Revenant Review Extras 3: The one where everybody's dead

 

Title: Dead And Buried

What Year?: 1981

Classification: Prototype/ Anachronistic Outlier

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the course of this feature, it’s never to say when I’m going to “end” something. Still, I finally feel like I’ve come to the point where I can say “one more, once”, just to round out the numbers. That left me with one last slot, and I found I had no trouble thinking of entries to fill it without simply becoming overwhelmed. My final choice was one that had been at the edge of consideration all along, from the middle of the late 1970s-mid ‘80s period I had focused on, yet never quite made it into the lineup. I finally gave it a look, and decided it was indeed the one to cover. With that, I present Dead and Buried, a very odd zombie movie that somehow still fades into the background.

Our story begins with a photographer on a scenic beach who is approached by a beautiful woman, only to be brutally attacked by a mob. We then meet our hero, a small-town sheriff named Dan investigating the same attack as a fiery car crash, and his lovely, perky wife Janet. While the sheriff gets nowhere, we meet more of the locals, including an undertaker who views every death as an opportunity to make his customer look better than new. Meanwhile, several more bodies pile up as the townspeople murder visitors with no obvious provocation, and soon, a few new citizens move in. After witnessing the tail end of one of their attacks, the sheriff realizes that the attackers are most of the town, and their victims are being returned to life. Soon, the trail leads him to a deeper truth: Many or most of his friends and constituents are already undead- including his wife!

Dead And Buried is a 1981 horror film directed by Gary Sherman, from a script credited to Alien screenwriters Dan O’Bannon (see Lifeforce, Dark Star, etc.) and Ronald Shusett. O’Bannon later stated that he had only provided limited input on an existing script by Shusett, with little if any impact on the finished film. The film starred James Farentino and Melody Anderson as the sheriff and his wife, with Jack Anderson as the undertaker Dobbs and Robert Englund as one of the townspeople. Special effects were provided by Stan Winston. The finished film was distributed by AVECO Embassy (see The Manitou), with a box office estimated at $216,000. A novelization was written by Chelsea Quinn Yarboro. The movie received an evidently successful release on VHS, and has remained both well-reviewed and readily available. As of this writing, it is available for free streaming on Amazon Prime.

For my personal experiences, my main recollection of this film is simply tripping over it while I was looking for other movies that were of more interest at the time, especially the now-unquestioned classic Dead of Night. At some point, I grudgingly decided to watch it, and though I never disliked it, it has continued to stir up a sense of vague annoyance that it certainly doesn’t deserve. What has built up even more over time is a more acute than usual sense of déjà vu common to the “runnerup”, except this time the movies it most strongly calls to mind are unquestionably from later in the timeline: The power-mad reanimators of Dead Heat and Chopper Chicks In Zombietown; the grizzled hero and over-the-top violence of Evil Dead; the horridly decayed revenants of Heavy Metal and the Return of the Living Dead franchise; the murderous townsfolk of Hard Rock Zombies; even the general despair of Shatter Dead. At a certain point, the film itself becomes a conundrum. On one hand, it clearly anticipated or actually influenced a great many films in the following years (plausibly through O’Bannon, notwithstanding his efforts to distance himself from it). On the other, it never really stood out from the pack, even if it was ahead of most of them. In my analysis, I decided a review was in order just to give it a fair shake it never got, least of all from me.

Moving to the actual film, the foremost thing to say is that almost every aspect of the production is better than it needs to be. There’s very good acting and dialogue, without any gimmicky “big name” casting. The cinematography and camerawork are even better, providing tension and a certain level of emotional involvement. The one thing that might be counted a disappointment is the quite limited gore effects, but this only goes to show that the genre was doing just fine before such things became a staple. The big qualifier is that there are definitely major issues with the story. There’s never any real question that the vast majority of the townspeople are in on the various murders, and most of the attacks occur without the victim putting up enough of a fight to test their capabilities. Numerous further plot holes are created by the discovery that they are themselves undead, including several “clues” that could easily have been erased, without the sense of ambiguity that redeems lesser movies like The Child and Tourist Trap. (If I’m using those as good examples, you know we’re in trouble…) Ultimately, almost everything really interesting is crammed into the finale, which is superb yet somehow oddly predictable, though that at least can be put down to the movie’s own success.

More than usual, the most intriguing aspect of the film is the undead, and these are a very unusual lot. It is implied that they are created by a combination of science and black magic, but there is no effort to flash out the kind of pseudo-rationalization that is almost always unneeded.  We only see one of them actually created, a revived victim who simply gets up from the undertaker’s table and walks out. Whatever their origin, these revenants are evidently “normal” in their intelligence and abilities, though the question is gradually raised how much of this is reasoned action or rote memory and behavior. The main point for autonomy is the murders, which don’t serve any obvious purpose or give them any particular pleasure. When Dobbs is unmasked as their maker, he frankly recounts that they require regular attention to remain presentable. He holds up Janet as his finest creation, with the further remark, “She could go three weeks, a month!” The following confrontation with Janet herself is the clearest indication of the creatures’ mental life, at first cheerfully oblivious, then histrionic in her despair.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I’m going to go with one I didn’t remember. At about the 45-minute mark, the sheriff witnesses one of the attacks. As he moves to investigate, he accidentally hits one of the townspeople. He stops to examine the victim, then whirls around at a jump scare. What we see is easily the best and most gruesome effect in the film, a severed arm lodged in the grill of his vehicle. We get a closer view, which makes it fairly obvious that the prop is lashed in place with a convenient rag. Still the motion and detail are very convincing. That’s when the “victim” rises and stuns the sheriff. The true horror and hilarity comes when the revenant grabs the arm and runs off almost sheepishly into the fog. It’s one of many moments that aren’t really explained, or easily reconciled with what we do learn, yet it is one with a payoff that outweighs the problems.

In conclusion, after going through this review, I can see why this movie has retained a following, but I also remain quite satisfied with my decision not to cover it previously. It is above all a transitional film, bridging the gap between low-tech parables of the 1970s and the conceptual high strangeness of the 1980s. Considered on its own merits, it remains impressive yet frustrating. It is by all means a well-made film that deserved more recognition. Still, it could surely have been a good deal better, especially considering the talent that was brought to bear. To me, it remains indelibly lower tier, at least as good as many films without being any more memorable or entertaining than quite a few that are otherwise inferior. Reviewing it as an “extra” was truly the most fitting thing I could have done, and more fitting still as the one to wrap this up. With that, I am finally calling this done. “You never know…”