The remarkable thing about Only A Coffin isn't its preposterous murder mystery plot, which involves a fake death, missing corpses, and ridiculous exposition in the final reel, but rather the bizarre random scenes of nudity, torture and sex that that have been clumsily spliced into the film, none of which has any bearing on the story.
The hackneyed plot involves greedy relatives of a terminally ill man, Dan (Howard Vernon), who are called to his home to learn how much they will inherit when he dies. Soon after, Dan is found dead, from suicide or murder; concerned that this will invalidate his insurance policy, the relatives pretend that he died of his cancer, but this isn't the only secret being kept by the occupants of the house.
As mysteries go, this one isn't bad, with a decent pace, acceptable performances, and a denouement as silly as it gets, but I have to say that I enjoyed this one more for its blatantly exploitative scenes of sex and violence, so clumsily inserted into the film in order to get more bums on seats. It's done so badly, with no attempt to integrate the new footage into the narrative, that it's hard not to admire.
The hackneyed plot involves greedy relatives of a terminally ill man, Dan (Howard Vernon), who are called to his home to learn how much they will inherit when he dies. Soon after, Dan is found dead, from suicide or murder; concerned that this will invalidate his insurance policy, the relatives pretend that he died of his cancer, but this isn't the only secret being kept by the occupants of the house.
As mysteries go, this one isn't bad, with a decent pace, acceptable performances, and a denouement as silly as it gets, but I have to say that I enjoyed this one more for its blatantly exploitative scenes of sex and violence, so clumsily inserted into the film in order to get more bums on seats. It's done so badly, with no attempt to integrate the new footage into the narrative, that it's hard not to admire.