Main Cast: James Farentino, Melody Anderson, Jack Albertson, Dennis Redfield, Nancy Locke
Release Year: 1981
Country: US
Run Time: 92 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, the screenwriters behind the highly successful Alien, turned their attention to earthbound terrors with this creepy horror tale. Dead and Buried focuses on Dan Gillis (James Farentino), a man who has recently returned to his hometown of Potter's Bluff to be its sheriff. His job becomes difficult when a series of strangers who visit Potter's Bluff begin dying in violent and mysterious ways. To make matters worse, his wife, Janet (Melody Anderson), has begun to act strangely, taking an odd interest in voodoo and acting like she might be having an affair. As the murder victims pile up, Gillis discovers that all his troubles have an occult origin that has to do with the town's elderly mortician, Dobbs (Jack Albertson, in his final feature film role). Gillis gets to the bottom of the mystery, only to discover that the truth is much worse than he imagined. Despite effective direction and solid acting, Dead and Buried got lost in the shuffle of the early '80s horror boom and failed to click with the movie-going public. However, it later gained an audience via home video and cable and remains a minor cult favorite today thanks to its singular blend of creepy atmosphere and gruesome shocks. ~ Donald Guarisco, All Movie Guide
Review
This horror oddity, an attempt to update Twilight Zone-styled spookiness with a splash of early '80s gore, doesn't fully achieve this aim, but remains worth a look for hardcore horror buffs. The best element of Dead and Buried is the intelligent script by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett. They populate their bizarre story with intelligent, believable characters and dole out the clues to the film's central mystery in a way guaranteed to keep the audience offguard. The film also benefits from slick direction by Gary Sherman, who crafts the film's shocks with bone-chilling verve. Highlights include the thoroughly unsettling prologue and a suspenseful nocturnal chase scene where a lost family stumbles into a seemingly deserted house that turns out to be full of killers. Unfortunately, lead actor James Farentino gives an uneven performance, going overboard on his character's hysteria near the end in way that reduces his character to a cartoon. However, Jack Albertson steals the show as the morbid but witty Dobbs, clearly relishing the chance to cut loose on such a bizarre role, and the support cast is full of familiar character actor faces like Barry Corbin and a pre-Nightmare on Elm Street Robert Englund. In the end, it's easy to see why Dead and Buried never found a big audience. It is too plot-heavy for those viewers in search of a shock machine, yet too visceral for the viewers who appreciate subtle horror. Despite this problem, Dead and Buried contains enough solid shocks and offbeat moments to make it worth a viewing for fans of creepy cult movies. ~ Donald Guarisco, All Movie Guide
Lisa Blount - Girl on the beach; Robert Englund - Harry; Bill Quinn - Ernie; Michael Currie - Herman; Christopher Allport - George Le Moyne; Macon McCalman - Ben; Lisa Marie - Hitchhiker; Estelle Omens - Betty; Ed Bakey - Fisherman; Barry Corbin - Phil; Joseph Medalis - Doctor; Glenn Morshower - Jimmy; Tony Cecere; Bill Couch, Jr.; Michael Pataki - Sam
Credit
Joe Aubel - Art Director, Michael Rachmil - Associate Producer, Erica Phillips - Costume Designer, Bill Jobe - Costume Designer, Gary Sherman - Director, Alan Balsam - Editor, John W. Hyde - Executive Producer, Joe Renzetti - Composer (Music Score), Stan Winston - Makeup Special Effects, William Sandell - Production Designer, Steven Poster - Cinematographer, Ronald Shusett - Producer, Richard St. Johns - Producer, Robert Fentress - Producer, Cloudia - Set Designer, James Tocci - Set Designer, Dennis Barton - Set Designer, Alex Stern - Screen Story, Jeff Millar - Screen Story, Dan O'Bannon - Screenwriter, Ronald Shusett - Screenwriter
This was Jack Albertson's final film; he died six months after the film's US release.
Plot
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Dead & Buried stars James Farentino as Sheriff Dan Gillis. Without warning, his peaceful tiny New Englandtown of Potter's Bluff starts having murders. Strangers to the town are turning up dead. Naturally, Dan has to find out why. With some able assistance from the local coroner and mortician Dobbs (Jack Albertson), these two become more horrified as each passing day reveals yet another gruesome murder. That is actually a clue: all the murders aren't simple but gruesome. The murderer(s) actually take photos of the victims as they are killed.
The mystery becomes weirder. The audience sees what is happening, and know who the killers are. They can see Sheriff Gillis when he is in the company of friends, and when he is in the company of Grave Danger. One of the questionable people in the Sheriff's life is none other than his wife Janet (Melody Anderson), who has some rather odd reasons for her frequent night time disappearances. One discovered clue is when Dan accidentally hits someone with his car after a recent attack. He goes out to the hood of his car and sees the severed arm of the person he hit severed from the body, stuck to his grill, and twitching as if it were still alive. Gillis is then attacked by the person he hit. He fights him off, and takes the arm to the doctor, who makes the shocking discovery that the flesh on the arm had been dead for approximately four weeks already.
It is eventually revealed that Dobbs has discovered a secret technique for reanimating the dead: all the townspeople are in fact reanimated corpses under his control. Dobbs considers himself an "artist", and has been sending his zombies to murder the living in order to create more corpses on which Dobbs may practice his technique, effectively adding to the town's population. The ending reveals that the Sheriff is himself one of the living dead, having been murdered by his undead wife before the beginning of the film under Dobb's orders. Gillis then notices his hands decomposing, and the doctor asks to look at them, thus ending the film.
