It's a World of Pure Imagination (or just unconventional zombies)

Having recently read Shock Value, the fine and thorough study of the men behind some of the latter 20th century’s most genre-defining films, I’ve come to the realization that I should really watch more films touched by Dan O’Bannon. 1981’s Dead and Buried comes with his name (among others) on the screenplay, plus it’s a Netflix Instant Watch, so fate was predetermined.


Of course, a little research (or informed opinions from the good people over at the Palavr forums) let me know that Dan O'Bannon had absolutely nothing to do with Dead and Buried, save for selling his name to smack on the title after the success of Alien. So that's that.

Quick Plot: We open on a beach in Potters Bluff with the very strange flirtation between a photographer and random blond, who figures a chance meeting with a man and his camera could guarantee a modeling career. It helps when you show him your boobs.

Unfortunately for the almost-lucky stranger (whom the blond insists on calling Freddy), the day isn’t quite as peachy as a naked beauty would lead you to believe. Just as he moves in for a kiss, a herd of townsfolk (including a young Robert Englund) knocks him out, dragging him to a post to burn him alive. 

Dating is HARD.

Elsewhere in town we meet Sheriff Dan Gillis as he investigates the mysterious death of the unidentified passerby. On hand to help (sorta) is the town mortician Dobbs, played with extreme grumpiness by Grandpa Joe himself, Jack Albertson. See, Dobbs loves his art of repairing mauled or burnt or blown apart faces, and the fact that his town keeps giving him closed casket funerals is like asking Gordon Ramsay to turn country fair winning pig meat into ballpark hot dogs.

When another non-Potters Bluffian is found dead, Gillis’ suspicions grow to extreme levels of scowling. You can’t blame him, especially when the barely surviving and hospitalized “Freddy” is murdered in his mummy body wrapped immobile state, only to later reappear as a cheerful gas station attendant. Throw in the slightly odd behavior of Gillis’ own wife (Flash Gordon’s Melody Anderson) and you have some eerie mystery building, 1980s small seaside town style.

Dead and Buried is an interesting little film, one that never seemed to find any cult status. On one hand, I can see why: while it has some surprising actors and a neat premise, it’s a slow trail. Then again, so is Dan O’Bannon frenemy John Carpenter’s The Fog, a film with a very similar tone and style and one of which I never quite understood the intense genre adoration for.

I don’t know that Dead and Buried is necessarily better than The Fog, but it might be just as good. There are some genuinely tense scenes--witness the nighttime shadow attack on a young family with the nerve to make a bathroom break in a mystery town--and lots of macabre humor, most of which comes courtesy of the hilariously crotchety Grandpa Joe and his pride in corpse transformation. The makeup effects are credited to Stan Winston, and while they certainly look makeup effecty, they also boast that late 70s/early 80s charm that marks a film with a specific time stamp so near and dear to many of our hearts.

Ultimately, Dead and Buried was a far more interesting film than I was expecting, although its slow pacing in revealing the not terribly well-kept secret certainly kept me from feeling overly impressed. Director Gary Sherman has an uneven but not boring resume, beginning with the enjoyable subway slaughter film Raw Meat and stretching through the not-as-bad-as-it-quite-is Poltergeist III. His touch on Dead and Buried works well, blending odd humor with horror in an effectively creepy village setting. The film dragged for me, but that’s probably more due to that halfway through it, I realized there was a new episode of Hell’s Kitchen AND the annual Miss Universe Pageant to watch. That will make anything feel too long.

High Points

The central death of the film--I won’t spoil whose--is done with an outstanding balance of horror and sadness

Low Points

While I liked the reveal of what’s been plaguing Potters Bluff, I found something lacking in how it unfolded. We already suspected most of the secret, but the ultimate explanation just seemed clumsy

Lessons Learned

Photographers don’t get famous in St. Louis

You can always count on a diner waitress to be named Midge. Also, for her to burn people alive

Shells = bullets

1980s Alert!

An attractive but ill-fated hitchhiker dares to hop into a grungy truck. Remember folks, VHS tapes were still new and kids back then didn’t have the luxury of watching so many horror movies that they learned important (or Doll’s House official) life lessons explaining the horrors of hitchhiking in a movie

Overacting Drunk Alert!

I just adore any actor with the guts to go all-out slurry. So thank you, dude playing a drunk in Dead and Buried. Thank. You.

Rent/Bury/Buy

I liked Dead and Buried quite a bit. I did. I just really wanted to watch living mannequins known as pageant girls parading in Barbie gowns while attempting to incorporate God into their 10 seconds of allowed non-quiet time. It’s one of my many fatal flaws. Hence, Dead and Buried doesn’t get the fairest shake from me, since I just really wanted it to end for reasons that weren’t *necessary* its fault. I did like this movie and recommend a viewing (probably just a rental/stream) so long as you’re in the mood for something early 80s, something slow, and something starring Grandpa Joe.

Lottos and Torture and Boars, Oh My!

The time has come.

Kind of.

On May 23rd, the world said goodbye to something very special. Scoff at unexplained physics, the mere presence of Nikki & Paulo, and the weekly questioning of “Why are you telling me this?” but for six years, LOST gave us a weekly viewing experience unlike anything else ever seen on television.

So how to fill that Hurley-sized void in your Island-less heart? One way ticket to Hawaii? Pricey. Enlistment in the Dharma Initiative? Perilous. New career as a con man/spinal surgeon/fertility doctor/rock star/protector of golden light? There has to be an easier way!

