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Buried Alive
A prison trustee rescues a despondent executioner from a bar-room brawl, and is blamed for the fight by a tabloid reporter who actually started it, and loses parole, becomes embittered, and gets blamed for murder of guard.
Release : | 1939 |
Rating : | 4.6 |
Studio : | Sigmund Neufeld Productions, Producers Distributing Corporation (PDC), |
Crew : | Director, Screenplay, |
Cast : | Beverly Roberts Robert Wilcox Paul McVey Ted Osborne George Pembroke |
Genre : | Drama Crime Romance |
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Really Surprised!
Don't listen to the negative reviews
It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.
A prisoner with a spotless record, about to be paroled, encounters a series of misunderstandings, unlucky accidents, and set-backs that jeopardize his freedom and his future with the blonde prison infirmary nurse he's fallen in love with. Sound interesting? IT'S NOT!This movie is so badly written, it might be used as a textbook example of how not to construct a story. The exposition wanders around, trying to get a story started, and fails miserably.It's not even clear who the main character is until about 45 minutes in. The script seems to have been written as some kind of protest piece against capital punishment. A worse punishment is trying to sit through this movie to the end.Wooden dialog, poor acting and direction, and scene after scene in which characters' actions make absolutely no sense. This is almost Ed Wood- bad, but sadly it's not "so bad it's good". It's "so bad it's depressing".
I just read a wonderful interview with Beverly Roberts on the "Midnight Palace" site and thought I would look up her films. I didn't know anything about her but I managed to find this film which was just okay.Directed by Victor Halperin of "White Zombie" fame it is the story of a prison executioner whose job is sending him around the bend. After enduring some taunts at a local bar, a brawl starts and Johnny, the Warden's prisoner chauffeur gets hurt, helping him out. As a result Johnny's parole is delayed. Johnny's cell mate is a man called "Big Billy". Early in the film Johnny describes their friendship as similar to one in a book he had read (it wasn't named but it was "Of Mice and Men").Big Billy is like a big kid - and he remembers all the guards who have treated him harshly. When he attacks and kills a guard - Johnny comes to his rescue but too late as Big Billy is shot while trying to escape. Once again Johnny has to prove his innocence.Beverly Roberts has a pivotal role as the nurse, Joan, that Johnny loves and is determined to go straight for. This was Robert's last film for a decade - the big mystery is what happened to her in those intervening years??? She was no less talented than Wendy Barrie, who had a bigger career.Dave O'Brien (minus his toupee) is one of the participants in the brawl and later in the film as a witness to an execution.
The cheapo box I had made it seem like a vampire horror movie where someone is buried in a grave. So horror fans beware. But fans of little B movies might find this a pleasant diversion. Most remarkable is the very clear "Of Mice and Men" style relationship between the lead guy and his big, dumb buddy.
With its limited settings, slow pacing, and small cast, this "B" movie could almost be staged as a radio drama. It offers little in the way of suspense or romance and has no comic relief but there may be some academic interest in its Roosevelt-era attitudes toward prisons, capital punishment, and the power of the press.Robert Wilcox, who always deserved better and who has one of the greatest heads of hair in the history of the movies, does what he can as the inmate who suffers a contrived and implausible string of bad luck. His best part came in the following year, however, when he played an inmate who endures a memorable flogging in "Island of Doomed Men."