--- SPOILERS ---
"Dead & Buried"... I had read the novelization of this movie when I was a teenager in the mid-eighties and I remember being grossed out the hard way then. The beautiful opening moments, that sexy girl on the beach, the brutal attack occurring suddenly, a village lost in the fog, all those gruesome murders, the shocking final twist... It was a very nice and grabbing horror book written by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, in a pure Stephen King style.
Jumping on the Blu Ray release of "Dead & Buried" out of nostalgia, I was looking forward to feel the same shock before my screen... well, it didn't happen. That's strange : I feel the novelization of the original script is more frightening than the movie based on that script itself ! How can that happen ?
Well, the movie is, to me, a mixed bag. The book was not, because it focused on the criminal investigation led by Sheriff Dan Gillis (demotivated and implausible TV star James Farentino in the film). In the book, you can feel, page by page, the stubbornness and competence of that sheriff evolving into confusion and anguish because of the strange events occurring .... and because of his wife's odd behavior, turning from loving and chilled out to spooky and unsettling.
The movie doesn't explore this feeling at all. Good horror flicks need to have a sort of "blur" zone where nothing is revealed at once, just suggested. Not here : the movie spoils itself from the very beginning. For example, the point of the film is that the viewer *must* understand after 10 minutes that the town folks are a big part of the problem... OK, no big deal, that's a viable option, but then, why focusing on poor lonely Sheriff Gillis who spend his time driving around the village with his concerned face all day long, going nowhere, picking up dead bodies one after the other and doing nothing serious to keep things moving ? He's even losing a fleeing suspect during an overlong and not scary chase-in-the-dark sequence that leads nowhere.
He doesn't even react professionally to the murder occurring in the hospital room, during the infamous needle-in-the-eye sequence, when every cop on Earth would have locked down the place and call for support to interrogate everybody, patients included. And let's not mention that silly haunted house sequence with the usual "poor lost family from the city".
And the final twist, to mention it briefly without spoiler, so very astonishing and uneasy in the book, happens in the movie to be completely illogical and couldn't make less sense than there.
Ms. Yarbro could handle holes like these in her novelization because, I guess, she could use the number of pages to work it out, fix broken links, put some flesh on things... but in the motion picture, these plot problems tend to invade the screen and bother viewers.
The film has highlights, though. The opening sequence, both erotic and dreadful in the book, is totally grasping on screen, thanks to gorgeous Lisa Blount and an excellent music and cinematography. The city atmosphere is really scary, with all that fog, this big horn sound in the distance, the gray appearance of houses and streets... Shocking gore details still hold up after all those years, thanks to the genius of great Stan Winston.
So my advice would be : go for eBay search engine and try to purchase an old copy of the book, forget about buying the damn thing on DVD or BR.
"Dead & Buried"... I had read the novelization of this movie when I was a teenager in the mid-eighties and I remember being grossed out the hard way then. The beautiful opening moments, that sexy girl on the beach, the brutal attack occurring suddenly, a village lost in the fog, all those gruesome murders, the shocking final twist... It was a very nice and grabbing horror book written by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, in a pure Stephen King style.
Jumping on the Blu Ray release of "Dead & Buried" out of nostalgia, I was looking forward to feel the same shock before my screen... well, it didn't happen. That's strange : I feel the novelization of the original script is more frightening than the movie based on that script itself ! How can that happen ?
Well, the movie is, to me, a mixed bag. The book was not, because it focused on the criminal investigation led by Sheriff Dan Gillis (demotivated and implausible TV star James Farentino in the film). In the book, you can feel, page by page, the stubbornness and competence of that sheriff evolving into confusion and anguish because of the strange events occurring .... and because of his wife's odd behavior, turning from loving and chilled out to spooky and unsettling.
The movie doesn't explore this feeling at all. Good horror flicks need to have a sort of "blur" zone where nothing is revealed at once, just suggested. Not here : the movie spoils itself from the very beginning. For example, the point of the film is that the viewer *must* understand after 10 minutes that the town folks are a big part of the problem... OK, no big deal, that's a viable option, but then, why focusing on poor lonely Sheriff Gillis who spend his time driving around the village with his concerned face all day long, going nowhere, picking up dead bodies one after the other and doing nothing serious to keep things moving ? He's even losing a fleeing suspect during an overlong and not scary chase-in-the-dark sequence that leads nowhere.
He doesn't even react professionally to the murder occurring in the hospital room, during the infamous needle-in-the-eye sequence, when every cop on Earth would have locked down the place and call for support to interrogate everybody, patients included. And let's not mention that silly haunted house sequence with the usual "poor lost family from the city".
And the final twist, to mention it briefly without spoiler, so very astonishing and uneasy in the book, happens in the movie to be completely illogical and couldn't make less sense than there.
Ms. Yarbro could handle holes like these in her novelization because, I guess, she could use the number of pages to work it out, fix broken links, put some flesh on things... but in the motion picture, these plot problems tend to invade the screen and bother viewers.
The film has highlights, though. The opening sequence, both erotic and dreadful in the book, is totally grasping on screen, thanks to gorgeous Lisa Blount and an excellent music and cinematography. The city atmosphere is really scary, with all that fog, this big horn sound in the distance, the gray appearance of houses and streets... Shocking gore details still hold up after all those years, thanks to the genius of great Stan Winston.
So my advice would be : go for eBay search engine and try to purchase an old copy of the book, forget about buying the damn thing on DVD or BR.