Mausoleum
Crying at the graveside of her mother Christina as the procession of cars depart from the funeral and offered little comfort by her Aunt Cora Nomed with whom she will be living until she is old enough to inherit her family estate, conspicuous wealth does not protect ten-year old Susan Walker from the supposed family curse over all the firstborn women in the Nomed family, strangely compelled to run from the other mourners and finding herself by the mausoleum shrouded in mist, the gates opening to reveal the strangely illuminated interior…
Twenty years later, Susan Farrell is married and lives in luxury, her husband Oliver doting and devoted and equally wealthy, flying to New York to conduct business before returning to their multi-level Los Angeles mansion, yet despite a decade of therapy with Doctor Andrews she remains troubled, her housekeeper Elsie noticing the changes in her behaviour and the strange things which happen around her such as the man who harassed her at a disco burning to death only moments after when his car explodes.
Allegedly partially financed with mafia money and later confiscated as a “video nasty” although it was never actually prosecuted, director Michael Dugan’s Mausoleum of 1983 raises high expectations which remain unfulfilled, a supernatural horror rendered as a glossy but empty soap opera of superficial characters whose first thought when witnessing demonic possession is to schedule therapy for the following afternoon, Doctor Andrews (The Terminal Man’s Norman Burton) calmly accepting the family history of possession as part of the patient’s case notes.
Starring Bobbie Bresee as Susan, any vestigial personality presumably drained out of her at finishing school, her more wilful younger version played in the opening scene by Julie Christy Murray has distinctly more personality, yet hopes that the ancient demon who haunts her family will make the adult more interesting are shortlived, seducing then shredding her leering gardener (Maurice Sherbanee), similarly disposing of her controlling aunt (Laura Hippe) then heading to the Woodland Hills Promenade to drop a man off a balcony.
The other mallgoers observing with indifference, Mausoleum is a stifled upper-class horror, appearance everything and honesty or depth shed like yesterday’s fashion, more voyeuristically concerned with Susan’s burgeoning desires, her lust for flesh and blood, than a coherent story, her frequent disrobing apparently a prelude to her final transformation complete with drooling demonface titties so preposterous they would not be out of place in a Boulet Brothers floorshow.
So incongruously sharp is Elsie’s dialogue it may be that the brilliant LaWanda “Flame Goddess” Page improvised her own lines, a former dancer and standup comedian and later an evangelist for the Holiness Church, by strange coincidence Starcrash’s Marjoe Gortner who plays Oliver began his performance career at age four as a revival preacher who later admitted his motivation was money rather than belief, his self-titled film of his final tour and backstage disclosures having won the 1972 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Mausoleum will be streaming on the Arrow platform from Friday 21st March
