Dead and Buried: Obscene But Not Heard

Dead & Buried, a 1981 lurid crap classic and, despite its budgetary limitations, actually added a new twist to the zombie genre without evening knowing it or promoting itself as a zombie movie. But to tell you what it is, I’d have to spoil the entire thing. By doing so, as the neighbor’s 4 year-old kid says, will have me “going to jail for a very long time.”

Since I don’t want to go to jail for any length of time, I’ll just give you a few of the juicy details – and by that, I mean oozing, shiny juicy gore.

Potter’s Bluff is a small coastal New England town where its residents act nice at first, then bash you over the head with hard objects, tie you up, then light you on fire while you’re still screaming about being hit with hard objects. As you’re doing your best Joan of Arc impersonation, this large group of PB’s citizens take pictures and home movie footage, all the while showing about as much emotion as someone totally wasted on Zima™.

If you somehow manage to live, you get taken to the hospital, where a nurse will give you a co-pay lethal injection in the eye. Then off to the coroner you go, while the local sheriff searches for clues as to who is wasting gasoline and matches on tourists.

Daily explicit and grisly deaths, with the recently deceased showing up soon thereafter, fit as a fiddle, looking no worse for wear and tear (emphasis on the tear). The sheriff is flummoxed (word of the day calendar –sweet), but slowly starts to assemble the clues. It isn’t until he stumbles across footage of the townsfolk’s handiwork that he loses it, especially since one clip involves his wife and… Uh oh.

During this, the emotionally distraught sheriff also discovers who is behind all this madness. And it’s right here we get the money shot. In a sweet twist, the horror of all this “bringing ‘em back to life” whack-a-do pays off like a max bet penny slot machine. Did for me, anyway.

FYI: Due to its unflinching gore and violence, Dead & Buried was initially banned as a “video nasty” in the UK in the early 1980s, but was later acquitted of obscenity charges and removed from the Director of Public Prosecutions’ list. Whew!

Parentless Ghosts

In need of a job, Ana is young, pregnant and hired to clean up after a bunch of runny-nose orphans at a huge orphanage where they manufacture orphans. The “school” for abandoned WWII kids is empty for the summer, but the place is a stink hole, so she takes the gig, knowing it’s better than working for Kinkos™ and hoping it’ll get her mind off the fact her former employers raped and beat her.

Two people remain in the cavernous orphanage: an old lady who serves as the school’s cook/doctor (what can’t be healed goes in the pot) and a “disturbed” young gal whose mind is a silverware drawer where none of the silverware matches. A crazy chick practically alone in a spooky old building? Hell, the only thing missing is me, a bottle of Jager™ and a roll of paper towels.

But something’s not right in the building besides Ana’s roommate’s sense of reality. Noises, voices, spectral farting. (OK, that one was really just part of my wish list). Ana was warned about the scary children. Now we’re getting somewhere. Previously brought to the school by the bus load, about 300 war-wounded kids turned up in various stages of bleeding. With only one doctor and a nurse, let’s just say some of ’em didn’t need a doctor bill at the end of the day.

Determined to find out who or what the scary children are, Ana and demento chick go into the big bathroom where there hangs a big mirror, which conceals a big mystery. Ana chucks a flashlight through the glass and damn if there isn’t another room back there. And hey – there’s a service elevator just big enough for her to crawl in. Yeah, that’s what I’d do in a haunted house – squeeze into an elevator that hasn’t been used for years and throw the switch. Why doesn’t Casper just come right out of the wall and push me down the shaft?

The elevator goes screaming down for what seems like three commercial breaks. When it opens, Ana discovers the hospital wing of the orphanage. It’s all painted an eerie white and lit up like a Christmas barbershop. Uh, oh – somebody’s about to go into labor. Good timing…something is down there with her. But what could it be?

House of Voices (aka Saint Ange, 2004) is a pretty darn creepy and atmospheric flick, but the story takes freakin’ forever to get where its going. A couple of nice distractions: Ana’s boobs. While this movie does not end on a happy note, I think I tracked down that cool crazy chick on Facebook™.