Wed 16 Sep 2020
A Horror Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: THE PREMATURE BURIAL (1962).
Posted by Steve under Horror movies , Reviews[12] Comments
THE PREMATURE BURIAL. American International Pictures, 1962. Ray Milland, Hazel Court, Richard Ney, Heather Angel, Alan Napier, John Dierkes, Richard Miller. Screenplay by Charles Beaumont and Ray Russell, based on the story by Edgar Alan Poe. Directed by Roger Corman. Currently streaming on Amazon Prime, DirecTV and others.
Put aside the plot for now. For this third entry into Roger Corman’s Poe cycle of films fundamentally revolves around an idea, a concept. And that is: what would it be like for a man deathly afraid of being buried alive to actually be buried alive? How would he act? What would he do to those who accidentally (or purposefully) entombed him? How could a filmmaker put reflect his psychological state cinematically?
In terms of reflecting this morbid concept on screen, The Premature Burial succeeds admirably. And then some. Ray Milland, although too old for the part, does a great job in portraying a man who afraid of being buried alive that he allows all the life to be sucked out of him. Hazel Court, who portrays his long-suffering wife, is there to both support and scold him. She clearly doesn’t want to have to spend the rest of her years with a man with one foot already in the grave.
Based on the eponymous Edgar Allan Poe short story, The Premature Burial is enriched with claustrophobic sets and a chillingly effective score from Ronald Stein. The film also makes ample use of a rich color palette, both in terms of set design and lighting. Corman’s use of jump cuts do not work nearly as effectively as do the lush atmospherics.
The movie also benefits greatly from the presence of three great character actors. Alan Napier, who is now best remembered as the butler Alfred in the live-action Batman TV series, portrays the father-in-law of the protagonist. And John Dierkes and Dick Miller portray two graverobbers who end up being key to how the story unfolds.
Back to the plot. I’ll be honest. It is a little more than creaky. The ending is simply a little too pat, even for a low budget horror film. That’s unfortunate given that the credited screenwriters were none other than Charles Beaumont and Ray Russell. But that’s not what this film is about. It’s a concept film. And a good, albeit not great one, at that.
September 16th, 2020 at 9:27 pm
Perhaps 11 was the best age to have seen it in the movie theater, as I was. Only later, on seeing it again years afterward, did I realize that Ray Milland was too old for the role, and that like Corman’s THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, the plot was a noir-ish one of a guy being played for a sucker by two people close to him.
September 17th, 2020 at 8:16 am
I have this by my DVD Player, queued up for October!
September 17th, 2020 at 9:58 am
Less than a year before this film came out, Boris Karloff’s Thriller series did a tab version of “Premature Burial”, with Sidney Blackmer in Ray Milland’s part, Patricia Medina as the bad wife, and Karloff as the good doctor who settles everyone’s hash at the finish.
For the record, Sidney Blackmer was 66 when he did Thriller.
Ray Milland was 55 when he did the Corman movie.
So who was “too old”?
You tell me …
September 17th, 2020 at 10:10 am
Both — and since when do we compare a television show and its production to a motion picture?
September 17th, 2020 at 10:44 am
I for one do, often. Not quite the same as apples and oranges, or am I wrong?
September 17th, 2020 at 9:12 pm
It misses being a great film, and Milland’s age seemed a moot point since it’s far from an action film. I enjoy this one, but USHER, PENDULUM, and HAUNTED PALACE were all better films.
For my take on it, this one suffers more from what they had to add to the Poe original to get something more than atmosphere out of it since there isn’t a great deal beyond the main characters fear to the Poe story to hang a film on. This, USHER and PENDULUM all use the same basic plot that only really is true to USHER.
September 18th, 2020 at 6:39 pm
” … since when do we compare a television show and its production to a motion picture?”
Funny thing – I kinda thought that’s what we were all doing here anyway.
Comes to that, isn’t this what you were doing when you posted the comment?
A day or two ago, I took delivery of a DVD of Ten Little Indians – the 1989 version, generally considered the worst of the Harry Alan Towers decennial reworkings (and that’s saying something).
What can I tell you – I’m one of the world’s completists …
But here’s the Fun Part:
I now have six (6) different versions of TLI/And Then There Were None in my Olde DVD Wall.
How’s That Grab Ya?
September 18th, 2020 at 7:20 pm
Yes and no, Mike. You certanly cannot compare available film talent with their opposite numbers in television. Nor production time or detail.
September 18th, 2020 at 7:49 pm
No doubt about it. But we can talk about the comparisons, can we not? Surely we don’t close the door on that.
September 18th, 2020 at 8:03 pm
Certainly not close the door, but the comparisons ideally should be made relative to interpretation, not casting or production. And both of these guys are or were,way too old. That was a problem Corman dealt with using Vincent Price, also too old; they took a shot at it, the films were successful financially, and that satisfied the public and production company, no reason to satisfy any of us.
September 19th, 2020 at 8:29 pm
Just to be a little perverse here, in some cases the bigger budget, time, and production values in a film end up subtracting from the television version. I found the film versions of PATTERNS, REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT, and the episodes of the series in TWILIGHT ZONE THE MOVIE all inferior to the more claustrophobic and focused television productions.
The Saint worked far better on television than any film in the series, and save for the two films Clayton Moore did the Lone Ranger certainly hasn’t functioned on the big screen. Neither did BEWITCHED, BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, THE HONEYMOONERS, or THE MAN FROM UNCLE.
More money, time, and greater production values aren’t always the deciding factors.
That said, here I take Barry’s point to the extent what it was possible to accomplish in a single episode of an anthology series compared to even a relatively low budget Corman film is difficult to weigh fairly.
Frankly it is not one of Poe’s better stories, and at best should have been a half hour episode of SUSPENSE or ESCAPE on radio or a short piece in an anthology movie. Both THRILLER and the Corman film stretch a thin story to the breaking point and neither does any favor with the tired subplot about unfaithful spouses and murder.
Age or not I’m not sure lesser personalities than Blackmer or Milland could have gotten anything out of the parts as written though it is interesting to speculate in the Corman film if Jack Nicholson had starred since he was in THE TERROR, LITTLE SHOP …, and THE RAVEN.
That both still manage to be diverting and a bit suspenseful is a tribute to everyone involved because there is nothing to hang an hour long drama or a movie on in the original and that rather tired murder plot is telegraphed in both.
September 19th, 2020 at 10:01 pm
Fair enough, David but with this caveat; all the titles, The Saint excepted, orginated in a filmed television format. As for The Saint films, with the exception of Hayward’s first, Saint in New York, are neither likeable on their own nor true to Charteris, and whileRoger Moore took off, follow up series, have, with the possible exceptions of the Ian Ogilvy episodes, fallen flat. So, it is really not at all simple or comparable. Oh, as for The Lone Ranger, I did not like the television shows , nor think much of the follow up films, although they were watchable, but The Lone Ranger on radio with the voices of Brace Beemer and Fred Foy, were little works of art.