Buried Alive (1939)
3/10
Good Intentions Are No Remedy For Bad Execution
23 November 2023
George Pembroke runs the electric chair at the prison. After a session, he goes out to get drunk, because he doesn't like his job. There he finds reporters, one of whom taunts him. They get into a fight, and Robert Wilcox, a trusty who drives the car, comes in and punches out the reporter and rescues Pembroke. The reporter decides he's going to get even and writes a story about how Wilcox was drunk and started the fight. As a result, Wilcox is turned down for parole.

There's something worse about a good idea that goes bad in a movie. This could have been. And arguably is, a movie about the breakdown of the penitentiary system and how that destroys lives. Instead, in the hands of director Victor Halperin, it becomes a confused mess. Wilcox and prison nurse Beverly Roberts (in her last big-screen role) are in love; Pembroke and prison doctor Stephen Chase also love her, but aren't going to mention it, because they are gentlemen. This is, I suppose, part of the movie's love of romance and melodrama, but is it necessary? Acting choices, like having Wilcox's cellmate, Don Rowan, speak slowly and refer to himself by name to show he is stupid, is likewise clumsy.

But worst of all is the slow pace of the dialogue and the visual inertness of the movie. Cinematographer Jack Greenhalgh was a talented cameraman, so the only conclusion is that this was a deliberate choice. A movie can survive a lot, but it can't survive the dullness thus imposed on it.
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