Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers (USA, 1989)

Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers is the first full-length feature film of Jonathan Mostrow, who somehow managed to carve himself a Hollywood career despite his inauspicious directorial debut. An astounding achievement, actually, for nothing about Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers in any way indicates that he might be able to deliver a film as entertaining as his first real industry success, Breakdown (1997/trailer)....

Lou (Vic Tayback) is a mortician who has one-to-many outstanding debts with the mob, which would probably rub him out if he weren’t burying their kind for free. Unknown to the mob, Vic is secretly working together with Doc (Frank Gorshin — who played the Riddler in the old Batman TV show) to create a formula to bring back the dead: they plan to get rich by reviving the rich. Vic (Art Metrano), the second-in-command of the Mob, is suspicious about where all the lent money is going to, so he finagles a job at the mortuary for his two mentally deficient surfer nephews Freddie (Rodney Eastman) and Vincent (Warren Selko). Although they should spy for him, they change sides as soon as they are promised a cut of the eventual take and begin stealing the corpses required for testing the serum. After the dead Don of the mob is accidentally revived, he shambles out into Beverly Hills leaving a trail of bodies behind him, and soon the mortuary is full of pasty-faced brain-dead. But things really go wrong when the dead Don breaks free again at his very own funeral...
Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers is a notably unfunny comedy populated by characters that are all less than likable, and nothing that occurs in the course of the films painfully long 85-minute running time is in any way entertaining. Laughs are few and for the wrong reasons, a good example of which is Vincent’s haircut: worse than the boy's acting, it is both the scariest and funniest aspect to the whole film. Handled properly, Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers might have been a morbidly funny farce—as is Plots with a View (2002), for example, which also involves morticians—but no one involved in this low budget turkey gives an indication of having comic talent. Truly, the film is about as much fun as being caught in TJ with the runs and no toilet paper. Hard to believe that Jonathan Mostrow went from directing this to making Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003/trailer)....
Then again, maybe it isn't all that hard to believe.