BURIED ALIVE
A film review by Ken Johnson
Copyright 1991 Ken Johnson
90 min, R, Horror, 1990 Director: Gerard Kikoine Cast: Robert Vaughn, Donald Pleasence, Karen Witter, John Carradine, Nia Long, Bill Butler, Ginger Lynn Allen
The film adaptation of some short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Karen Witter is hired by Robert Vaughn to come and work at the girls facility he runs called Ravenscroft. Girls start disappearing from Ravenscroft and the police assume that they have run away. Witter starts having weird dreams of a pulsating brick wall after she starts working at Ravenscroft. Witter also hears screams at night that no one else hears, are they real or her imagination.
There is no short story ever written by Edgar Allan Poe entitled "Buried Alive." The film BURIED ALIVE is a combination of Poe's stories "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Black Cat," and pieces of his other short stories. The film has almost nothing to do with the stories which it is "based on."
The only similarity that I could find between these stories I have just described and the film is that someone gets walled up by bricks in them. However if you are just looking for a horror film to see and are not looking for any of Poe's stories you might think about this movie. This film is part of a series of produced by Harry Alan Towers that are coming over from Italy. The only other films, that I know of, that are also coming over are THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (which is already in video stores) and THE HOUSE OF USHER. There are probably others. Don't get this film confused with the 1989 film BURIED ALIVE with Tim Matheson and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
The film is the last film by the late John Carradine, although he is not on the screen very much. If you are a diehard fan of John Carradine I don't think that is a good enough reason just to run out and see the film.
For the rating: for enjoyability I gave the film a four (out of five), for following Edgar Allan Poe I gave the film a zero. The film is a direct-to-video release, like THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM. BURIED ALIVE is rated R for explicit language, graphic violence, and female nudity.
Spoilers ahead
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"The Cask of Amontillado" is about a man (no name was ever given in the book) that was insulted by a wine connoisseur called Fortunado. The man lives with the insult for several years. He finally gives in to himself and tricks Fortunado into his wine vaults to taste some Amontillado. To make sure Fortunado comes, the man keeps on telling Fortunado if it is a great inconvenience he can always bring Luchesi, another wine connoisseur, to the Amontillado instead. Fortunado's greed won't let Luchesi go instead of him, even though he has a cold. The man brings Fortunado to his house and brings him into his wine vaults. The man offers Fortunado wine getting him very drunk as they go inside the vaults. When the man has Fortunado deep in his vaults he chains him up and bricks him in, tossing his torch in just before the last brick to make sure all the oxygen gets depleted.
"The Black Cat" is about this man (no name was ever given for him either) who is an alcoholic. His wife happens to love pets and has many. He abuses them when he is under the influence of the alcohol. An all black cat, which followed him home one day, he has found a liking for. Because of this he keeps from abusing the cat. One night in a drunken fury he grabs the cat and cuts out its eye. For many days the cat avoids him, but one night he catches the cat and hangs it in the garden. That night his house catches fire and he and his wife escape unharmed. On one of the outside walls is a white silhouette of the cat which he had hung. Following this, in their new apartment, an almost totally black cat shows up and takes up an immediate liking for the man's wife. The man however hates the cat because it is missing the same eye as their former cat. One night the man goes into the basement to kill the cat. His wife stops him and the man ends up killing her. He walls her up in his basement and then hunts for the cat, but cannot find it. After four days the police show up and want to know if they can search the house. The man, confident in the job he did of walling up his wife, allows them to make their search. When they are in the basement the man taps on the new wall showing the police how well the house is built. After the tapping a wailing cry comes from behind the wall and the police open it up and find the man's wife, who had already begun to decompose. The police also found the cat which caused the man's wife's death.
Carradine, I felt, gave a disappointing performance as Vaughn's dad, who experimented on Vaughn. Somehow the experimenting made Vaughn into a killing psycho, but why did he choose to wall people up? That, to the best of my knowledge, was never explained. Another problem is that the girls from Ravenscroft go into the basement to party and explore, yet none of them ever saw Carradine down in the basement. Witter saw Carradine when she went in the basement (the man in the wheelchair). The other thing that bothered me is that no one saw the new bricking in the basement, surely someone had to notice.
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