Funeral Home

Cries in the Night, more popularly released as Funeral Home, is a 1980 Canadian slasher film directed by William Fruet and starring Lesleh Donaldson, Kay Hawtrey, Jack Van Evera, Alf Humphreys, and Harvey Atkin. The plot follows a teenager spending the summer at her grandmother's inn—formerly a funeral home—where guests begin to disappear. Briefly released in eastern Canada in 1981, the film premiered in the United States and was re-released in its native Canada under the alternative title Funeral Home in the summer of 1982. It received mixed reviews from critics, with several noting it as starkly redolent of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). Plot At the beginning of the summer, Heather arrives in a small unnamed town to stay with her eccentric and religious grandmother, Maude Chalmers, whose house—a former funeral home—has recently been converted into an inn. Maude's husband, James, an undertaker, has been missing for several years, and she has been forced to make a living selling artificial flower arrangements; she hopes to supplant her income by opening the home to traveling guests. Billy Hibbs, a mentally-challenged man, lives with Maude as the property handyman. Nearby, a farmer named Sam reports an abandoned vehicle discovered on his property, which is traced to a missing real estate developer who had been surveying the area. At the inn on the evening of Heather's arrival, guests Harry Browning and his mistress Florie check in. When Maude realizes the couple are unmarried, she asks them to leave, but they refuse. That evening after having drinks, they drive to a local quarry recommended by Heather; while there, Maude's truck arrives, smashing the back of their car and pushing them into the water below, where they both drown. The same night, Heather goes on a date with Rick, a local teenager, and returns home to hear her Maude speaking to an unseen man in the basement. When she inquires, Maude denies it.