Dead & Buried

Gary Sherman's horror masterpiece begins with one of cinema's best beatings (and burnings) of a fellow human being. The scene takes place on a beach in Potter's Bluff (Mendocino, No. Cal) and is a hypnotic, brutal, black shock to the system.

The beating is filmed by a mild-mannered pipe-smoking old man, a waitress, a mechanic and many other affable citizens of the area. It sets the scene for much grotesquery to come.

DEATH LINE (aka RAW MEAT) demonstrated that Sherman had the goods. DEAD AND BURIED cements him into the brickwork of the horror hall of fame.

Future Freddy Kruger (Robert Englund) makes an appearance, as does sexy Lisa Blount from AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN. But the film's real star is the (now dead and buried himself) Jack Albertson as the coroner of Potter's Bluff. Albertson's is an eccentric, layered, career-best performance.

The tone is dream-like and ethereal. Even interiors are filled with mist. A foghorn is heard constantly. Nobody is who they seem.

A stand-out is a Super-8 home video shot by some students. Its climax provides a not unexpected revelation and the film itself perfectly embodies the horror of corruption which director Sherman is pushing.

The film did zero theatrical business because it's too damn weird for most audiences, and too damn good. But it has developed a cult on video.

Exceptional.

'Dead & Buried' is one of the most interesting and original American horror movies of the 80s. Co-written by Dan O'Bannon of 'Alien' and 'Lifeforce' fame, this underrated movie should get a larger audience once it is available on DVD. (It already is here in Australia, but I'm not sure about the US and UK just yet). TV regular James Farentino stars as a small town sheriff who finds that a series of puzzling murders is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to bizarre secrets hiding right underneath his nose. He's not sure exactly what's going on but quickly begins to suspect the involvement of his lovely wife ('Flash Gordon's Melody Anderson) and/or the creepy local eccentric mortician (Jack Albertson, best know from 'Willy Wonka'), and basically just about everyone else in Potter's Bluff, the residents of which includes horror icon Robert Englund, Lisa Blount ('Prince Of Darkness'), and Barry Corbin ('Northern Exposure', 'WarGames'). The plot is a little bit hard to swallow when it is finally revealed, but up until that point this movie has plenty of suspense, atmosphere and shocks, and if you can suspend your disbelief at certain crucial moments you'll be in for a good time. Recommended.

Sheriff Dan Gillis (James Farentino) has a nice life with his wife, the teacher Janet Gillis (Melody Anderson), in the small coastal and friendly town of Potter's Bluff. When visitors are mysterious killed in the town, Sheriff Gillis investigates the cases carefully and finds that dead people are reanimating and coming back to life. Dan finds a book of witchcraft and voodoo in his wife's drawer and he suspects that she might be practicing black magic. Dan meets the coroner-mortician William G. Dobbs (Jack Albertson) and learns the dreadful and surprising secret.

"Dead & Buried" is a cult-movie with a creepy atmosphere and a surprising end. The plot has flaws, with lack of explanation for many situations. Why should Dobbs let the sheriff investigate further and not disclose the truth about him in the beginning? My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Os Mortos Vivos" ("The Living Dead")

Note: On 26 March 2015, I saw this film again. Note: On 10 Dec 2019, I saw this film again.

Gary Sherman's film Dead & Buried, from a script by Alien writers Ron Shusset and (the late) Dan O'Bannon, is a strange creature of a movie. It's meant to reel in the horror movie crowd, but it's for a crowd of another time period. That is, at least, the filmmaker's intention, and it's the kind of horror movie that might have been made in the 40's (maybe Val Lewton would've produced it, though probably never showing a death on screen), and has a mad mortician, calmly and chillingly played by Jack ("Grandpa Joe" from Willy Wonka) Albertson, bringing back people from the dead and having those dead go after tourists or passerbys who have the dumb luck to travel into town.

Sometimes the gore is meant to be emphasized, like with the death of the fisherman or the doctor who gets acid poured on him. The latter of these is a terrible scene, not just because Stan Winston wasn't involved in the effect (you can tell), but because it's done too much and the camera lingers a little too long. Dead & Buried is helped by it being surreal: the opening scene where the guy is photographing on the beach, comes across the woman and starts to take pictures "for Playboy" and then is overcome by a horde of people also flashing pictured and filming and is killed by fire, is something out of a pure nightmare (you almost expect someone to wake up, but no one does). When it sticks to this dead-undead thing, of the hints at witchcraft and the eerie performances by the Sheriff's wife and some of the townspeople like Robert Englund, make it worthwhile.

Dead & Buried is not what you expect, which is a good and not-so-good thing. It's low-budget and atmospheric, and its ending is a bit of a WTF twist that seems unnecessary. But there's a lot of interest here, a lot of weird effects with cameras and crowds of the undead. Just don't go expecting the usual flesh and guts show, despite what the film's own distributors thought at the time.

"Dead & Buried" is a classic horror "small town with a secret" film, this time concerning a tiny little seaside town called Potter's Bluff. The formerly peaceful community has suddenly been plagued by a series of grisly murders for the town sheriff Dan (James Farentino) to investigate. Creepier still, the murder victims reappear as walking, talking, friendly townsfolk. And what does the eccentric town mortician (Jack Albertson) have to do with it?

This rarely talked about flick, above all else, is a masterpiece of atmosphere...moodily lit, foggy, with a genuine sense of claustrophobia as the horrors seem to be closing in closer and closer to Dan's own home and family, especially the strange new habits his wife (Melody Anderson) has taken up lately.

All of the actors are solid enough, but Jack Albertson steals the show as the eccentric, big band loving Mortician Dobbs. In one of his final performances, he delivers a character whose unsettling realism and reverence for the dead will make you completely forget his also classic turn as the kindly grandpa in "Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory". Rather than just play this character, he inhabits his psyche and becomes Dobbs, and it shows.

Everything from the low key bits of airy score music to the often slow and dreamlike pacing of the plot, is dedicated to heightening the viewer sense of disconnection and dread, leading up to a well known sort of "twist" climax, which in this context doesn't seem hackneyed.

My only real problem with this film is that the pacing can sometimes seem jarring, with little connection to scenes preceding it, almost to the point of breaking the well crafted mood. Also, the climax was a bit too abrupt and a few more seconds of that final anguished scene would've done a lot to increase the film's overall impact.

I'd still highly recommend "Dead & Buried", as a solid reminder of what imaginative and well made R rated horror used to be, before the parade of dull remakes and tamed to PG-13 bore fests that now clutter the genre.