Don't listen to the negative reviews

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Boring

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Before now, if you had told me that Donald Pleasance had starred alongside '80s hardcore porn-star Ginger Lynn Allen, I might not have believed it; my mind would have certainly boggled at the many sordid and potentially upsetting possibilities. But here it is... Buried Alive, which sees the ageing bald horror actor as kooky Dr. Schaeffer, employee at Ravenscroft, a reform school where the girls (whose number includes Ginger Lynn as Debbie) start to disappear in mysterious circumstances. There are, thankfully, no XXX scenes between Pleasance and Allen.The film starts with the capture of one of the girls by a masked maniac. The next day, the school's beautiful new teacher Janet (Karen Witter) arrives at the institution, but quickly becomes confused by goings on (but not as much as me), and thereafter suffers from hallucinations in which a hand grabs her from the ground and out of a toilet bowl while ants crawl everywhere. Meanwhile, the school's director Gary Julian (Robert Vaughn) professes his love for Janet (having made her acquaintance only a few days earlier), which turns out to be a big problem for the lovely lady when it transpires that he is the deranged lunatic who has been walling up the missing girls in the basement.To be brutally honest, the film's plot is a colossal mess, but the whole thing still manages to be fairly entertaining nonsense nevertheless, with a few gore effects (the rotting corpses of Debbie and her boyfriend are particularly grisly) and the requisite nudity (a group shower scene ticking that particular box). The film also features John Carradine in one of his last roles, as Julian's crazy coot of a father, who may or may not be a ghost; by this point in his career, I'm not sure if Carradine even knew what his films were about.

Pheeeew.... An Edgar Allan Poe story in some sort of slasher format...? A concept like this only could have been thought up during the late 80's...The movie does try but fails to convince because the script offers no surprises whatsoever. It's basically an average horror effort where angry women in a reform school meet their demise at the hands of a mad psychiatrist and his insane curing methods.It's not impossible to sit through, mainly because of the mildly entertaining death-scenes and it does have a certain style to it. In my opinion, you can tell this was directed by a Frenchman (Gérard Kikoïne), because his way of mise-en-scène at moments is just a bit more imaginative than your run-of-the-mill slasher/horror director from the 80's. At times he chooses quite original angles and camera movements to portray the events (unusual framing, profile close-ups of the actors with action going on in the background, inventive travels & crane-shots,...). But like I said, the story is extremely predictable and lacks suspense, and that's what basically kills the movie.The acting was overall acceptable (though the angry woman did get a bit on my nerves after a while - thankfully there was a group shower scene!), and Donald Pleasance, again, provides a very weird role. He's completely wasted on this movie, has almost nothing to do but it was fun seeing him play another out-of-place weirdo (who's also a notable member of the school's staff, by the way, wears a fake toupée and has some sort of German accent). For some reason you can often see him munching on stuff - I couldn't quite make out if it were peanuts or ants...An added value could come from Robert Vaughn, leading the cast as the mad psychiatrist, and John Carradine (in nothing more but a cameo). The climactic scene near the end (in which they're both featured) was somewhat amusing. But leading girl Karen Witter, although sweet eye-candy, wasn't really capable of carrying the film, as her performance came off as too generic to me. I did chuckle when I spotted a young Arnold Vosloo in a supporting role. All this made me enjoy the movie a bit more than I should have. And you can add a nonsensical frozen surprise-shot at the end to the mix.A rather weird film. Incompetent too. But as far as raping Edgar Allan Poe goes, they did a good job.

Although the overall plot is obvious, the details are baffling; characters have dreams/visions/hallucinations that are never explained; most exposition parts seem to have been cut out; the film moves from one warped scene to another instead of trying to build some atmosphere. Robert Vaughn is utterly unconvincing in the first half of the film (though he improves later on), and Donald Pleasence is irritating as the doctor/possible suspect who mostly comes across as just a senile old man. (*1/2)

BURIED ALIVE was to be the last film made by John Carradine during his lifetime (the old actor would later come back from the grave to appear in a few more movies). Edgar Allan Poe's name is mentioned in the title, but don't believe the hype. For this is just another cheap horror exploitation flick (what more can you expect from producer Harry alan Towers, who churned out some of the worse movies ever?) Nevertheless, it's enjoyable enough if only for the performances. Robert Vaughn (TEENAGE CAVEMAN) plays the director of a school/madhouse. Donald Pleasance is once again typecast as one of its loony inhabitants. His French voice is not the same as in the HALLOWEEN series, but it's as much fun. And John Carradine appears shortly, wheelchair-bound, in what constitutes a fitting, if not flamboyant, last blast of weirdness. That's about all you get from an otherwise poor-looking film...