Buried Alive (1962)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Buried alive |
| Original title | Premature Burial |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1962 |
| length | 81 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Roger Corman |
| script |
Charles Beaumont Ray Russell |
| production | Roger Corman Samuel Z. Arkoff |
| music |
Ronald Stein Les Baxter |
| camera | Floyd Crosby |
| cut | Ronald Sinclair |
| occupation | |
| |
Buried Alive is an American horror film directed by Roger Corman from 1962 and produced by American International Pictures . The work is based on the short story The Premature Burial of the writer Edgar Allan Poe and is assigned to the genre of B-Movie . The central theme of the film is taphephobia , the fear of being buried alive .
content
The wealthy Guy Carrell lives secluded in his large estate with his wife Emily Gault and his sister Kate. Emily worries about her husband's mental health, who fears nothing more than to be buried alive one day. He is convinced that his father was once inadvertently buried alive in the family crypt on the property , as he was supposed to have heard the house's unsuccessful calls for help. Emily therefore invites the psychologist Miles Archer, who she has known for a long time, to visit, so that this guy can convince and cure the unfounded phobia. There are several signs of a closer bond between Emily and Miles, who is younger than Guy. At the gathering, it turns out that Guy had already made arrangements in his own way to meet his fear. He has had a mausoleum built on the spacious property , in which he wishes to be buried one day. This mausoleum was equipped with numerous technical aids to guarantee that Guy can escape his grave should he actually be buried alive: an easy-to-open coffin, easy-to-open doors, emergency exits through the wall and over the roof, alarm bells, Food supplies and - just in case - poison in a cup. Although Miles tries to convince him otherwise, Guy believes that the existence of his mausoleum has freed himself from his fear. He learns that this is not the case through a nightmare in which all aids and rescue options in his mausoleum remain ineffective and he gradually threatens to perish. Even the goblet of poison with which he tried to commit suicide as a last resort is empty.
After this traumatic experience, Guy is persuaded by Miles to take longer therapy to treat his fears. Among other things, he has his mausoleum torn down and has several conversations with Miles, after which his condition appears to be improving. Even when, while taking a walk with his wife through the gloomy property, he thinks he hears a melody that his father's gravedigger, Sweeney and Mole, had whistled repeatedly, it does not upset him, even when he is one of them in the Believes to see night at the window of his bedroom. But his fears soon return at an evening company with Emily, whose father Dr. Gault, Miles and Kate back. Guy hears the pleading meow of a cat stuck in the partitions of the house but saved by Miles. Miles then convinces him to finally overcome his phobia by descending into the family crypt to open his father's grave and convince himself that he was not buried alive. In the crypt , Guy discovers that the key to his father's grave has disappeared. So he forcibly opens the door to the grave with a crowbar, whereupon his father's skeleton falls on him and he collapses motionless.
In the salon, Dr. Gault records the death of his son-in-law after neither pulse, breathing nor heartbeat can be felt. Miles is initially not convinced by the diagnosis and conducts an experiment on Guy in which he tries to elicit a sign of life from the body by means of small-dose electric shocks . But after this too was unsuccessful, he too has to discover the death of Guy, who has apparently succumbed to cardiac arrest. In fact, Guy is paralyzed after the shock in the crypt and is no longer capable of any body agitation. Only when he is lowered into an earth grave in the coffin at his funeral, although he never wanted to, can he move his eyelids, which, however, goes unnoticed by the mourners, as earth is immediately poured onto the window of his coffin by the two grave graves who had already buried his father.
On the evening of the funeral, Emily, whose father Dr. Gault, Miles and Kate invite them to mourn the property together. Unnoticed by the other three, Dr. Gault the two gravedigger the exhumation of the body of his son-in-law, because he wants to do scientific experiments with him. But when the coffin is uncovered again, Guy, who has now come back to life, emerges from it and kills both gravedigger. Then he kills his father-in-law in the basement of the house by electrifying him with Miles' electronic equipment. Through the window of his bedroom, Guy witnesses an intimate conversation between Emily and Miles that confirms his suspicion that Emily and her father deliberately tried to murder him. When Miles, alerted by the housekeeper, went into the basement to find the dead Dr. To find Gault, Guy uses the moment to reveal himself to his wife, who then passes out . Guy intends to bury her alive in his grave, which he almost did when Miles arrives at the grave. Although Guy is convinced that Miles had nothing to do with the plot against him, a fight breaks out between the two, as Miles believes Guy has become schizophrenic and wrongly suspected Emily. Before Miles can be killed by Guy with a spade, he is shot at the last moment by his sister Kate. It's too late for Emily too, she has suffocated in her impotence on the earth with which Guy buried her face.
To his horror, Miles learns that Emily actually intended to murder her husband by burying him alive. As proof of this, the key to Guy's father's grave can be found on her necklace, which now makes it clear that she was responsible for the preparation of the skeleton that fell on Guy when the crypt was opened, as well as for her husband's imaginations - the eerie whistled melody and the cat in the wall - was responsible. Apparently her father and the two gravedigger were involved in obtaining Guy's great legacy. Miles also learns from Kate that he is indirectly involved in the situation. After the mausoleum was destroyed, he told Emily about the phenomenon of apparent death , which particularly affects people who, like Guy, suffer from psychological anxiety, and that often only one particularly shocking experience is necessary for the person concerned to cause an apparent death. The silent but attentive Kate had followed this conversation, as well as the murder plot based on it between Emily and her father, secretly. Kate ultimately shot her brother in order to finally release him from his suffering. Both then leave the place, driven by feelings of guilt.
Reviews
"A macabre horror film made with skilful color dramaturgy and artificial décor, in which Roger Corman once again relies on Edgar Allan Poe's motifs."
Remarks
- Buried alive is the only one of Roger Corman's eight Poe films in which the main character is not played by his main actor Vincent Price .
- The American TV production Buried alive (Buried Alive) from 1990 with Jennifer Jason Leigh is also based, albeit very clear on the work of Edgar Allan Poe.
Web links
- Buried alive in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Buried alive in the German dubbing files