| Product: |
Dead & Buried (DVD) |
| Date: |
31.03.08 (72 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Well made
Disadvantages: Not particularly interesting or original
A video nasty from 1981, Dead and Buried is a big-budget American horror which is a bit too respectable to sit with the sleazy dregs that make up most of the nasties list. It was re-released pretty quickly after the video nasty furore had died down without anyone really caring. It's made with a great deal of technical proficiency and professionalism; whether this makes it more or less interesting than the other nasties is debatable, though.
In the small town of Potters Bluff a group of the townsfolk have taken to murdering tourists. The sheriff, Dan, is puzzled, especially when some of the murder victims start turning up alive and well but with different names. As events in the town become stranger, and even his own wife starts to act suspiciously, Dan begins to piece together the macabre truth about life - and death - in Potters Bluff.
Which is all well and good, but sadly it won't really set your pulse racing. There are a couple of effective scares early on, but it's better at building atmosphere than actually making you jump. There are some excellent gore effects, some of which are inventively unpleasant - there are particularly good mutilated faces on display - but they don't really add any real uncanny effect to the film.
After a while the film eschews real frights and coasts along on its plot developments, which are simply not original enough to shock. This is a hybrid of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and a 1970 British horror called Scream and Scream Again, and once you've figured out what's happening (this takes 20 minutes) you'll realise there are only three ways this film can end. It plumps for the most annoying option.
It is at least decently acted. James Farentino as Dan is good enough to carry the film, a man who knows he's out of his depth but who soldiers on regardless. Veteran Jack Albertson is also good as eccentric mortician Dobbs. The rest of the cast do what's required of them. Robert 'Freddie Krueger' Englund has a small part, and Dan's wife is played by the lovely Melody Anderson (fresh from playing Dale in Flash Gordon; this film can only be a step down after Flash, but then that's true of pretty much every film ever made).
As I said, everything about this is professionally done. It's shot well, looks good, is edited effectively, and the script is never less than stolidly decent. But whether it's actually interesting is another matter; it's a fairly lifeless film. The violence is about all that stands out, mainly because it's unexpectedly messy for a film like this. There's one very nasty bit of eye trauma, and a face being dissolved with acid. The co-writer also wrote Alien, another film that isn't terribly original, plot wise. But Alien had great art direction, an exceptional cast, and Ridley Scott back when he was good. Dead and Buried has nothing and no one to elevate the hackneyed material. (The director, Gary Sherman, did make the magnificent British horror Death Line back in the early 70s, but he must have used up all his inspiration on that film.)
This is generally too respectable to be a video nasty. It's probably only worth checking out if you're a horror fan who's seen almost everything else. It's not a complete washout, but you won't be rushing to see it again. Oddly, it's been given an opulent DVD release by Anchor Bay. There are three (yes, three!) commentaries, by the director, co-scripter and cinematographer, respectively. They're all kind of tedious, to be honest.
Disk 2 contains a bunch of trailers, three biographies with too-small text and an image gallery that I couldn't get to work. There are also three featurettes. One has the effects guy, Stan Winston, talking about his work on the film. One has co-scripter Dan O'Bannon talk about the making of the film. And one has Robert Englund talking about the film - he's not at all like you'd imagine him to be, although I guess expecting him to be a wise-cracking psycho with magic powers and razor blade fingers was pretty stupid. A lot is made of his involvement (he also gets one of the biographies and is mentioned prominently on the back of the DVD box), but he's on screen for less than five minutes. I'd imagine if you were specifically a Robert Englund fan (are there such things?) you'd feel pretty short-changed.
Anyway, another title to tick off the list. This is available on amazon for a ludicrous £17, but their marketplace sellers offer it for a much more realistic £6. There are also cheaper editions available if you want to do without the extras.
Summary: A rather uninspiring small-town horror
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