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Dead & Buried
This welcome wagon doesn’t distribute gift baskets
1981
Review: April 24, 2006
Director: Gary Sherman
Starring: James Farentino, Melody Anderson, Jack Albertson, Robert Englund
Yes, though not strictly necessary. Oh wait, yes it is.
THE SETUP:
It seems that everyone except the sheriff in a small coastal down is in on a huge murder ring.
DISCUSSION:
I had read rave reviews of this movie in a few quarters, so when I saw the deluxe 2-disc edition for a mere $10, I just went ahead and bought it. I’m not sorry, though I think I’m going to sell it now. Though now I look on Half.com it doesn’t even go for $10. Gotta eBay that shit. Anyway…
All that said, it’s not bad. It opens with some subtle piano and strings music showing scenes of a quaint coastal town. My DVD player is a refurbished piece of merde that sometimes doesn’t set right upon being turned on, so it was five minutes in before I realized I was only getting ambient sound from the rear speakers. I was like; “Wow, this film sure is quiet and atmospheric!”
Anyway, so there’s this photographer who’s come by to take some really banal pictures [shells, boats, nets… haven’t we seen it all before?] when he’s hit upon by this blonde who “wants to be a model.” She whips her tits out, and shortly afterward, things end poorly for the poor lad, for the time being at least… It seems that the townpeople make a habit of getting together to slaughter some tourists every now and then. It’s good to see the spirit of community thriving in a small town. You know, that’s something we’ve lost here in the big city, where too many brutal slayings happen in solitude.
There’s a good transition to the next scene, wherein the cop of the town, and the hero of the movie, Danny, finds the body where it has been arranged to look as though the guy was the victim of a car accident. Then the weird town coroner shows up, played by Jack Albertson, who was the kindly grandfather in Willy Wonka. Then there’s a pretty good surprise!
So the cop, who looks like Columbo if he were cute [I found the cop to be a big, big sweetie], starts to investigate the case. The coroner, Dr. Dobbs, goes on and on about how he’s such an artist of human taxidermy that it’s a crime to have a closed casket, to such an extent that it almost sounds as though he WANTS people to die, just so he can fix them up. But this is just one part of what grows into a huge web of suspicion.
The story veers for a while to create a complex tangle of suspicion around Danny’s wife, played by Melody Anderson, whom OBVIOUSLY you remember as playing the girlfriend in Flash Gordon, where she must have met the hunky hotness of Brian Blessed as the Birdman, one of the top movie mega-bears of all time. I found the wife to be a hoot, all perky deflections, then bitter bitchiness when she’s suspected. Her poor, hunky hubby thinks it’s all in his charmingly grizzled head until he finds some ceremonial witchcraft stuff in her drawer, which she explains away as well. Then he later sees her delivering exposition about voodoo to her class at school, which viewers should pay attention to, as it explains a lot of what ends up to be going on in this town. What’s going on turns out to be somewhat akin to what was going on in The Serpent and the Rainbow.
What’s good about this film is the structure of the scares and how they’re handled. For example, the famed “eyeball” scene with the nurse. I really liked how the doctor sent the nurse away, then he and the detective settle down to talk, long hallway in the background. After a while, we see the nurse appear in the background and enter the room, and we know something bad is going to happen. It does. I won’t spoil it for you if you don’t know, but I loved the brazenness of doing it while the cop was right outside!
So it goes on with good chills and atmosphere, until the mystery is explained, somewhat, at the end. Unfortunately, at that point the movie drops about three points in the general estimation, as though it has had great atmosphere, structured scenes and scares, once you find out that they’re not really in the service of much, you can’t help but look back and feel, not gypped, but not nearly as great as you would have if it had all built to a climax that held together.
SPOILERS > > >
So it would seem that Dr. Dobbs takes dead people, the more disfigured the better, and rebuilds them [out of WHAT, you wonder], then brings them back to life, apparently in his service. The big shocker at the end is that even Danny, the cute cop, is dead and doesn’t know it. But it also seems that the doctor is also dead [if he’s alive this point is really not made clear], so… there’s just a bunch of dead people inhabiting a town and killing visitors? Is that IT? It is marginally better if the doctor is alive, or has magical powers, because then it seems like there’s someone in charge of it all who had a master plan, but as it is now, it’s just kind of this self-perpetuating band of dead people, and no one wants that.
< < < SPOILERS END
This movie contains the presence of Robert Englund three years before he became Freddy, so that’s another point of interest. Please note that the Lisa Marie who plays the hitchhiker here is NOT the same Lisa Marie who later married Tim Burton.
Anyway, this is definitely worth watching and features some great scares, atmosphere, and set pieces, but the perplexing ending and the fact that it all doesn’t amount to much detract from a lasting good feeling about it all.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Essential for horror fans. If you’re not horror-obsessed, there are a lot of other movies that would be more worthwhile for you.
