Buried Alive

The cheapo box I had made it seem like a vampire horror movie where someone is buried in a grave. So horror fans beware. But fans of little B movies might find this a pleasant diversion. Most remarkable is the very clear "Of Mice and Men" style relationship between the lead guy and his big, dumb buddy.

"A prison trustee is soon to be released from prison when he ends up stopping a bar brawl involving one of the prison guards. After some unkind press for him on the bar brawl, the convict is turned down for his early parole. Will his love for the prison nurse help him in getting past all of the people trying to keep him in prison and looking at the electric chair?" according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

"Buried Alive" is a potentially interesting look at the electric chair era, and the public servants who organize the executions. But, the main story, involving handsome Robert Wilcox (as Johnny Martin) doesn't end up serving the film's morality question; at least, not the one introduced in the opening, by twitchy switch-puller George Pembroke (as Ernie Matthews).

A "love story" between Mr. Wilcox and beautiful nurse Beverly Roberts (as Joan Wright) isn't terribly exciting. The book Wilcox describes, while driving, is John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" - which makes Wilcox "George" and cell-mate Don Rowan (as Big Billy) "Lennie". In the 1929s, prisoners did a lot more reading (and motion pictures were sometimes too talky).

*** Buried Alive (11/6/39) Victor Halperin ~ Robert Wilcox, Beverly Roberts, George Pembroke

A prisoner with a spotless record, about to be paroled, encounters a series of misunderstandings, unlucky accidents, and set-backs that jeopardize his freedom and his future with the blonde prison infirmary nurse he's fallen in love with. Sound interesting? IT'S NOT!

This movie is so badly written, it might be used as a textbook example of how not to construct a story. The exposition wanders around, trying to get a story started, and fails miserably.

It's not even clear who the main character is until about 45 minutes in. The script seems to have been written as some kind of protest piece against capital punishment. A worse punishment is trying to sit through this movie to the end.

Wooden dialog, poor acting and direction, and scene after scene in which characters' actions make absolutely no sense. This is almost Ed Wood- bad, but sadly it's not "so bad it's good". It's "so bad it's depressing".

The interesting thing about this film is the story by William A. Ullman, who has a clear eye for poignant realism and is always consistent with a sharp psychological intelligence, and he stands as far from the Hollywood dream factory output of box office candy as anyone could ever do. This is a grim story of a prison ward who is about to be set free on parole, when his concern about his fellow prisoners gets him into trouble. His interference in a bar brawl undoes his parole, and it will get worse. When a fellow prisoner tries to escape he tries to stop him, while that prisoner gets time enough to kill a prison guard before he is shot to death. Our fellow gets indicted for the murder and is actually brought to the electric chair.

The film begins with the executioner and his second thoughts about his job, which isn't very funny, we follow a detailed execution from the beginning, and the film ends up where it started, with another execution, which becomes one execution too much for the executioner, who quits his job.

The story is very polyphonic with many characters involved, the direction is lousy, but the film is definitely worth watching for the sake of the story. It's an early and astute attack on the death penalty, showing how easy it was for an innocent to become executed by mistake. No one is buried alive here, but the whole system is by understatement accused of being an institution for burying people alive.

George Pembroke runs the electric chair at the prison. After a session, he goes out to get drunk, because he doesn't like his job. There he finds reporters, one of whom taunts him. They get into a fight, and Robert Wilcox, a trusty who drives the car, comes in and punches out the reporter and rescues Pembroke. The reporter decides he's going to get even and writes a story about how Wilcox was drunk and started the fight. As a result, Wilcox is turned down for parole.

There's something worse about a good idea that goes bad in a movie. This could have been. And arguably is, a movie about the breakdown of the penitentiary system and how that destroys lives. Instead, in the hands of director Victor Halperin, it becomes a confused mess. Wilcox and prison nurse Beverly Roberts (in her last big-screen role) are in love; Pembroke and prison doctor Stephen Chase also love her, but aren't going to mention it, because they are gentlemen. This is, I suppose, part of the movie's love of romance and melodrama, but is it necessary? Acting choices, like having Wilcox's cellmate, Don Rowan, speak slowly and refer to himself by name to show he is stupid, is likewise clumsy.

But worst of all is the slow pace of the dialogue and the visual inertness of the movie. Cinematographer Jack Greenhalgh was a talented cameraman, so the only conclusion is that this was a deliberate choice. A movie can survive a lot, but it can't survive the dullness thus imposed on it.