Dead & Buried

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Dead & Buried
Directed by Gary Sherman
Produced by Robert Fentress
Richard R. St. Johns
Ronald Shusett
Written by Short Story Author:
Alex Stern
Jeff Millar
Screenwriters:
Ronald Shusett
Dan O'Bannon
Starring James Farentino
Melody Anderson
Jack Albertson
Dennis Redfield
Nancy Locke
Robert Englund
Music by Joe Renzetti
Cinematography Steven Poster
Editing by Alan Balsam
Distributed by Avco Embassy Pictures
Release dates May 29, 1981
Running time 92 min.
Country United States
Language English

Dead & Buried is a 1981 horror film directed by Gary Sherman, starring Melody Anderson and James Farentino. With a screenplay written by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, the movie was initially banned as a "video nasty" in the UK in the early 1980s, but was later acquitted of obscenity charges and removed from the Director of Public Prosecutions' list.

The movie was subsequently novelized by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. In a 1983 interview with Starburst promoting Blue Thunder, O'Bannon disowned the film (he claimed that Shusett had written the script by himself but needed O'Bannon's name on the project, and promised he would make some changes; on seeing the finished film O'Bannon realised that Shusett had done nothing of the sort, but it was too late for him to take his name off the credits).

Plot

James Farentino stars as Dan Gillis, sheriff of the small New England coastal town of Potter's Bluff. In the film's opening scene, a mob of townspeople attempt to kill a visiting photographer. He is beaten, tied to a post then set on fire. He survives and is taken to a hospital, where he is murdered just out of sight of the sheriff and the doctor.

More visitors are murdered by the townspeople. Sheriff Gillis, assisted by Dobbs, the local coroner-mortician (Jack Albertson), works hard to discover the motive for the killings. Gillis becomes increasingly disconcerted as a grisly death occurs every day. In each case, the killers photograph the victims as they are murdered.

The film's creepiness is enhanced by the audience knowing the identity of the killers, nearly all of whom are friends of Gillis. Gillis' wife Janet (Melody Anderson) has suspicious reasons for her own frequent nocturnal disappearances.

Gillis accidentally hits someone with his squad car following an attack. On the grill of his car, Gillis finds the twitching severed arm of the accident victim, who attacks him and flees with the arm. After the attack, Gillis scrapes some flesh from the vehicle and takes it to the local doctor, who tells him that the tissue sample has been dead approximately four months.

Gillis grows suspicious of Dobbs and conducts a background check. He discovers that Dobbs was formerly the chief pathologist in Providence, Rhode Island, until he was dismissed 10 years ago for conducting unauthorized autopsies in the county morgue.

It is revealed that Dobbs has developed a secret technique for reanimating the dead, and all of the townspeople are reanimated corpses under his control. Dobbs considers himself an "artist" who uses his zombies to murder the living in order to create more corpses on which to practice his reanimation technique.

The Sheriff is unaware that he is also one of the living dead, having been murdered some time ago by his undead wife under Dobbs' orders. Gillis notices his hands decomposing, and Dobbs asks to examine them.

Cast

Critical reception

AllMovie wrote, "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",[1] but complimented its "blend of creepy atmosphere and gruesome shocks."[2]

References

  1. ↑ Guarisco, Donald. "Dead and Buried (1981) - Review - AllMovie". AllMovie. Retrieved 12 August 2012. 
  2. ↑ Guarisco, Donald. "Dead and Buried (1981)". AllMovie. Retrieved 12 August 2012. 

External links

Films directed by Gary Sherman
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
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