The plot of this film actually would make a wondrously extravagant "Love is
" cartoon! You know, the drawing of that cute little naked couple holding hands and looking into each other's eyes with a text underneath stating: "Love is
poisoning him with Japanese fish fluids, refusing to pay extra for his embalming and burying him in a rotten coffin barely two feet under the ground!" This modest and well-directed early 90's made-for-TV thriller guarantees decent suspense and entertainment as long as you don't set your expectations too high. The plot, which is absolutely unrelated to the similarly themed Edgar Allen Poe story, is full of far-fetched and utterly implausible story elements and you better don't contemplate about it too much, but it's definitely compelling enough to keep you on the edge of your seat for an hour and a half. Hard-working family man Clint Goodman *thinks* he has a good marriage going on, but his spoiled wife Joanna is actually sleeping with her doctor and planning to run off to California with him. They need money first, though, and so they conceive a plan to kill Clint and sell his profitable business to a frequent bidder. Their plan kind of backfires, because tropical fish-poison is a worthless murder weapon, and Clint literally crawls back among the living. He wisely decides that killing his wife and her lover with a shotgun is "too easy" – and right he is – and prepares an inescapable death trap of his own. The implausible part of "Buried Alive" is how sloppy the murder scheme is. Here you have a formula for murder that you could actually get away with, but it almost seems as if they want everything to fail. You make sure the last words your husband is supposed to hear aren't "Die! Damn you! Die", you pay for the embalming because it means extra security he's dead and you make sure everybody in town witnesses a proper funeral with an expensive coffin! Other than the occasionally lacking plot, "Buried Alive" does contain a surprisingly large amount of intense fright-moments, superb acting performances and tight direction from Frank Darabont (acclaimed director of "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile") in his long-feature debut. Tim Matheson is good, but the always very sexy Jennifer Jason Leigh is terrific as the battle-ax wife and William Atherton is simply brilliant as the sleazy scumbag lover. Since this is a TV-movie, we unfortunately don't get to see a lot of gore. Certain moments are reasonably icky, like the image of Clint's scratched-open fingertips and a sink full of hydrogen peroxide, but Darabont merely keeps the emphasis on atmosphere
Moral of the story: don't use poisoned fish if you want to kill someone! Homer Simpson didn't die after eating the allegedly poisoned dish of sushi, either.
Moral of the story: don't use poisoned fish if you want to kill someone! Homer Simpson didn't die after eating the allegedly poisoned dish of sushi, either.