The Premature Burial

I got a little excited on Saturday when I picked up the "Roger Corman Collection" at Waterloo Video. I have only seen two so far, of the eight classics offered. I saw "Bloody Mama" with Shelly Winter first, because that takes place during the Depression and is about the notorious and controversial Barker Gang. Next I watched "The Premature Burial" with Ray Milland, my all-time-favorite actor. For the time being it is my very favorite horror film, and is a superb companion to our current witching season. It`s excellence may be due to the fact that the plot is based on a short story by Edgar Allen Poe, who too rules the Halloween season with an iron hand. I found the actual short story online and will give it to you! I wish that I could post the crimson face of Ray that accompanies the DVD (& did so on 10/10). I suppose I could photograph it? (consider it done) The phenomenon of catalepsy or fear of burial before death was more widespread in the 19th century, but I am able to experience it vicariously well enough, especially through the chilling portrayal of Ray Milland who plays Guy, a haunted rogue of sorts! Ray`s ability to express fear and horror, the wincing facial features, the frozen eye-sockets, the macabre grimaces, and understated black-comic expressions, are unprecedented in vaults of gruesome films! The strains of Maude Malone on keys recall the whistles of a gravedigger unearthing the coffin of a man buried alive! Here are some true tales of premature burial or references in literature and popular. Notable is that in medieval Italy unrepented murderers were buried alive as referred to in canto XIX of Dante`s Inferno ( Se di saper ch`i` sia ti cal cotanto, che tu abbi pero la ripa corsa, sappi ch`i`fui vestito del gran manto;) or the Black Sabbeth song "Buried Alive". For me, the concept of premature burial is a wide-reaching metaphor that speaks volumes about our condition on earth. Think of Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, an over-the-top silent film star, in "Sunset Boulevard" idly passing her days watching her old movies; she has few prospects of a revival, and indulges in vane reverie in the screening room. Norma Desmond is the living dead. Be sure you tune in to this Roger Corman classic. Lots of fog, blues and greens, dream sequences, cob-webbed chalices, mantels, & gaslights...way scary soundtrack...goblets and rats...worms in the doom cup...