Buried Alive (1989)

A woman goes to teach at the Ravenscroft Institute , finding that some secrets better stay buried....This movie has a pretty good cast which includes Donal Pleasence, Robert Vaughn, Nia Long , and even John Carradine. There are even early appearances by Arnold Vosloo (The Mummy),and William Butler ( NOTLD'90). Donald Pleasence is a very versatile actor, but is wasted in this movie. Carradine appears for only 10-15 seconds. The lead actress Karen Witter doesn't do anything at all , except for screaming. The plot is OK, but i expected more gore. Though, there is one good death scene, the movie lacks the intence, and is very boring at times. There's enough suspense, but its not compensated with enough action.I wasn't satisfied. Maybe someone will. 5/10

A woman leaves the Raven Croft Mental Facility, which for some reason is filled with only women who do not seem insane, but more like juvenile delinquents (played by women in their 20s and 30s, to be sure). Outside, she's attacked by a short person in a Ronald Reagan mask and pushed through a trapdoor down a very long chute. Mr. Reagan shows up at the bottom of the chute seconds later, suggesting he has his own chute nearby or an express elevator. It was lucky for him her escape route passed by his trapdoor anyway.The late Reagan is infamous for (among many other things!) being responsible for the closing of federally funded mental institutions, essentially kicking many patients out onto the streets. I wonder if this movie was trying to comment on that, in its own stupid way. The "Ronald Reagan Home for the Mentally Ill" in Airplane II may have been making a jab at the same thing. Anyway, a Reagan mask isn't really scary-looking. Even though it seems to be painted a solid color, suggesting the William Shatner mask in Halloween, it still looks like a caricature of Reagan, and thus, silly.The next day a young woman shows up at the facility to be a teacher. On the way she has a Psycho moment when a sunglasses-wearing cop (Vosloo, years before the Mummy!) finds her asleep in her car. At the institution, she has some odd hallucinations relating to people falling down the chute (which she's never seen) or being walled up behind bricks.And about those bricks - the killer walls people up behind a single row of red bricks which he does not appear to cement together. Even though he puts his prisoners in straitjackets, they could still simply push against the wall and have it fall down.Donald Pleasance has a character that is ridiculous and serves practically no purpose except to be weird. John Carradine shows up for all of about ten seconds. I understand in his later years people would film him doing something, before even having an idea of what to do with it, just so they could put him in their movie. Perhaps this fits in with that.Robert Vaughn looks, sounds, and dresses the same in this as in everything else I've seen him in. C'mon, an accent, some facial hair, and different haircut, do something to make your character superficially different! Or is it the director's fault?The movie is definitely not adapted directly from Poe. It suggests The Black Cat, The Premature Burial, The Fall of the House of Usher, The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether among others, without really having much to do with any of them except superficially.

This film is awful. I rented it because at our store it was $0.99 Thursday rental. The movie was very slow paced and did not keep one's attention. Robert Vaughn has got to be one of the worst actors. Has he ever done anything other than B movies. No. He is that bad. Donald Pleasence was casted, but had such a small role that one could not judge his abilities. The only part I did like was the brick work which is movie is loosely based on. 2/10

They've got a lot of nerve to call that "Edgar Allan Poe's buried alive".It does not look like the writer's works to the slightest extent -unless the presence of a black cat counts-Located in a luxury reform school for girls (?) ,this piece of garbage casts Robert Vaughn as the director and D.PLeasance as a doctor(?)A young female teacher arrives:she is to teach here-but we never see her working or so little.In the basements ,a man with a Ronald Reagan mask(??) is burying alive the girls who try to escape.This is a completely failed horror film,borrowing now from"shining",now from Dario Argento's "suspiria" and "phenomena".This is a cock-and -bull story with the obligatory final trick:it's not over when you think it is,now roll on "Buried alive 2" :but the movie,proving that sometimes there's justice in the universe ,was a flop,preserving the spectators from it.It's the movie scenarists that should be buried alive.