Dead and Buried is not a song from The Stone Temple Pilots. That’s Dead and Bloated.
Dead and Buried is a movie written by the guys who thought up The Fossilized Derelict Pilot from Alien: Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett.
Dead and Buried released in 1981 and did nothing in theaters ($215,000 on a $5.5 million budget). The U.K. then gave it a jolt of publicity by adding it to their “video nasty” list. That made it one of 72 films that every British kid tried to watch.
Other films on the “video nasty” list included Cannibal Ferox and a Clint Howard movie, Evilspeak. The latter was considered obscene because it made the viewer look at Clint Howard’s face for 97 minutes…
Since then, Dead and Buried achieved a small degree of cult status. Let’s dig into it…
Dead and Buried
Gary Sherman directed Dead and Buried. He also gave us the one-two punch of Rutger Hauer’s Wanted: Dead or Alive and Poltergeist III. Before that, Sherman did a cannibal film called Death Line that starred Donald Pleasence and Christopher Lee.
Ronald Shusett was a Sherman fan and approached him with a pile of scripts. Dead and Buried was one of them. The success of Alien helped them secure funding, and Dead and Buried was soon in front of cameras.
Dead and Buried is also notable for being an early effort of one of the members of the make-up effects trinity: Stan Winston. Winston prepared a decent amount of rubbery gore effects for the film, which included people being burned alive, rebuilt skulls and needles in eyes.
These types of scenes are what ultimately got Dead and Buried added to the “video nasty” list. To the modern eye, it looks less nasty and more like mannequins being abused, however.
Dead Alive and Buried
The plot of Dead and Buried is simple, ultimately too simple. A rash of violent deaths happen in a small town. A sheriff investigates. All is revealed. The end.
What Dead and Buried lacks is some sort of push-pull dynamic to tie it all together. In a conspiracy film, the sheriff should be stymied in his investigation. Forces should put up roadblocks that he has to navigate to get answers.
None of that really happens. The movie follows a pattern of a violent death, the sheriff asking questions of various townsfolk, another violent death, the sheriff asking more questions and so on and so forth until the villain ultimately explains themselves.
To a degree. Dead and Buried is similar to a movie like Halloween III. The difference is Halloween III has a quirkiness to it that gives it personality. Plus, Tom Atkins’s character has more to do in the face of frightening conspiracy overseen by a wonderfully droll Dan O’Herlihy, who fully understands the assignment.
Dead and Buried establishes a dark, oppressive tone and sticks with it throughout its runtime. There is no denying it elicits a palatable mood. Yet, it lacks the requisite amount of conflict to serve as an engine to get the story fully up to speed.
It should be noted that Dan O’Bannon ultimately disowned the film. He claimed Shusett wrote it and used O’Bannon’s name to secure funding.
Dead Ringers and Buried
Dead and Buried is also pretty sparse in the cast department. It stars James Farentino, who we saw before in The Possessed. Farentino does what he can with the sheriff role. He every-mans it up to the best of his ability in between looking confused.
Melody Anderson portrays Farentino’s wife. She was Dale Arden in another cult classic: Flash Gordon.
Robert Englund (V), Barry Corbin (No Country for Old Men) and Glenn Morshower (Transformers) also have small roles. Christopher Allport (Invaders from Mars) gets to play a victim who goes from burning with lust to just burning within about two minutes.
Weird fact: Allport was killed by an avalanche at a ski resort in California in 2008. He joins Julian Sands, Dave Legeno, Charles Levin and Natasha Richardson as actors who sadly died in standard outdoor-related activities.
This was also the last live-action theatrical film of Jack Albertson, who played Grandpa Joe in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. His final theatrical role was a voice in The Fox and the Hound. Albertson is unrecognizable in Dead and Buried with his Coke-bottle glasses. He was sick with cancer during filming. He attended the premiere in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank and passed away shortly after.
Bring Out Your Dead and Buried
The best way to describe Dead and Buried is as a lost Tales from the Crypt film.
It simply lacks the tongue-in-cheek humor found in the 1990s series. Add in wraparound Cryptkeeper segments, and it would get an additional star automatically.
On the other hand, a purist could look at Dead and Buried and say it is more faithful to the original EC Comics than the 1990s iteration.
“Putridity is in the eye of the beholder,” as the Cryptkeeper would say…
Go on and dig Dead and Buried up for a viewing, but don’t be surprised if the stink gets to you…
