The Premature Burial

Solid, well crafted entry in producer / director Roger Corman's cycle of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations that's an effective exercise in psychological horror as well as more traditional kinds of horror (such as we see in the nightmare sequence, for example). It shows just how badly one's life can be affected by an unhealthy obsession.

Corman initially tried to get Vincent Price for the lead, needing to switch to Ray Milland instead. While the casting of Milland may have seemed odd at the time, the esteemed, Oscar winning actor would go on to make appearances in other genre and schlock movies in the future. Milland offers a mostly understated performance as the tormented Guy Carrell, medical student and painter who can't get his supposed legacy and phobia of being entombed alive out of his mind. Meanwhile, good friend Miles (Richard Ney), new wife Emily (beautiful genre vixen Hazel Court), and sister Kate (Heather Angel) grow increasingly concerned over his behaviour.

Working with his consistently reliable production design / cinematography team of Daniel Haller and Floyd Crosby, Corman is able to create very effective atmosphere for the production, and the 2.35:1 aspect ratio allows him to pack the frame with detail, and he also continues the practise of creating depth to the images. The music by the great Ronald Stein would be enjoyable enough on its own, but it's supplemented by the repeated refrain of the "Molly Malone" melody, whether it's whistled or played on the piano.

Milland does some delicious work here, particularly in the sequence where Guy is showing Emily and Miles all the safeguards he's put in place in case of his being "buried alive". The excellent cast also includes Alan Napier as Emily's doctor father (who utters one of the best lines, "I never enjoy myself, I merely experience greater and lesser amounts of tedium."), and John Dierkes & Corman regular Dick Miller as the unsavoury grave diggers.

The script by Charles Beaumont and Ray Russell has a very literate quality, and Milland gives his dialogue all of the gravitas that he can muster.

While this wouldn't rank among the best of Corman's Poe series (that honour would have to go to "House of Usher" and "The Masque of the Red Death"), it's still very respectable and fun viewing for classic horror fans.

Seven out of 10.

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.

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