DEAD AND BURIED

US, 1981, 85 minutes, Colour.
James Farentino, Jack Albertson, Melody Anderson, Lisa Blount.
Directed by Gary Sherman.

Dead And Buried is a macabre horror thriller. It is both ghastly and fascinating. It was directed by Gary Sherman who made the arresting English horror thriller Death Ride with Donald Pleasence and Christopher Lee. This film offered a subterranean semi-human culture - descendants of workers left underground in the late 19th. century in London. The American setting of this film is very similar to that of The Stepford Wives or The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The theme is also a variation on living dead and zombie films - the ordinary American town which is being transformed into controlled living dead. The cast is good, the special effects good and sometimes gruesome, the themes interestingly presented. A horror film for devotees of the genre.

1. Audience response to horror? Nightmares, fantasy, what if...? The ability to face nightmares? Shock, suspense, gruesome violence, terror, mystery?

2. The plausibility of the plot? The trappings of plausibility - the average American town e.g. in the credits and the establishing of the town? The gradual transformation of the ordinary town into an extraordinary and horrible town? The initial killings, the taking of photographs, Dobbs and his funeral parlour? The growing number of murders, the victims reappearing in mundane situations? The mystery of the investigation? Dan as police hero? The gradual build-up of horror? The shock ending? The implausibility of the ending ~ and throwing doubt on all that had preceded? Plausibility and atmosphere - especially while on the screen?

3. The background of voodoo and witchcraft and its being commented on in the film? The zombie legends? The living dead? The mythologies of past centuries updated? The technological 20th. century aspects for creating and preserving the living dead? Medicine, law, art? Human vanity and pride?

4. The strength of the basic horror idea - violent death, control of the heart, the reconstruction of the body, technological power, psychological power? The variation on the 'mad doctor' theme? The role of the zombies in the town - performing the usual functions of the average American citizen? The use of the horror devices and myths for an ironic comment on the quality of 20th. century American life?

5. The credits and the ordinary town? The photographer and his skills? The overtones of the sex film and the seduction? The sudden ugliness of the death and burning? The victim later found in the car alive? The murder of the fisherman? The family and their being chased and terrified in the house? The hitch-hiker and her murder? The irony of these people appearing alive again?

6. The picture of the killers - ordinary people, gloating over death, the ugly violence, the photography? Seeing them in their ordinary occupations and knowing they were killers? Seeing them in operation? Their all gathering at the end?

7. Dan and the ordinary policeman hero? His training, his home town? The humour with his secretary and her phone calls? His assistants? Investigating the murders - and the overtones of the police thriller? The discussions with Dobbs and the theories about death, embalming? The ordinariness of his home life? His gradual suspicions of his wife - and being proven wrong? (And the audience being taken in with him?) His following through the investigations, the telex about Dobbs. the digging up of the grave. the discovery of the hearts? The confrontation with Dobbs? The truth about his wife? The truth about himself? The strength of the character portrayal for being the central focus of the film?

8. His wife and her attractiveness, life at home, love for her husband? Her teaching and her comments about voodoo and witchcraft? Suspicions being allayed? The irony of seeing her in the film at the end? Her killing of her husband? The discovery that she was a zombie under Dobbs' control? The eeriness of this transformation?

9. Dobbs and his fussiness, his focus on his work, his explanations, the madness of his talk? His assistant? The hitch-hiker and his transforming her? His control? The truth about his past? His engineering his own death? His bringing himself back to life? His control even of Dan? The mad doctor?

10. The gallery of characters in the town - the photographer transformed to the service station assistant, the woman in the cafe, the doctor helping and his being transformed, the headmaster, the fisherman? The range of ordinary people and their appearing as living dead at the end?

11. The sinister aspects of American small town life?

12. Insight via the horror film and its conventions into evil, power, control?