BURIED ALIVE (1989)
This is a weird one. First of all, I was set to watch 1990's Buried Alive, but the tape was a dud. Thanks to YouTube, I was able to find a replacement...1989's Buried Alive! Same title, (very) different film. It's presented as an Edgar Allen Poe adaptation, but this is a far cry from Roger Corman's AIP ventures. In fact, it's not based on any particular story at all. The plot concerns a psychiatric ward for wayward girls. I suppose you could call them "delinquents." They are comically antagonistic towards each other, to the point that there is a knife fight every other day. Somehow, this joint doubles as an educational institution, and one of the "teachers" is a naive blonde plagued with disturbing visions. Red flag alert! I've had to use quotation marks twice, and I haven't even gotten to the meat of the matter. Buried Alive is on the fence about being a slasher, as we see characters slide down a chute to an underground lair where they are accosted by a dude in a creepy Ronald Reagan mask.
I don't know, gang. This is a stylish flick, and for the first ten minutes, I was optimistic. I thought I had another diamond in the rough at my disposal, but no, this is just more rough. Donald Pleasence, of all people, is criminally wasted in a peculiar role as some pompous popinjay who gets off on quoting Shakespeare. John Carradine (yes, that's a complete sentence). Also wasted. Apparently, this was his last gig, unless you count Jack-O. NOTE TO SELF: Revisit Jack-O. Buried Alive seems to think that it's pretty brutal, but aside from crosswise camera angles, it doesn't offer anything noteworthy. Again, it's made well. That only gets you so far, though. Technically, Jack-O was made well. Actually, it wasn't, but it was profoundly more entertaining than this Poe-dunk pablum.
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