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Dead & Buried
Directed by	Gary Sherman
Written by	Short Story Author: Alex Stern Jeff Millar Screenwriters: Ronald Shusett Dan O'Bannon
Produced by	Robert Fentress Richard R. St. Johns Ronald Shusett
Starring	James Farentino Melody Anderson Jack Albertson Dennis Redfield Nancy Locke Robert Englund
Cinematography	Steven Poster
Edited by	Alan Balsam
Music by	Joe Renzetti
Distributed by	Avco Embassy Pictures
Release date	May 29, 1981
Running time	92 min.
Country	United States
Language	English

Dead & Buried is a 1981 horror film directed by Gary Sherman, starring Melody Anderson and James Farentino. With a screenplay written by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, the movie was initially banned as a "Video Nasty" in the UK in the early 80s, but was later acquitted of obscenity charges and removed from the Director of Public Prosecutions' list.

The movie was subsequently novelized by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. In a 1983 interview with Starburst promoting Blue Thunder, O'Bannon disowned the film (he claimed that Shusett had written the script by himself but needed O'Bannon's name on the project, and promised he'd make some changes; on seeing the finished film O'Bannon realised Shusett had done nothing of the sort, but it was too late for him to take his name off the credits).

Plot

James Farentino stars as Dan Gillis, sheriff of the small New England coastal town of Potter's Bluff where, in the film's opening scene, a mob of townspeople attempt to kill a visiting photographer; he is beaten, tied to a post then set on fire. The Photographer is later killed under the sheriff and doctor's noses at the local hospital.

As the story progresses, more visitors are murdered by the townspeople. Sheriff Gillis, assisted by Dobbs, the local coroner-mortician (Jack Albertson), works hard to discover the motive for the killings. Gillis becomes increasingly disconcerted as a grisly death occurs every day with the killers photographing the victims as they are murdered.

The film's creepiness is enhanced by the audience knowing the identity of the killers, nearly all of whom are friends of Gillis whose wife Janet (Melody Anderson) has suspicious reasons for her own frequent nocturnal disappearances.

After Gillis accidentally hits someone with his squad car following a recent attack, the bizarre nature of the murders becomes even more evident. On the grill of his car, Gillis finds the twitching, severed arm of the accident victim, who suddenly attacks him before fleeing with the arm. After the attack, Gilis scrapes some flesh from the vehicle and takes it to the local doctor, who tells him that the body the flesh came from had died approximately four months before.

As his suspicion of Dobbs grows, Gillis conducts a background check and discovers that he was formerly 'Dr. Dobbs', a chief pathologist in Providence, Rhode Island until his dimissal 10 years previously for conducting unauthorized autopsies in the county morgue – just before he moved to Potter's Bluff.

The film eventually reveals that Dobbs has developed a secret technique for reanimating the dead, and all of the townspeople are in reality reanimated corpses under his control. Dobbs considers himself an "artist" who uses his zombies to murder the living in order to create more corpses on which to practice his reanimation technique.

At the conclusion, it turns out that the Sheriff is actually one of the living dead, having been murdered by his undead wife prior to the on-screen events under Dobb's orders. As the film ends, Gillis notices his own hands decomposing, whereupon Dobbs asks to examine them.

Cast

• James Farentino as Sheriff Dan Gillis
• Melody Anderson as Janet Gillis
• Jack Albertson as William G. Dobbs
• Dennis Redfield as Ron
• Nancy Locke as Linda
• Lisa Blount as Girl on the Beach / Lisa
• Robert Englund as Harry
• Bill Quinn as Ernie
• Michael Currie as Herman
• Christopher Allport as George LeMoyne / Freddie
• Joseph G. Medalis as The Doctor
• Macon McCalman as Ben
• Lisa Marie as The Hitchhiker
• Estelle Omens as Betty
• Barry Corbin as Phil

Critical reception

AllMovie wrote, "it's easy to see why Dead and Buried never found a big audience. It is too plot-heavy for those viewers in search of a shock machine yet too visceral for the viewers who appreciate subtle horror", but complimented its "blend of creepy atmosphere and gruesome shocks."

References

1. Guarisco, Donald. "Dead and Buried (1981) - Review - AllMovie". AllMovie. Retrieved 12 August 2012.
2. Guarisco, Donald. "Dead and Buried (1981)". AllMovie. Retrieved 12 August 2012.

External links

• Dead & Buried at IMDb

• 1981 films
• Zombie films
• 1981 horror films
• Supernatural horror films
• Crime thriller films
• Films directed by Gary Sherman
• American horror films