Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Dead & Buried (1981)


Dan O'Bannon is together with Larry Cohen my favourite screenwriter. If there's someone I always feels inspired by it's O'Bannon, and it hurts a lot that I never got a chance to meet and talk with him. What he did, just like Cohen, is proving you can write about the most absurd subjects and concepts and still make a good movie from it. An original movie, or just extremely interesting. I mean, Alien isn't that original - it's a combination of earlier, older movies, but set in the gritty seventies - but still in the future, and as a haunted house movie instead. See, it's still original.  What O'Bannon did with frequent co-writer Ronald Shusett was to take b-movies seriously, and that often made them better than typical mainstream flicks. Dead & Buried was one of the first movies in the sub-genre "Small Town With a Dark Secret" I saw and it still is one of my favourites.

James Farentino is sheriff Dan Gillis who lives in the small town of Potters Bluff. One day they find a badly burned man in car wreckage, he's still alive, but so hurt that it's impossible to communicate with him. Soon an identical man starts working at the gas station and the original victim gets brutally murdered. More people die and the good sheriff starts to think it's something very fishy in his little town. Is there black magic involved? Is it eve impossible for people to die in Potters Bluff?

Dead & Buried is filled with mysteries and oddities and a great gallery of original characters, just the work to expect from Dan O'Bannon and Roland Shusett. It's hard to deny the Lovecraft-feeling over the story,  but maybe it's the small town in Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth that's the inspiration, just like in Carpenter's The Fog, Amando De Ossorio's Night of the Seagulls and official film adaptation like Stuart Gordon's Dagon or Dan Gildark & Grant Cogswell's Cthulhu? Dead & Buried certainly belongs in the same category - the dangerous conspiracy of a small coastal town.

I think the intimate atmosphere in small towns scares us all. I'm from a small town, and lived in even smaller places, but I had to get away from there because of the mental inbreeding. The sense that everyone knows who you are and what you're doing. That's not style. That's the finest with this horror movie concept and it still comes back from time to time. The countryside IS dangerous. Maybe not in physical way, but like Cthulhu up here shows, it's a breeding ground for racism, homophobia and just egoism - in a way that never happens in a big town. I have nothing against small towns, but I prefer staying there at the most two-three days.

Anyway, this is one of many things that Dead & Buried deals with. But it's foremost a horror movie, dealing with strange powers - or is it a new science? The atmosphere is stunning, foggy and filled with an interesting feeling of dread - right under the charming American gothic. Everything feels dirty, dishonest, and still so cute and cuddly. It's hard to explain, but I see it like someone who smiles without smiling. Just muscles moving, no meaning behind it. That's what director Gary Sherman and the screenwriters created.

Most of the grisly effects is done by Stan Winston, except one scene - and it's very visible that it's not Winston who's done the effects. It's a cool scene, but has none of the realism that you can see earlier or later in the movie. Overall is a more grisly and nasty film than I remember it to be, which is good. I see horror movies because I want to see horror, not family movies.

Dead & Buried as a genuinely good twist, gore and blood and a great cast (watch out for Robert Englund in a smaller part, and Lisa Blount - from Ruggero Deodato's Cut and Run!). It's a very good and original movie and a perfect midnight matinee, maybe a double bill together with Messiah of Evil... 

10 comments:

Exploding Helicopter said...

This sounds like one worth keeping an eye out for. As much as directors and actors it's always worth following writers as well. If they don't come up with the goods then no-one else has got anything to work with.

Anonymous said...

"Dan O'Bannon is together with Larry Cohen my favourite screenwriter."

I would love to see more reviews of Larry Cohens work here, ninja.

"I mean, Alien isn't that original - it's a combination of earlier, older movies, but set in the gritty seventies - but still in the future, and as a haunted house movie instead. See, it's still original."

Yeah but they had some help from Hill & Giler.

"Dead & Buried certainly belongs in the same category - the dangerous conspiracy of a small coastal town."

Thta´s why I love some adaptations of Stephen KIngs work....where they kept that feeling.


"Most of the grisly effects is done by Stan Winston"

He was good.


"Dead & Buried as a genuinely good twist, gore and blood and a great cast"

Never seen it, thanks for the tip,Ninja.

Megatron

Alexander Kassberg said...

Anonymous: Indeed. This movie actually reminds me more of Stephen King than Lovecraft. Ben then of course King is greatly influenced by Lovecraft.

Ninja Dixon said...

On the other hand, King had't release any small town-books by 1981. Not in this style.

Kev D. said...

I love this movie. Great review... and the idea of pairing it with Messiah of Evil... GENIUS!

http://www.zombiehall.com/2011/11/dead-buried.html

You know I hadn't really thought about Lovecraft similarities before reading your review... but good call.

In conclusion, Potter's Bluff is a totally rad name for a town.

Anonymous said...

Kassberg: I never seen the film, I was just commenting on something Ninja wrote in his review.

Ninja: Well....Salems lot was published in 1975...so he had written some small town horror.

Megatron

Ninja Dixon said...

Yeah, I know, but it's hardly THE story that inspired a whole generation of horror movies. That to take away everything from Lovecraft.

Alexander Kassberg said...

NInja Dixon:
His short story collection Night Shift from 1978 cotains several short stories set in small towns, such as Graveyard Shift, Grey Matter, Trucks, Children of the Corn, The Last Rung on the Ladder and One for the Road. Just sayin'!

Anonymous said...

Ninja: No...you´re right about that....Lovecraft is/was highly influential...but as I said...haven´t seen the movie yet.

Megatron

forestofthedead said...

This movie is so different than most horror films I've seen.

It reminds me more of the show Supernatural, which deals with small towns a lot, more than any movie.

People, watch this.