And naturally, there is and all you need are a few great horror movies. So dear Islanders and Tailies, Sideways inhabitants and Others, I give you a few key elements of your favorite ABC show and how you might fill them.

1. Terry O’Quinn

Even Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof couldn't let go of one of the industry’s longest underrated actors, a bald and enigmatic presence so vital to the universe that he took on a whole new role as Evil (maybe) Incarnate in the final two, post-dead John Locke seasons. So where does one go for that sparking blue-eyed smile that never quite feels right? The late 80s, naturally. In 1987’s The Stepfather (and its first sequel), O’Quinn plays--wait, who is he again? We’ll call him Jerry, the name he takes to woo a lovely widow and later, attempt to kill her and the family she has left. By far the second best way to see this charmer wield an oversized knife.

2. Torture

Sayid, you scamp! From the Iraqi National Guard to Sawyer’s fingernails, everyone’s favorite curly-haired loveboat was quite the expert when it came to inflicting pain. Life won’t quite be the same without his sad puppy dog eyes seeking validation or that petite Benjamin Linus accepting that sweaty fist in his cheek, but thanks to the 21st century trend of torture porn, you can at least pretend their spirits live on. Sure, you could go standard and find a cheap boxed set of Saw or Hostel, but why not make like Charles Widmore sipping aged scotch and go classy with the philosophical genre twisting Martyrs. Yes, you’ll have to read subtitles (unless you decide to wait for the American remake, brought to you by the people who made Twilight which is sure to be the best thing you can possibly ever in your life witness) and yes, the film isn’t for everyone, but much like Lost, Pascal Laugier’s Martyrs takes viewers on an ambiguous, poetic, and post-death journey (maybe) that happens to be accompanied by a whole lot of blood and beatings.

3. Crazy French Woman Trying to Steal Your Baby

Danielle Rousseau, we hardly knew ye, but one thing we were sure of was just how much you missed your little girl. Left alone for 16 years with nothing but surprisingly tame bangs and a rifle, this shipwrecked mother wanted nothing more than her child back in her arms...even if (briefly), she had to take someone else’s. Where to find that special mother with a hole in her heart? Easy: Inside. Beatrice Dalle’s La Femme. Basically, it’s the same exact thing. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

4. Surgeons Under the Influence

From Jack’s shaky pain medicated hands to his dad’s functional alcoholism, Lost was never a role model for hospital interns. Now that Dr. Shepard squared has gone on to a better, hopefully less accident-prone place, where will we fans ever find our illegal and falsified prescriptions of malpracticing hunks? Canada, naturally. In David Cronenberg’s 1988 masterpiece Dead Ringers, Jeremy Irons plays--whaddya know--two related gynecologists slowly slipping into a drug addicted depression. While wielding medical instruments. On women’s vaginas. Wow. This makes a mere 18-hour spinal cord rebuilding look like a romp on the beach.

5. Undoing the Past

“What happened, happened!” shouted so many an island survivor, but Lost’s final season tried awfully hard to put us in a reality where it didn’t. For a somewhat similar plot thread, check out 2004’sThe Butterfly Effect, an ambitiously flawed sci-fi love story of sorts that also shared a few random Lost ties: leading men temporarily bound to wheelchairs, likable dogs, surprise bombs with devastating results, and black-and-white journals that also serve as vouchers for time traveling.

6. Boars

John Locke instantly proved his worth by serving up porkchops his first week as a castaway, but Gary Oldman found himself on the wrong side of dinner when his wheelchair-bound--whoa! double link!--millionaire molester reunited with Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lector.

7. Smoke Monster

Gray precipitation that moistens the air and summons ghosts? Call your lawyer, John Carpenter! Though Smokey, aka The Man In Black When Mobile didn’t have a whole lot in common with the pirate ghoulies of 1980’s The Fog, there are plenty of random links: shipwrecks, radio towers, Maggie Grace (a few steps removed of course). But hey. It’s John Carpenter’s The Fog. Do you really need another reason?

8. The Lottery

Ever say to yourself “If my numbers would just come up, all my problems would be solved!” Then you watched Hugo “Hurley” Reyes lose his friends, grandfather, and sanity in a pile of green and said, “Well, A LOT of my other problems would still be solved!” Maybe you need a harsher lesson in the fickle nature of Lady Luck. If that’s the case, queue up Final Destination 2 for a reality check, where one newly minted motorcyclist learns the hard way that money may buy gold rings and frozen dinners, but it won’t pay off Death to spare you from an eye gouging via fire escape.

9. Plane Crash

First class or coach, passengers on Oceanic Flight 815 started the series with a horror movie of their own, a crash that had the nerve to menace them even on land (pity the poor sucked-into-engine pilot). For the big screen, few films have ever quite matched the chaotic horror of 1993’s Alive, a crash made all the more terrifying by the fact that it actually happened.

10. The Numbers

Though we never learned the true significance of 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42, just knowing such digits held mystical and/or electromagnet powers was enough to keep us constantly ruminating on their place in the world (and on our own lottery tickets). What better companion piece is there then, than Vincenzo Natali's low budget 1997 mystery Cube, a film which shares Lost’s penchant for ambiguity, mismatched people forced to work together, and characters named after something they vaguely represent (in this case, American prisons). Also, savvy mathematicians (which thankfully includes one of Cube’s leads) are quick to latch onto the numerals found inside each cubic doorway, decoding their meaning and thus providing Losies with their own fan-fiction fantasy answer involving square roots and booby traps.