"For a limited time only, buy one casket in advance of need and receive a second one at half price. You heard right!"

Buying a casket no longer has to be a somber affair, as shown by this lively radio ad for Direct Casket of Van Nuys. A handful of Southern California discounters are selling caskets out of brightly lighted storefronts these days, trying to dig into funeral home sales.They advertise caskets at 30 percent to 70 percent lower than mortuary prices. Direct Casket's cheapest vessel is the Congressional, a felt-covered corrugated cardboard casket priced at $245. At the other end of the scale, customers can splurge on a mahogany model that costs just under $1,000.

"When we come in with a mahogany casket, the funeral director wants to kill us," Direct Casket President Raymond Silvas said.

Although funeral directors, who believe they're being undersold, counter that caskets sold by discounters don't meet their quality standards, making price comparisons unfair, the upstart companies have been expanding at a vigorous clip.

They got a boost in 1994, when the Federal Trade Commission made it illegal for mortuaries to charge a handling fee for a casket purchased outside the funeral home.

In addition to Direct Casket in Van Nuys, which opened a year ago, at least four other casket businesses have opened showrooms in Southern California recently.

"This business has grown a lot faster than what we would have ever thought," Silvas said. Direct Casket has sold more than 2,000 caskets and has opened new showrooms in New York and Costa Mesa, he said.

Direct Casket's 800-square-foot Van Nuys showroom is spartan, with fluorescent lighting and paneled ceilings. Ten of the most popular caskets, including the Pieta, the Going Home and the Raymond (named after Silvas) sit on plastic stands, lids open. There are no pretensions about the place. Just caskets.

Silvas got into the casket business after burying six relatives in a three-month period. The emotional toll was tough, he said, but so was the financial one. He became president of Direct Casket a year ago, he said, because he believed people should not have to pay so much.

The company purchases caskets from the same manufacturers as funeral homes, he said, and is able to make a profit because it does not offer costly funeral services.

Advertisements for Direct Casket encourage customers to buy their own casket while they are still living. Buying "pre-need" helps alleviate the anxiety of making funeral arrangements, he said, and is really no different from purchasing a funeral plot ahead of time. And there's the advantage of picking out your own.

"People want to know what they're going out in," Silvas said.

The company can either deliver a casket to a home right away or keep it in storage. In that case, the company will deliver it to the funeral home when the time comes.

Funeral home representatives say these new companies face tough competition from mortuaries, with their established customer bases and name recognition. Families tend to return to the same funeral homes and take advantage of packages that cover it all - embalming, transport and casket, said James Pinkerton, spokesman for the National Funeral Directors Association.

Forest Lawn, for one, never had a policy charging a handling fee on a casket that came from outside and so has been unhurt by the FTC ruling, company executives said.

Though some casket sellers accuse the funeral home industry of offering people only the priciest caskets, the Southern California chain of five funeral homes has about 39 different caskets with a gradual price increase, Forest Lawn Vice President Paul Gelb said.

The casket companies also leave customers with only one thing - a casket, funeral home representatives note.

"We get a call from the family that a family member has died. We provide all the after-care . . . the emotional after-care for the family," said Pinkerton.

Consumers should also be wary, he said, of purchasing merchandise in advance without a guarantee that the casket will be there when the time comes. Regulations protecting consumers from funeral industry abuses don't exist in the casket-selling business because it's so new.

"I don't see how (the discounters) can afford to keep these things for so long," Gelb said. "If I were a consumer, I would be asking, `Is that casket going to be there in 10 years?' "