Dead & Buried (1981)
(In French, On Cable TV, March 2021) Lulled into a false sense of familiarity by Dead & Buried’s first third, I almost missed the film’s swerve into far weirder territory — I’ve seldom seen a horror film improve so definitely in its last act. At first, it feels like the type of folk horror movie we’ve seen countless times — the creepy isolated village that murders tourists in some sort of pagan ritual nonsense. But as our sheriff-hero starts investigating the murders, the film becomes something a bit more interesting — the atmosphere becomes more sharply defined, and there’s clearly another plot at work. I was reminded of the much-later Silent Hill films by the time the entire plot was uncovered, the special effects (thanks to Stan Winston) became more gruesome and the film’s horror graduated from dull slasher to body horror undead reanimation with a side of reality-warping. Director Gary Sherman doesn’t do much, but all is explained when you find out that the screenwriter is Ronald Shusett of Alien fame — the script isn’t up to that level, but it’s better than usual. That doesn’t mean that Dead & Buried is a good movie — it’s too slow to rev up into something interesting, and by the time it does, it’s almost too late anyway. But the final ten minutes are not the ten minutes you may have imagined from the first ten minutes, and that’s almost too rare a compliment in early 1980s horror. Anyone willing to give it a try should be wary of the first hour — Dead & Buried gets better after that.
