The Premature Burial

She wheels her wheel barrow, through streets broad and narrow...

The third in Roger Corman's cycle of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations sees Charles Beaumont & Ray Russell on script duties and Ray Milland star. The story follows Milland's cataleptic Guy Carrell, whose fear of being buried alive like his father drives him to build a tomb that should ensure against such a disaster occurring...

Pulpy, Gothic and at times silly, The Premature Burial is still very much a nice slice of Corman pie. Some critics have bemoaned the lack of AIP mainstay Vincent Price for this one, yet that's unfair on Milland who does some neat work as he blends lunacy with sympathy to great effect. Though the plotting lacks any imagination, since it's obvious from ...

An intense thriller from the outside, but full of suspenseful events!

A very surprising mystery-thriller from the 60s that I usually won't write reviews for the old flicks, but for this one an exception. The film was based on the book of the same name that sets in the early 19th century. Since it was a short tale the film was just a 80 minutes long. It looked like the film 'Take Shelter', but while progressing its narration totally impressed me with the uniqueness in the development area. However, I did not understand the final scene after all those twists, yet it is obvious an agenda that was achieved.

The cast was small and a single location concept where most of them takes place inside a building and its surroundings which were o...

Nice foggy moors, but the premise is odd and the story too one-dimensional

A British aristocrat during the Victorian Era has catalepsy and is therefore obsessed with the fear of being buried alive (Ray Milland). His lovely new wife urgently tries to help him (Hazel Court). Heather Angel plays his sister, Richard Ney a colleague and Alan Napier his wifes father, a doctor.

"Premature Burial" (1962) was the third of AIPs gothic horror flicks of the 60s inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, eight of which were done by Roger Corman, but others were filmed by different directors, like The Conqueror Worm (1968), aka Witchfinder General, and The Oblong Box (1969). Others were Poe-ish in ambiance, yet had nothing to do with the works of Poe, li...

Very loosely based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, this is quite a decent - if somewhat claustrophobic - drama that centres around "Guy" (Ray Milland) and his paranoia of being buried alive. The start of the film involves the exhumation of his father's coffin - and here we clearly see evidence that the occupant wasn't quite dead when he was put into the ground. Needless to say, his son becomes just a bit worried that this may happen to him, so he becomes totally preoccupied with ensuring that it cannot - much to the detriment of his marriage to the young, and increasingly concerned, "Emily" (Hazel Court) and his sister "Kate" (Heather Angel). Of course, things are not quite what they seem - the plot offers us quite a few red herrings: we are c...