Nightmares and Seascapes: The Dreamy Genius of Dead and Buried

WARNING: Vague spoilers ahead.

I honestly couldn’t tell you why it took me so long to watch the nightmare fuel that is Gary Sherman’s Dead and Buried (1981). In several ways, it’s precisely my kind of movie: A visually striking cocktail of melancholic brutality with a healthy dose of mystery and a quirky mortician to boot. Seeing it for the first time felt like falling into a fever dream, which isn’t necessarily what I’d expected from an early eighties zombie movie. Of course, Dead and Buried is so much more than that… and the people of Potters Bluff are far from typical zombies.

Set in the foggy portside town of Potters Bluff, Dead and Buried feels a bit more like “Texas Chainsaw by the sea” at the start, introducing us to a host of nameless townsfolk as they brutalize a tourist on the beach, many contentedly photographing the ordeal for reasons unknown. From there, we shift to Sheriff Gillis (James Farentino), who gradually falls down the rabbit hole as the body count rises. He eventually finds himself hip-deep in an occult investigation revolving around the people he trusts the most, which transforms a cruel exercise in vérité into a waking dreamscape surreal enough to give Phantasm a run for its money.

Adding to the film’s purgatorial tenor are a lovely, gloomy score from Joe Renzetti, and Stan Winston’s truly – and not surprisingly – spectacular makeup FX. The latter particularly leave me enchanted and traumatized, from the charred body of first victim Freddy screaming upside down in a blazing car to the time-lapsed reconstruction of the upper body of a bludgeoned hitchhiker, Winston’s masterful combination of puppetry and makeup result in some of the most haunting FX I think I’ve ever seen in a movie of this era. 

Even a hastily constructed head replica used in a cringey death-by-acid effect (of which Winston was less than proud) feels perfectly in place here, as its unusually obvious flaws only strengthen the sense that we’re wandering through a pretty fucked up dream. I feel similarly about the sound design for the film, which is distractingly low-budget at times, but over time, it becomes as essential to the overall weirdness as everything else.

We also have deliciously unsettling performances from the residents of Potters Bluff, the most notable of which are that of Jack Albertson, who plays Dobbs, the town’s darkly humorous mortician, and Melody Anderson as Janet, the sheriff’s wife. I got the sense from the very beginning that these two were up to no good, but somehow, they managed to catch me off guard repeatedly with their bizarre behavior and endearing monologues. 

The one potential problem with Dead and Buried’s nightmarish descent into madness is one of plausibility. As more is revealed about the residents of this quaint little hamlet, the story begins to make less sense, which is especially jarring given how grounded things are at first. Thankfully, writers Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett (Alien, Total Recall) knew just how to combat their plot holes: By delivering a shocking and fantastical twist at the last second. The ending reframes the entire movie as though it were one long episode of The Twilight Zone, which instantly negates the need for clear-cut logic. It doesn’t matter how or why the people of Potters Bluff do what they do because they’re simply bit players on a stage of pure terror.

In fact, the ending of Dead and Buried is, to me, the very best thing about it. Any questions I may have as the sinister nature of the town’s inhabitants are unveiled is dissolved upon that utterly satisfying moment when the screen freezes on the film’s final, awful truth. 

All in all, I was so pleasantly surprised by this movie. It amused me, gave me the creeps more than a couple of times, and kept me guessing from start to finish. My favorite line in the film comes from Gillis who, having reached the end of his rope, simply throws his arms out and shouts, “What the hell is going on in this town?!” At that moment, fully enthralled and lost beyond measure, I couldn’t have said it better myself. 

What I love about it: Exquisite makeup FX, beautiful set design, high “WTF?” factor, a truly entertaining villain, getting to see Robert Englund play just an everyday sort of guy.

What doesn’t quite work for me: Yep, I got nothing. This movie just works.

Overall rating:

Don’t F*CK with the Brotherhood: The Hidden Depth of Black Circle Boys

The year was 1999. I was sitting in the middle of my mother’s living room floor, carrying out my weekend ritual of watching IFC on digital cable until my retinas burned. There were tons of extraordinary films being shown on the channel at that time: Tom DiCillo’s Living in Oblivion, Happiness (which was my first experience with Todd Solondz and, my god, did that make an impression), the criminally underappreciated The Addiction… and then there was Black Circle Boys. This film taught me two things the day it graced my television screen: Firstly, I will always find dudes in spiked belts attractive. Secondly, just because a movie is “bad,” doesn’t mean it isn’t also kind of fabulous.

