Wednesday, May 2, 2018

BURIED ALIVE (1990) **


A psycho in a Ronald Reagan mask likes to stalk scantily clad runaways from a school for wayward girls.  He wraps them in a straitjacket before walling them up behind a brick wall.  A new teacher (Karen Witter) comes to the school and almost immediately starts having weird visions.  She thinks she sees John Carradine coming out of the walls (and toilets), but no one, not even the head shrink at the school (Robert Vaughn) believes her.  More girls disappear, and she soon fears she’ll be next.

Produced by Harry Allan Towers and directed by Gerard (Edge of Sanity) Kikoine, this uneven (and very loose) Edgar Allan Poe adaption at least has the benefit of an awesome cast.  In addition to Robert Vaughn and John Carradine, we have Donald Pleasence (with a bad German accent and even worse wig) as a creepy teacher, Ginger Lynn (as the school’s resident bad girl), Nia Long, William Butler, and Arnold Vosloo.  Although all the plot developments are predictable, their efforts are enough to keep you watching.

Kikoine gives us a handful of effective freak-out scenes that feel like they came out of an Elm Street sequel.  (The breathing wall effect is pretty cool.)  The rest of the movie is something of a disappointment, especially considering how warped Kikoine’s Edge of Sanity was.  The kills aren’t all that graphic and are a letdown for the most part, but I did like the scene where one of the girls uses a mixer as a makeshift curling iron.  (Naturally, it ends badly.)  There’s also a decent shower initiation scene, although the nudity is rather fleeting.  Kikoine films it all in an atmospheric manner, giving us plenty of odd camera angles along the way.  Too bad much of the second act is plodding and the final reel is mostly a washout.

AKA:  Lost Girls.

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