Of the popular series of 60’s horrorflix "adapted" by Roger Corman and company from the works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Premature Burial is one of the least seen. Produced in 1962 after the success of House of Usher and Pit And the Pendulum, the movie was made during a brief dispute between director/producer Roger Corman and American International Pictures, the company that had been distributing his flicks for years. As a result of this contentiousness, Poe icon Vincent Price was not available for the film, and the lead was given to Ray Milland (a year before his great Corman-directed performance, as X, The Man With The X-Ray Eyes). Though other Corman stock players like Dick Miller have a role in the film, you can really see how inseparable Price had already become from Corman's Poe-sie: Milland never approaches the level of effete menace Price conjured up with deceptive ease in these films. S'no wonder that Corman quickly brought Vincent back for subsequent Poe excursions like Tales of Terror.
As a pre-teen, I missed Premature Burial during its first-run at the movie theatres. These were the days when horror movies were advertised with sound fx-packed ads on AM top forty radio, and I remember being ultra-enthused about seeing Burial when I first heard its creepy ads. But my spoilsport parents, recalling the nightmares I'd been subject to after seeing Pit And the Pendulum the year before (for some reason, my folks didn't much enjoy being roused in the middle of the night by the sounds of me screaming in my sleep), refused to let me go with my friends. For years I had to be content with the oral summary of the film offered the next day to all the other no-shows in the neighborhood by my friend, Bill "Mushy" Michaud. And when I recently happened upon one of MGM's "Midnight Movies" sets featuring Burial alongside Masque of the Red Death, I jumped at the chance to finally view this still unglimpsed gothic offering. Turns out, of course, that the movie I'd erected in my imagination was ten times creepier than the actual product.
Corman's film, written by prolific horror/fantasy film writers Charles Beaumont & Ray Russell, centers around 19th Century artist/medical student Guy Carrell (Milland, looking considerably older than yer average student), a moneyed English Lord with an obsessive fear of being buried alive. The movie begins with a moody glimpse of the aftereffects of this particular misfortune: two gravediggers (one of 'em whistling "Molly Malone," a song that achieves a spooky resonance over the course of the flick) opening up a grave at night as Guy and several of his doctor peers look on. When they lift the coffin lid, first thing we see is a pattern of bloody scratchmarks on the inside, then the inevitable shock shot of a mummified corpse caught in mid-scream. You know, after seeing that, I'd be a tetch nervous about the possibility of premature burial myself.
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