VIDEO NASTIES – Dead & Buried

Published on: 15th August, 2009

VIDEO NASTIES - Dead & Buried  | read this item

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Whilst the DPP’s list of ‘Video Nasties’ had its fair share of zombie movies, perhaps the most unique of the bunch was Dead & Buried, a bizarre tale of small town America straight out of The Twilight Zone. Mixing black comedy, psychological horror and gruesome violence, the film would fail to find an audience and would be reduced to cult status, primarily due to the involvement of special effects legend Stan Winston, whose work would become the talking point of the picture. Despite being relatively blood-free, the few scenes of gore would result in Dead & Buried become the subject of controversy. Avoiding the splatter that had become commonplace in the genre at that time, the movie instead attempted to build tension with its slow burning story of a small fishing community that hides a deadly secret, often resorting to violence to keep strangers from discovering the truth. Although relatively tame compared to many of the Italian-produced films on the list, Winston’s work succeeded in causing the film to fall foul with the BBFC.

The interesting thing about Dead & Buried is that many do not even consider it a zombie movie. This was the intention of its creators, Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, who were conscious of avoiding employing the typical ‘Romero’ zombie (O’Bannon would once again toy with the formula for his horror comedy The Return of the Living Dead in 1985). The project was first conceived by writers Jeff Millar and Alex Stern, who had co-authored a script set in the fictional town of Potters Bluff, which would see its residents viciously attacking any strangers who dared to trespass in their domain. The concept had first been optioned by Robert Fentress, who the approached his producing partner, Shusett, about developing it into a movie. Shusett and his new writing collaborator O’Bannon were impressed with the story but felt that it needed re-writing, an extensive process which resulted in the Writers Guild awarding them full writers’ credit and simply reducing Millar and Stern to ‘story by.’

Amongst the elements that were changed through the various drafts included the inclusion of the fishermen who carry out the brutal acts of violence, which would help elaborate on the conspiracy theme that the town harbored. The final revelation, when it is discovered that the hero himself is in fact a zombie, was originally to have been featured midway through the story, but both O’Bannon and Shusett felt that this should instead be the climax. At that time, both writers were struggling to find work and were living together, along with Shusett’s wife, Linda, as they attempted to write another script, entitled Alien. The duo then began to shop their script around various financiers but had little success, eventually approaching independent producer Richard R. St. Johns, whom they felt would be their most likely choice. To their surprise, St. Johns declined and the project seemed that it would fall through. But events soon changed when Alien was picked up by Twentieth Century-Fox and a buzz began to generate around the project, causing O’Bannon and Shusett to immediately become hot property. Within a month, St. Johns had contacted them with an offer for Dead & Buried.

As with Alien, O’Bannon chose not to become involved in the production, instead allowing Shusett to oversee the project. A search began to fid a suitable director, with Shusett eventually settling on British filmmaker Gary A. Sherman after viewing his low budget horror Deathline, which saw set in the London Underground>. Sherman was impressed with the black humour of the script and agreed to direct. As pre-production commenced, Sherman had allowed Shusett to help re-draft a screenplay that he had written entitled Phobia. The story would eventually be shot by legendary filmmaker John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, The Asphalt Jungle) later that year and would be considered a disaster by all involved. Thankfully, the failure of Phobia was overshadowed by the success of Alien and so Shusett was allowed to continue with the production of Dead & Buried.

The project was budgeted at $3m and both Shusett and Sherman began searching for suitable character actors to carry the movie. For the central role of Sheriff Dan Gillis, they eventually settled on James Farentino, whose extensive television work had included The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Fugitive and a recurring appearance as Dr. Nick Toscanni in Dynasty. His on screen wife, Janet, would be portrayed by up-and-coming actress Melody Anderson, who had been tipped for stardom due to her upcoming role in the remake of Flash Gordon. Perhaps the most established actor to be cast in Dead & Buried, however, was Jack Albertson, an Academy Award winner who had since become more famous for his turn as the caring and eccentric Grandpa Joe in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

The supporting cast would also be made up of soon-to-be-known names, such as Lisa Blount, whose disrobing during the opening scene would later be followed by acclaim for the Richard Gere drama An Officer and a Gentleman, as well as an appearance in the John Carpenter cult favourite Prince of Darkness. One face that would soon become recognizable to horror fans would be that of Robert Englund who, just three years later, would become a huge star as Freddy Krueger in the popular A Nightmare on Elm Street films. Shusett’s wife Linda, would also make a cameo setting fire to the first victim, credited as Linda Turley. She would be partially responsible for the involvement of Winston, having worked with him previously on the underrated horror Mansion of the Doomed in 1976.

Sherman and Shusett, meanwhile, had travelled the Californian coastline in search of a suitable location for Potters Bluff. After briefly considering Santa Catalina Island, a picturesque resort just off the coast, they finally settled on Mendocino, located west of Central Valley and north of the San Francisco Bay Area. The crew obtained permission to redesign the main street, which would serve for the principal shoot. Other sequences, such as interiors and the docks, were filmed on a sound stage at Samuel Goldwyn Studios, which had just being bought out by Warner Bros. Whilst the local fisherman welcomed the presence of a film crew, there was a small hippie community that took exception to the production and, in one instance, managed to shoot out one of the film lights with a cap gun.

Shusett’s greatest asset during the shoot was Winston, who had found acclaim through his work in television but had started to make the leap to feature films. Several key set pieces in the movie were achieved through his impressive makeup and special effect designs, such as the burning in the opening scene, which was achieved through a mixture of using a stuntman in an asbestos suit and a dummy. Another sequence which would require a more complex dummy was perhaps the film’s most notorious moment, when Blount would plunge a huge hypodermic needle into the eye of one of her victims. To achieve this, Winston had designed a dummy that not only had to perfectly resemble the actor (despite much of its features being obscured through bandages) but would also have to move in a variety of different fashions, from its limbs to its eyeballs.

Another example of Winston’s genius came in perhaps the film’s most brutal scene, in which a hitchhiker is brutally beaten before having her face crushed by a rock. Sherman was conscious that the actress in question had striking features and so cast the unknown Lisa Marie in the part. This decision was for the subsequent sequence, in which Albertson’s mortician would recreate her features from scratch, showing each stage of the process. To add effect to the scene, once the recreation is complete, the camera briefly pans upwards to Albertson to allow the crew time to replace the dummy with Marie, so that the camera can pan down once again to show her awakening. This scene had originally been more graphic, but Shusett had requested that less blood was used in order to make the effects look more chilling.

Due to the production being changed hands twice during filming, the overall effect of the movie was greatly reduced as the filmmakers were unable to produce the film that they had set out to make. This caused the film to remain unreleased for over a year, partially due to the distributor, AVCO Embassy Pictures, changing ownership. When Dead & Buried was finally released it received a lukewarm response, both commercially and critically, although The New York Times described it as ‘a good-looking film.’ But the dark tone of the movie (due to interference from the financiers much of the humour had been lost) and the gruesome nature of the violence, particularly the notorious eyeball scene, would eventually attract some controversy for the film, particularly in the United Kingdom. Despite being released by G.T.O. Films uncut in 1981, the film would soon be placed on the ‘Video Nasty’ list and remain unavailable until it was resubmitted to the BBFC in 1990 by Video Collection International, in which it would around a minute and a half of cuts. The film would eventually be released uncut in 1999 by Polygram Video Ltd.

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