Dead & Buried (1981)

A suspense horror film set in a small coastal town where, after a series of gory murders commited by mobs of townspeople against visiting tourists, the corpses begin to come back to life.

Director:

Gary Sherman (as Gary A. Sherman)

Writers:

Jeff Millar (story), Alex Stern (story)

Stars:

James Farentino, Melody Anderson, Jack Albertson

2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
James Farentino	...	Sheriff Dan Gillis
Melody Anderson	...	Janet Gillis
Jack Albertson	...	William G. Dobbs
Dennis Redfield	...	Ron
Nancy Locke	...	Linda (as Nancy Locke Hauser)
Lisa Blount	...	Girl on the Beach / Nurse Lisa
Robert Englund	...	Harry
Bill Quinn	...	Ernie
Michael Currie	...	Herman
Christopher Allport	...	George Le Moyne / Freddie
Joseph G. Medalis	...	Doctor (as Joe Medalis)
Macon McCalman	...	Ben
Lisa Marie	...	Hitchhiker
Estelle Omens	...	Betty
Barry Corbin	...	Phil

Storyline

Sheriff Dan Gillis has a nice life with his wife, the teacher Janet Gillis, in the small coastal and friendly town of Potter's Bluff. When visitors are mysterious killed in the town, Sheriff Gillis investigates the cases carefully and finds that dead people are reanimating and coming back to life. Dan finds a book of witchcraft and voodoo in his wife's drawer and he suspects that she might be practicing black magic. Dan meets the coroner-mortician William G. Dobbs and learns the dreadful and surprising secret.

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Plot Keywords:

extreme violence | zombie | murder investigation | screaming | photographer | 

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Taglines:

A new dimension in horror...

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Genres:

Horror | Mystery

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

9 October 1981 (USA)

Also Known As:

Look Alive

Filming Locations:

Goldwyn Studios - 1041 N Formosa Avenue, West Hollywood, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$3,000,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Barclays Mercantile Industrial Finance

Technical Specs

Runtime:

94 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The shot where Paul Haskel (Robert Boler) pulls into the gas station next to Sheriff Dan Gillis (James Farentino) was shot from inside Dan's Jeep, and required the crew to build a track across the inside of the vehicle for the camera to move.

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Goofs

The hitchhiker can be seen as a zombie before she is actually killed, reconstructed and brought back to life. This is because the abandoned house scene - where she is clearly visible as one of the dead townfolk - was originally placed in the film after her resurrection.

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Quotes

Janet Gillis: Dan, I'm dead! Please bury me!

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Alternate Versions

Although the original UK cinema version was uncut this film was undeservedly caught up in the British video nasties hysteria in the early eighties, and consequently did not receive an official British video certificate until 1990. Illegally circulated copies of the film, followed by successful prosecutions under the Obscene Publications Act, forced the BBFC to edit 30 seconds from the movie with most cuts being made to the opening burning scene and a brief sequence of a bandaged patient being stabbed in the eye with a syringe. The BBFC fully waived all the edits for the 1999 Polygram video and all subsequent releases are fully uncut.

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Connections

Referenced in Nekromantik (1987)

User Reviews

Cult movie with pleasingly effective moments, but lots of logic loopholes.

In Potter's Bluff, a quiet coastal town in America, a photographer is seduced by a young woman but just as he is about to have sex with her on the beach, a bunch of local thugs turn up and burn him alive. But this horrific opening only turns out to be the tip of the iceberg, when a few scenes later the very same photographer is seen working at a local gas station - very alive, very happy, and with not a single burn scar on his body! The local cop finds it strange too; in fact, the whole town seems to be full of people who were dead recently and are now very much alive. There's even a character who loses an arm in a car accident, but simply picks up the severed limb and runs off.... apparently suffering from no pain at all!

Dead & Buried has an enjoyably dumb resolution (I won't spoil things, but let's just say that the local mortician has been experimenting with the dead). It also has some genuinely effective scares and infrequent but powerful gore scenes. Leading actor James Farentino is a bit of a bore, but Jack Albertson is wonderful in an atypical role as the cranky old mortician. Stan Winston's makeup effects are suitably gruesome, and some of the killings are imaginatively handled. There are some logic loopholes, though, which seriously mar the film. The twist ending in which Farentino makes a chilling discovery about himself doesn't really make sense and is a good example of scripter's trying to be too smart for themselves - and merely tying themselves up into knots. However, misjudgements aside, Dead & Buried is a goofy and entertaining early '80s spine-tingler.