The Premature Burial (1962)

Ray Milland stars in this Roger Corman directed version of the Edgar Allan Poe story as a wealthy man with a morbid and all-consuming fear of death and being buried alive welcomes his beautiful fiancée(Hazel Court) to his castle. Happy at first, his fears soon return, and after falling into a cataleptic state, learns that being buried alive wasn't the only thing he should have been watching out for...Oddly dull and slow film has some atmosphere but feels flat, and doesn't make an effective use of its source material. Was filmed earlier as a good episode of the Boris Karloff hosted series "Thriller", with the same title and premise! A misfire in the Corman produced Poe adaptations of this period.

Solid, well crafted entry in producer / director Roger Corman's cycle of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations that's an effective exercise in psychological horror as well as more traditional kinds of horror (such as we see in the nightmare sequence, for example). It shows just how badly one's life can be affected by an unhealthy obsession.Corman initially tried to get Vincent Price for the lead, needing to switch to Ray Milland instead. While the casting of Milland may have seemed odd at the time, the esteemed, Oscar winning actor would go on to make appearances in other genre and schlock movies in the future. Milland offers a mostly understated performance as the tormented Guy Carrell, medical student and painter who can't get his supposed legacy and phobia of being entombed alive out of his mind. Meanwhile, good friend Miles (Richard Ney), new wife Emily (beautiful genre vixen Hazel Court), and sister Kate (Heather Angel) grow increasingly concerned over his behaviour.Working with his consistently reliable production design / cinematography team of Daniel Haller and Floyd Crosby, Corman is able to create very effective atmosphere for the production, and the 2.35:1 aspect ratio allows him to pack the frame with detail, and he also continues the practise of creating depth to the images. The music by the great Ronald Stein would be enjoyable enough on its own, but it's supplemented by the repeated refrain of the "Molly Malone" melody, whether it's whistled or played on the piano.Milland does some delicious work here, particularly in the sequence where Guy is showing Emily and Miles all the safeguards he's put in place in case of his being "buried alive". The excellent cast also includes Alan Napier as Emily's doctor father (who utters one of the best lines, "I never enjoy myself, I merely experience greater and lesser amounts of tedium."), and John Dierkes & Corman regular Dick Miller as the unsavoury grave diggers.The script by Charles Beaumont and Ray Russell has a very literate quality, and Milland gives his dialogue all of the gravitas that he can muster.While this wouldn't rank among the best of Corman's Poe series (that honour would have to go to "House of Usher" and "The Masque of the Red Death"), it's still very respectable and fun viewing for classic horror fans.Seven out of 10.

Like all of Roger Corman's movies based on the stories of Edgar Allen Poe, this one only has a superficial similarity to the Poe tale. In many cases, Corman took only the title from Poe and the story was completely new! In this movie, Ray Milland plays a bit of a flake. When the movie begins, the grave of his father is opened--to reveal that the man had not been dead but in some sort of catatonic stupor and had been buried alive. Naturally this would mess with Milland's mind (he shows many, many signs of post-traumatic stress disorder), but frankly he seems quite a few fries short of a Happy Meal, so to speak. To put it bluntly, he's rather obsessed with his own death--so obsessed that his new bride thinks he's crazy--and, based on his actions, this isn't too far-fetched! He spends so much of his time worrying about death and his own potential premature burial that he even designs the coolest burial vault in history. Watching him proudly show off its many, many innovations to allow for easy escape is pretty cool, but as for me, give me the old burning Viking long ship! As far as the plot goes, you eventually see that all is NOT as it seems. There are lots of interesting twists and in the end, there is a wild and crazy finale. I could say more, but don't want to spoil the suspense. However, I would say that the ending, though perhaps filled with too much exposition, was quite entertaining.Overall, a very good low-budget horror thriller. It has the usual excellent Corman direction and Milland is very good taking on a role that usually would have gone to Vincent Price. The only negative, and it's tiny, is the part played by Milland's on-screen wife--she does overact a bit here and there--but not so much the film is seriously impacted.By the way, this is one of two Milland/Corman films that have been packaged together on one DVD--the other being "X, the Man With X-ray Eyes". Both are very enjoyable and seem like a pretty good deal if you're in the market for horror/sci-fi stories.

Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe cycle ranges among the most essential moments ever in Horror cinema, some of the adaptations such as "Pit And The Pendulum" (1961), "The Masque of the Red Death" (1964) or (the actually Lovecraft-inspired) "The Haunted Palace" (1963) being among the greatest Gothic Horror films ever brought to screen. The brilliance of these films lies in the creepy Poe-themed stories, Corman's outstanding talent for eerie Gothic atmosphere, and, not least, the leading performances by Horror-deity Vincent Price."Premature Burial" of 1962 treats an eponymous subject that is as essentially 'Poe' as it gets - being buried alive, or more precisely, the terror of being buried alive.While I did have high expectations for this film, it had been lying on my DVD shelf for a long while before I finally saw it, the only reason for delaying the viewing being the lack of Vincent Price in this film. Ray Milland, who plays the lead here, was a fantastic actor, but simply not quite as fantastic as Vincent Price (who happens to be my all-time favorite actor). Price simply was one of the greatest actors who ever lived, and the Poe-adaptations are arguably the ultimate highlights of his career. The only flaw of this film, is therefore not really a flaw, but the greatness of Corman's other Poe-adaptations: The fact that the other films had Vincent Price, and this one doesn't. As great as Milland is - and he IS great - every fan of the other films will see that Price could have been greater in some scenes. Vincent Price had a unique quality of being likable sinister. Price played dozens of Horror villains and murderous madmen, yet one always somehow had to like them (the one notable exception being his entirely diabolical eponymous role in Michael Reeves' 1968 masterpiece "Witchfinder General"). Ray Milland is a great actor, but he doesn't share this unique talent for being macabre, creepy, even scary, and yet somehow likable at the same time. Actually, his character here is not villainous, and yet he is somewhat unlikable.This being said, "Premature Burial" is still and wonderful Gothic Horror experience, which once again proves that Corman is a true master of creepy greatness and beautifully eerie atmosphere. Ray Milland plays Guy Carrell, a man living in paralyzing fear of being interred alive. The beautiful Emily (Hazel Court) nonetheless falls for him and becomes his wife. Once they are married, however, his obsessions become worse and worse... The setting in an eerie mansion near a foggy cemetery is perfect for a Gothic Horror film like this one, and, apart from the usual atmosphere donors such as foggy grounds, Corman includes many morbid set-pieces, such as a demented live-in mausoleum. The fact that Milland's leading character is a painter of very morbid pictures also helps the film's creepiness. The stunning Hazel Court is, as always, absolutely wonderful in the female lead.Overall, "Premature Burial" isn't quite as essential as films like "House of Usher" (1960), "Pit and the Pendulum" (1961), "The Haunted Palace" (1963) or "The Masque of the Red Death" (1964), but it is still a fantastic Gothic Horror that no genre-lover can afford to miss. The true genius of this film manifests in that it creates a uniquely claustrophobic atmosphere - which actually makes the viewer afraid of being buried prematurely!