The Premature Burial is about a guy who is afraid that he is going to be buried prematurely. He has a sickness known as “catalepsy“, which is where all your vital signs can diminish to the point where you could pass for being clinically dead. He strongly believes that his dad had the same illness and was ultimately buried alive. This fear consumes our main character to the point where he can’t experience anything that reminds him of death (flowers, certain songs) and he spends every waking moment building a little church and coffin with a myriad of intricate releases and escapes just in case he is ever buried alive.

This Poe classic is brought to us by Roger Corman. Like Stuart Gordon with Lovecraft, Corman seemed to have a good thing going with his Poe interpretations. While this is not Corman’s best, (or Poe’s) it is still entertaining.

All the acting was good and the hotty Hazel Court makes another Corman movie appearance. The scenery and atmosphere were top notch as well. The feeling of melancholy was constant. We were always aware of our protagonist’s malady and you could feel the self-fulfilling prophecy building up. A cheery walk outdoors involved strolling out onto the gloomy foggy moors, constantly paranoid that somebody was trying to get him. No wonder this guy was fucked up.

The thing that dragged this movie down was indeed the tedium. We were always reminded that the main character was sick and was probably going to be buried alive. It led to some predictability. To be fair, there was a decent murder mystery angle and I didn’t see the ending coming. On a side note, I’m glad I didn’t watch the trailer beforehand, because I would have known how the whole movie turned out AND I would have been led to believe that this was the greatest horror movie of all time. It made Blair Witch’s marketing seem ethical.

Overall, this was a good, but not great movie. Corman added a touch of class to the horror genre. I probably don’t need to mention this on account of the movie’s age, but gorehounds and bootyhounds should probably look elsewhere. This was a nicely made movie with an average, albeit original, storyline. I give this movie 5 out of 10 times a group of people automatically assume that a guy is dead, even though he claims he has catalepsy and will probably be buried alive. On another side note, I guess we can assume that the advances of science, and the embalming process in particular, pretty much took care of the fear of catalepsy-induced premature burials. Of course that probably raised a new and different fear of being embalmed alive. Ok, I’m starting to ramble…