Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Kinley This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

JohnHowardReid Victor Halperin, who make such excellent work of both "White Zombie" (1932) and "Supernatural" (1933) obviously had an off day when he agreed to direct "Buried Alive" (1939) (available on a quite good Alpha disc), which is actually not a horror film by any stretch of the imagination, but a slack prison picture in which the luckless hero is condemned to an endless stretch. So no-one is actually physically buried alive at all. It's merely a figure of speech. That, in itself, is more than somewhat disappointing. But there is even more bad news to come! Burdened with a surfeit of dialogue and a totally uninteresting cast (including throaty-voiced Beverly Roberts in her final movie appearance — and who could blame her for quitting after being incarcerated in this turnkey turkey?), it makes for a boring 62 minutes, despite an obvious borrowing from John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men".

Red-Barracuda This mind-bogglingly tedious and utterly meaninglessly titled prison-drama is about a convict who is wrongly accused of killing a prison guard and subsequently sentenced to death by electric chair. Victor Halperin is at the helm here, he will be known to some as a director of some low grade poverty row genre pictures of the 30's. This has to be his least enjoyable feature that I have seen so far. It simply never gets going. It's very much a drama with little in the way of thrills; however, this is not a problem in itself. The issue is that the set-up and character relationships are not believable or compelling. The prison itself is like no other I know of, where felons are allowed out to work as chauffeurs for staff and even go drinking with them in bars in town. It's very silly. So too is the romantic sub-plot, where it seems that every man in the prison is deeply in love with the nurse/token woman. It's kind of trite and is a weak and pointless thread, as it doesn't really generate any worthwhile developments in the plot.One of the few points of interest in the plot is the way the film deals with the issue of capitol punishment. It seems to be very much anti-death penalty. This surprised me, as I thought that the general consensus back in the 30's would have been 'kill them, kill them!' Shows you what I know, turns out there were some very libertarian humanistic views on the subject back then. So that was quite interesting. Sadly not a lot else actually was.

wes-connors "A prison trustee is soon to be released from prison when he ends up stopping a bar brawl involving one of the prison guards. After some unkind press for him on the bar brawl, the convict is turned down for his early parole. Will his love for the prison nurse help him in getting past all of the people trying to keep him in prison and looking at the electric chair?" according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis."Buried Alive" is a potentially interesting look at the electric chair era, and the public servants who organize the executions. But, the main story, involving handsome Robert Wilcox (as Johnny Martin) doesn't end up serving the film's morality question; at least, not the one introduced in the opening, by twitchy switch-puller George Pembroke (as Ernie Matthews).A "love story" between Mr. Wilcox and beautiful nurse Beverly Roberts (as Joan Wright) isn't terribly exciting. The book Wilcox describes, while driving, is John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" - which makes Wilcox "George" and cell-mate Don Rowan (as Big Billy) "Lennie". In the 1929s, prisoners did a lot more reading (and motion pictures were sometimes too talky).*** Buried Alive (11/6/39) Victor Halperin ~ Robert Wilcox, Beverly Roberts, George Pembroke

LynxMatthews The cheapo box I had made it seem like a vampire horror movie where someone is buried in a grave. So horror fans beware. But fans of little B movies might find this a pleasant diversion. Most remarkable is the very clear "Of Mice and Men" style relationship between the lead guy and his big, dumb buddy.