Dead and buried and stabbed in the eye on horror movie night

For our traditional Friday night horror/mystery movie last week, we watched Dead and Buried, a film from 1981 which has picked up a small cult following. Normally I'd probably review this over on my Moviepalace site, but I try to adhere to a pre-1980 cutoff for that blog, so here we are. In the opening, on a misty New England beach, a photographer flirts with a hot local lady who rips her top off for him. Unfortunately, their naughty little idyll is cut short when she and a bunch of townies beat him up, tie him up, and burn him up, snapping pictures of him the whole time. They put his body in a car and make it look like he was the victim of an accident. When the new local sheriff and the (very) old undertaker investigate, it turns out the poor guy is still alive (in a startling scene inspired by a shot from Jaws) though horribly charred and unable to speak. Thus begins a string of mutilation killings; we know that the bulk of the townspeople are doing them, but we don't know why, or who the mastermind is. Even weirder, the eventually truly-dead picture snapper winds up alive and well, working as an auto mechanic at the town's garage.

The plot is fairly predictable, and the unmasking of the major villains is not surprising at all, but I must admit a number of gory setpieces did make me jump and/or yell: the charred man's unexpected scream, a nurse stabbing a man in the eye with a hypodermic needle, and a twitching, severed arm stuck in a car grille, all in the first half of the film. The plot itself has so many holes that it's way too frustrating to try and think it all through, but still things move along nicely to an OK wrap-up. James Farentino, a handsome if craggy-faced actor I know mostly from TV, is fine though he does tend to go over-the-top in the last half as his character keeps finding out nasty secrets. Melody Anderson (who played Dale Arden in the 1980 remake of Flash Gordon) is similarly OK as the sheriff's wife, who may have a secret or two of her own. Best is Jack Albertson, the Man from Chico and the Man (pictured w/Farentino) in his last screen role. He looks quite frail, but his role is fairly substantial and he does a fine job. The script was co-written by Dan O'Bannon (Dark Star, Alien) and I wish it had been a bit tighter; several relatively minor points that could be explained either aren't or are explained so subtly that I didn't notice. Still, a nice low-budget mainstream shock fest for a Friday night.