Black Circle Boys tells the story of troubled teen Kyle Sullivan (played by a very surly Scott Bairstow) who tumbles down a destructive path after the death of his best friend. Transferred to a new school in a new town, Kyle falls in with a group of self-professed Satanists led by the quasi-charismatic Shane Carver (Eric Mabius) and their lives rapidly devolve into chaos. On its surface, it seems like your average low-budget “drug-addled kids on a warpath” film, following Kyle and his new friends as they bond and wreak havoc a la petty theft, breaking and entering, trying – and failing – to wail like Deicide and, in many ways, that’s exactly what it is. But impressive camera work, some very smart writing from Matthew Carnahan and a couple of bang-up performances make this a surprisingly moving journey of loss and a haphazard quest for fraternity. 

Sure, the film paints a frustratingly grim picture of goth culture at times and does nothing to help eradicate misconceptions about Satanism, which, frankly, pisses me off. There are also several scenes that feel better suited for a homespun afterschool special than a horror movie and Kyle’s hippie girlfriend being permanently clad in bright, light colors to represent the angel on his shoulder is a little on the nose for my taste. Despite these problems, however, the movie delivers refreshing realism thanks to cinematographer Geary McLeod and Mabius’s awkwardly emotional Shane. In fact, I enjoy Eric’s foray into edgy teen psychosis so much, I’m able to forgive – albeit laboriously – the fact that he was quite obviously twenty five years old when they shot this.  

Even more than Mabius’s clear devotion to the role, Shane Carver is brilliantly written, both as a liberal homage to real life teen murderer Richard Kasso and as the embodiment of youthful arrogance colliding with pain and ignorance. Shane wants desperately to feel validated and loved, to rise victoriously above the suffering he’s experienced at the hands of his father, but his methods are as misguided and abusive as one would expect and he fails at… well, basically everything. He tries to be cool, but no amount of black clothes and spiked jewelry can mask his sentimentality. He forms a “kickass” thrash band, but has no idea how to play the guitar and refuses to take lessons. He works hard to foster a deep relationship with Kyle, but his persistent intensity and lack of sound judgment ultimately push his new friend away. This is all endlessly frustrating for Shane, of course, but he’s unable to express that constructively, so he acts out more and more violently until things come to a fatal head. Simply put, Shane Carver is one of the more well crafted angsty-turned-murderous teenagers I’ve ever seen depicted on screen.

In addition to Shane, about whom I could probably rave for another six paragraphs, we also have his lackey Rory, played perfectly by a young Chad Lindberg (fresh out of community theater, no less). Rory is timid, unconfident and eager to please, seeing in Shane everything Shane wishes the rest of the world saw, but because Shane hates himself, he has no respect for his one true fan and treats him like garbage. It’s a dynamic that tugs at my heartstrings increasingly as the story goes on. Additionally, we get a poignant performance from Dee Wallace as Mrs. Sullivan, Kyle’s distraught mother, who reaches a breaking point with her son in a way that feels all too real for those of us who were prone to brooding rebellion as children. The film also features a couple of fun cameos from 90s sweetheart Lisa Loeb and X frontman John Doe, so… yeah, if I haven’t stressed this enough, it’s worth a watch for the cast alone.

Is it a scary movie? No, not really, unless you’re afraid of a pot-bellied gothed-out Donnie Walbergh with boundary issues, which is more than a little unsettling at first glance, let’s just air that out right now. What it lacks in terror, though, it makes up for in the aforementioned angst and a moderate amount of manic energy, culminating in a memorable second-to-last scene that I still think about from time to time after all these years. There’s also a fair amount of dark humor sprinkled throughout the film, found in moments like the boys’ one and only band rehearsal or at the dinner table, when Mrs. Sullivan asks Kyle how school was:

Mrs. Sullivan: How was school today, Kyle?

Kyle: Fine.

Mr. Sullivan: Answer your mother in complete sentences.

Kyle: It was fine. 

All in all, I feel Black Circle Boys is a bit of a hidden gem – deeply flawed, but charming in a way that seems to swell with repeat viewings. It has a depth I wasn’t expecting to find when I revisited it so many years later, most of which rests on the shoulders of – appropriately – the boys.

What I love about it: Mimi Melgaard’s refreshingly accurate wardrobe choices, an engaging story that hits on some pretty hard truths, Eric Mabius Eric Mabius Eric Mabius.

What doesn’t quite work for me: It’s obvious that our two main characters are fully grown adults, which diminishes the impact of some of their angst.

Overall rating: