DailyView: Day 182, Movie 264

As October is coming to an end and Halloween is fast approaching, I am continuing to find interesting and different horror movies to fill the DailyView. Today, I watched the 1981 horror film from director Gary Sherman called Dead & Buried.

The small coastal town of Potters Bluff has become home to a series of murders of visitors to the town. Sheriff Dan Gillis (James Farentino) is on the case as the eccentric town mortician Dobbs (Jack Albertson) performs his art on the corpses to make them look presentable for the funerals.

However, the victims appear to be coming back, reanimated, and walking around the town as townspeople. Everything is complicated for Gillis as his wife, Janet (Melody Anderson), a local teacher, had begun to teach about black magic/ voodoo in her class.

Jack Albertson, who would die in reality six months after completing the film, gives a remarkable performance as the crazed mortician who has found a way to bring the people back from the dead, sort of. He was exceptionally creepy and frightening.

The entire atmosphere of the film is special as everything builds together to make Dead & Buried an uneasy film to watch. Between the manner in which the film was shot to the choice of the score, Dead & Buried offers a class in creating a mood for the audience to experience. It also contains a huge surprise that makes you reconsider the previous scenes of the movie.

With a distinct B-movie flavor to it, Dead & Buried feels like a movie that would gain a cult status and that is exactly what has happened. With a pre-Freddy Kruger cameo from Robert Englund, a harrowing performance form Jack Albertson, a slow burn that provides just enough morsels to keep the audience invested, Dead & Buried is a great example of horror in the 1980s.