Director: Roger Corman
Year: 1962
Rating: 7.0
I expect all of us have had moments when we woke in the middle of the night
in the total dark, disoriented, short of breath and held prisoner from our
tangled blankets - and wondered where we were and whether we were alive or
dead or buried deep into the moist earth. It is a natural fear or should
be. This was the third collaboration between Roger Corman and Edgar Allen
Poe in a series of films that was to extend to eight. The short story by
Poe is terrific and creepy though a far throw from the script of this one.
Poe always seems to be at his best when he utilizes inner narrative from
the perspective of a person near insanity or over the edge. Perhaps because
he was. In this story the narrator is terrified of being buried alive and
tries to anticipate every contingency if that should happen.
From this premise comes this wonderfully atmospheric Gothic tale of absolute
fear and paranoia. Since the set basically consists of one mansion always
beset by an invading permanent malicious fog Corman was able to use his limited
budget to make everything look sumptuous and yet at the same time claustrophobic.
In seven of the eight Poe adaptations Corman turned to Vincent Price who
had become the Master of Horror by this time, but a production snafu led
to Corman choosing Ray Milland as the protagonist.
Milland who had been a leading man for decades was a bit down on his luck
not having made a great film since 1954's Dial M for Murder and was now doing
a lot of TV though his nadir still lay ahead with The Man with the X-Ray
Eyes, Frogs and The Thing with Two Heads. He had the curse of aging rather
badly and by this time in his mid-50's he looked much older while other leading
men like Cary Grant and Gary Cooper remained romantic leading men until they
were 60.
Milland as Guy Carrell is obsessively frantically terrified that he will
be buried alive because he is sure his father was - from a state of catalepsy
- appearing dead but being fully conscious - which in fact there have been
numerous cases of. He has a sister (Heather Angel, who had been quite the
dish back in the 1930's when she starred as Bulldog Drummond's girlfriend
in a number of films) who looks after him and a new bride who oddly loves
him. She is Hazel Court, one of the great damsels of horror films from the
50's and 60's. Also on hand is her character's father played by Alan Napier
(Alfred in the Batman TV series) and as one of the gravediggers Dick Miller
who starred in Corman's infamous A Bucket of Blood.
The film moves slowly, in no rush to get to the end as it piles on the melancholy
and the mournful mood - is he as crazy as a loon or not? All leading to a
lovely final 20 minutes of resolution. I have of course prepared myself with
instructions to bury me with a phone, a nice selection of music to play,
my Kindle and of course food and water. Because the phone might not work.
