The Premature Burial

The wealthy cataleptic painter Guy Carrell (Ray Milland) believes that he overheard his father, who also had catalepsy, crying in the crypt of his family when he was a kid and is obsessed by the fear of being buried alive. He leaves his fiancée Emily Gault (Hazel Court) and lives alone with his sister Kate Carrell (Heather Angel) in the family manor. However Emily seeks him out and convinces Guy to marry her, despite the disapproval of Kate, promising that she would never bury him without the certainty of his death by her friend, Dr. Miles Archer (Richard Ney), and her father Dr. Gideon Gault (Alan Napier).

After the wedding, Guy does not travel in honeymoon to Venice, as he had promised to Emily, and builds a crypt with safety devices to avoid that he is trapped alive inside. However Emily and Miles convince him to demolish the building. Guy has nightmares and visions with the gravediggers and weird events happen in the mansion. He decides to prove that is cured of his fear and opens his father grave, but someone has moved his skeleton and Guy is diagnosed of heart attack. However he is catatonic indeed and is buried alive as he has always feared. Will be the end of Guy? Who might have caused the shock on Guy?

"Premature Burial" is a creepy tale of paranoid obsession and madness, with good scenarios and locations and good acting. Ray Milland is a great actor but does seem to be miscast for the role of Guy Carrell that should be of an insane man instead of so dramatic. The conclusion is disappointing with the overprotective Kate disclosing the mystery after killing her insane brother. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): Not Available on VHS / DVD / Blu-Ray

I think this is a very underrated little horror film even among Roger Corman's own directorial output. This stems, perhaps, from the fact that Ray Milland steps in for Vincent Price here, making it the odd one out among the series of Corman's Poe adaptations.

Ray Milland must have seemed a rather offbeat choice at the time given his reputation of being one of Hollywood's most charming and debonair leading man. In hindsight, however, he gives the role of the paranoid and cataleptic Guy Correll a wounded vulnerability which Vincent Price would have had trouble in bringing out (without resorting to camp). This is evident when one compares two similar roles played by Price in PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961), in which he overdid the fainting bit, and his later, admirably subdued performance in THE TOMB OF LIGEIA (1964). To his credit, Milland - who was at his best in such light but sophisticated comedies as EASY LIVING (1939), ARISE, MY LOVE (1940), THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR (1942) and KITTY (1945) - did not consider such roles as being beneath him and consequently gave them his all. As a matter of fact, he considered his subsequent role for Corman, that of Dr. James Xavier in X – THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES (1963), to be his second best after his Oscar-winning turn for Billy Wilder in THE LOST WEEKEND (1945)! I sure would like to get a chance to see Ray Milland in his three other notable 'horror' films: THE UNINVITED (1944), ALIAS NICK BEAL (1949) and (directing himself) PANIC IN YEAR ZERO (1962).

As for the film itself, I admit that having just watched PIT AND THE PENDULUM, PREMATURE BURIAL and (fairly recently) HOUSE OF USHER (1960) in quick succession, the repetition in the story-lines (catalepsy and premature entombment), not to mention in the art direction (recycled sets), does tend to get rather tiresome. Nevertheless, PREMATURE BURIAL, while perhaps not among Corman's best work, is engaging enough to repay repeated viewings (this has been my third time round).

This is the only film in Corman's Poe cycle without Vincent Price. He chose instead Ray Milland as the man haunted by fear of being buried alive. In fact Milland portrays the protagonist more "seriously" than Price would have, or more "realisticaly". This is a good film for those who like the subject. Some critics have talked about films filled with fascination with death, quoting some times "Obsession" by Brian de Palma, for example. But if there is a "necrophiliac" film ever, this is "Premature Burial". Loosely based in Edgar Allan Poe's unfilmable tale, it has a magnificent plot and many hints and blinks. It is a disturbing film, too. Its atmosphere is perfectly gloomy. Milland seems genuinely tormented by his fears, and he delivers some modified Poe lines with intensity. I think that this picture is in the better half of the Poe cycle, and has a particular quality of its own.

Intensely gloomy it may be, but an impressive example how a determined cinematic stylist can make a real virtue of a low budget. This was the third of director Roger Corman's AIP chillers based on Poe stories, and the only one not to star Vincent Price. Here, Ray Milland is the protagonist whose family history of catalepsy makes him fear burial alive.

Entirely shot on the sound stage, Corman and his regular art director Danial Haller have created a wonderfully expressionist garden of gnarled trees and shrubs wreathed with dry ice. Even the interior of Milland's mansion seems like a grave, notably in the scene where Hazel Court and Richard Bull take tea in a drawing room with wood-panelled walls, dark green wallpaper, with the dead tree pressing oppressively against the windows.

A number of other directorial touches make even this relatively minor Corman effort a winner. Court's shadow passing phantom-like over the sleeping Milland. The sudden shock moments when the sinister gravediggers Sweeny and Moe appear. And the blue-suffused dream-sequence in which Milland hallucinates the fate he fears most is quite masterfully shot, cut and scored (Ronald Stein).

A dark, dank little gem.

With Vincent Price busy elsewhere, Roger Corman shoveled the dirt on Ray Milland for this adaptation of Poe's "The Premature Burial." A bit too mature for the role, Milland nonetheless gives a good account of himself as an artist convinced that he'll meet the same fate as many of his ancestors by being buried alive. This movie offers some fairly useful tips for those who have a similar fear, but after watching it you might agree with me that cremation is the way to go.

Corman keeps things nice and creepy throughout, and your skin is sure to crawl at the appropriate moments. This is no match for the director's magnificent "Pit and the Pendulum," but it's an above-average horror flick recommended for everyone but the ghouls employed in the funeral industry.