Nothing strikes a chord of pure terror in people quite like the thought of being buried alive, however none take this fear to quite the extremes of Guy Carrell, the paranoid artist in Roger Corman’s 1962 film adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe’s The Premature Burial. Alienating everyone around him, Guy obsesses over his specially designed tomb. The tomb has everything from a spring loaded casket that jumps apart through any movement inside to a rope attatched to a bell to ring in order to notify passer-bys of the occupants survival. While it seems as though this whole scenario is a little more than overkill, everything goes down hill for poor Guy after those he loves threaten to leave if he does not destroy the morbid monstrosity. With that task carried out in an attempt to help Guy deal with the root of the issue, the group insist Guy open his father’s tomb to prove to himself that his father was indeed dead before being pitched into the casket and the wails he heard on that night were indeed his imagination. The traumatic story is handled quite well by Corman and company and should impress many Poe enthusiasts. This movie might even dig that bad taste out of your mouth Ryan Reynolds left behind in Buried.
