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: 
Final Girl Friday 