Enterrada Viva

...seeing the same movie twice? The first was good..the second a poor model of the first.

The summary says it all really? I'm just looking this up as I watch it on ITV and a bit puzzled by the link. Does anyone else actually understand what the two films have in common - apart from being distinctly average? I haven't really got much more to say, but apparently I need to make this ten lines long in order to submit it, so bear with me while I babble a bit in between breaks to watch her eat the poisoned blowfish...well, that was fun - but still no sign of James Bond,high budget stunts, SMERSH, SPECTRE, or even Pussy Galore. I suppose that this is just one more of Life's great mysteries that I will have to live with. Anyway, that's my ten lines up. Any clues anyone?

A man tries to murder his wife for her money, but she may not be as dead as he thinks in Buried Alive II, a follow up sequel to a very successful film from 1990.

We first meet Laura Riskin, the niece of the sheriff Sam from the first movie. She is mourning the recent death of Sam which has devastated the town. At his funeral, we see Clint from the original film show up mysteriously to pay his respects. In Sam's will, it is revealed that he had $250,000 worth in stocks which seems to spark a lot of interest in Laura's husband Randy.

Randy is an unhappy man who wants to buy a boat with the inheritance and leave town, while Laura wants to stay and have children. He begins engaging in an affair with a pretty blonde woman named Roxanne. They eventually decide to murder Laura with poison and take all of the money she got in Sam's will. He poisons her wine one night at dinner, and she has a massive stroke which seems to have killed her. However, the drug didn't finish her off and she is buried alive! Once out of the grave, she exacts revenge against Randy and his mistress.

It's interesting to me that Buried Alive got a Made for TV sequel seven years later considering it was a 90's made for TV film that wasn't all that heard of. Buried Alive II is pretty much a remake of the first movie with the genders of the bad guys and good spouse reversed. Ally Sheedy does however bring something to this movie that Matheson couldn't for me in the first Buried Alive, and that is that I felt really bad for her. She makes her character very likeable and it's hard to imagine why her husband would want to kill her.

Buried Alive II isn't a bad movie. I like that they continued some characters from the original movie including Sam and having Clint come back to town. It is a retelling of the first movie, but there are some differences. Randy is a way worse person than Jennifer Jason Leigh's murderous chatracter was in Buried Alive. I think this hurt the sequel actually because of how one dimensional our main villain was. It also seems like the main villain is just going through a mid life crisis and wanting to buy a yacht, and his main motivation for killing his wife is because she is boring and acts like an old person and because she doesn't want to invest the inheritance into a boat.

Overall, Buried Alive II is a pretty good movie and follow up to a solid first film. But I felt this was unnecessary, especially 7 years after the fact. It adds little to the series other than a good performance by Ally Sheedy who always delivers. Sadly, this is impossible to find. I luckily got the VHS at a yard sale years ago.

5/10

Following on from the first film Sheriff Sam has died and his niece, Laura (Ally Sheedy) mourns his passing with her husband Randy (Stephen Caffrey). She also meets a shadowy figure at her uncle's grave who may be Clint (Tim Matheson)- a man who many thought died years ago. Meanwhile Randy hears the story of Clint and his murderous wife and plots with his girlfriend Roxanne (Tracey Needham) to carry out the same deviousness on Laura.

Was the first film so good that it justified a sequel? I've seen both so I can tell you no! This is not even a sequel but a lazy rehash of the first movie. The situation is reversed from the treacherous wife of the first to the husband here, but the poison is the same, the plot is the same, the problems are the same, the revenge is essentially the same. There is a slight change due to the involvement of Tim Matheson's character but he only floats around for a bit before vanishing, and anyway his character only confuses the issue rather than adding to the film. All the same problems with the first film are repeated here. Tim Matheson tries to copy Frank Darabont's direction, in many cases just copying the first shot for shot, but he's flogging a dead donkey and can't inject any tension into this.

The actors are C-rate versions of the first film's B-rate stars. Sheedy doesn't really convince as the vengeful wife while Caffrey doesn't seem like the sort to say boo! to a goose much less murder his wife. Matheson seems to exist in his own little film - halfway in you find out why he's in it at all but until then he just confuses the thing.

This is a pointless remake posing as a sequel. No one cares that all the old characters are tied back into the second film or that Matheson's back. It's all a bit pointless and the fact that it happens in the same town to people familiar with what happened last time round make it even less believable than the first film. the only upside is that the revenge is a bit more believable that the whole "building a massive wooden maze in a house" deal in the first film but it's still not great.

The film would have been better as a pure remake with the sexes switched and set in a new town with new people. The attempt to pass it off as a follow-on from the original with the same characters turns this poor film into a pointless, boring rubbish film.

At one point in this movie, there is a quote that Sheedy's character's uncle bought Wal-Mart stock in the late 60's...Wal-Mart did not go public until 1971...He could not have bought stock in the late 60's ...