Buried Alive

Picture Releasing Corporation - Poverty Row Corporation - made many craps, yes, but let's be fair, considering the tiny budgets they had, we are lucky to have seen good little surprises from them. Very surprising stories, but a bit talkative, I admit. This one is not my favourite from Victor Halperin: TORTURE SHIP, WHITE ZOMBIE, REVOLT OF THE ZOMBIES were better..But that's not a reason to keep away from it. It is fun, not as boring as you could expect from PRC stuff. This movie is actually a drama, convincing drama, rather well acted and filmed. I am sure everyone has never seen or forgotten it. Such a shame.

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.

despite the title buried alive is'nt a horror film,nor is it a film about anyone being buried alive,its a well made PRC poverty row prison melodrama about a prison trustee(Robert Wilcox) who gets in a jam after helping a prison employee in a bar room brawl.he gets hurt and ends up in the prison sick bay and falls in love with the prison nurse(Beverly Roberts)it has the look of an old warner brothers crime drama,i kept waiting for the dead end kids to show up.for a low budget movie its pretty good.warner Oakland and don Rowan(both from the buster Crabbe flash Gordon serials play supporting roles.it was directed by victor halperin(white zombie)i bought this DVD for a buck at a local dollar store,it has 2 features on it,the other is the infamous ;i bury the living with Richard Boone.now thats a bargain.as a fan of vintage horror and dramas I'm always on the prowl for these bargains.buried alive is 7 out of 10,pretty good b-movie.

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".

It's sad that poor production values and some sloppy editing so typical of PRC films. I could have seen someone like James Cagney who in 1939 the same year that Buried Alive came out starred in Each Dawn I Die. Some of the elements of that classic are in Buried Alive.

Robert Wilcox plays a model prisoner and trustee and is looking forward to his parole and maybe settling down with prison nurse Beverly Roberts. But George Pembroke who plays the executioner the guy sets up the electric chair is having angst and in the worst place, a bar. When Pembroke gets into a brawl with bottom feeding reporter Wheeler Oakman, Wilcox steps in and saves him.

Oakman has his revenge in the press and the story he prints kills Wilcox's parole. Later on while trying to stop a break by a mentally deranged prisoner another convict lies and Wilcox is on death row for the death of a guard.

There are some good elements in the story and if this had been done at a major studio with a bit more care it could have been a classic.

As it is it's a sloppy PRC product.