwork for a newly inherited manor, personally remembered her departed aunt as a Satan-worshiper in a doomed relationship...

Trish Van Devere in THE HEARSE

That the audience learns about as Trish's Jane reads diary entries in the antique master bedroom, coinciding with the scariest moments that occur more subtly throughout... unlike the creepy mustached HEARSE driver, a too-obvious nod to Anthony James's scene-stealing chauffeur from the Dan Curtis classic BURNT OFFERINGS...

Herein, director George Bowers previous work as an editor is apparent since all scenes flow together neatly, from nighttime car-stalking sequences into more mainstream daylight hours including teenage bully Christopher McDonald riling smitten Perry King... jealous of Jane's relationship with tall-dark-stranger David Gautreaux, who's both old fashion charming and formidably eerie...

Trish Van Devere in THE HEARSE dream sequence

And, with the exception of an effective past-midnight dream/nightmare sequence, THE HEARSE mainly works when the black car's not around, lacking the kind of action-packed thrills of other possessed vehicle flicks (from THE CAR to CRASH to CHRISTINE) before and after...

Working as an equally-balanced haunted house/haunted town thriller where Crown International finally proved their worth, despite the unfairly maligned camp/exploitation reputation... which in itself, for this era and genre, is still a compliment since THE HEARSE is never boring.