Dead & Buried

In the coastal town of Potters Bluff, strangers passing through are murdered, and then the same people are seen walking around town. Trying to solve it, the sheriff works out that the killings are committed by the townspeople together. The film is not interested in a manhunt. It is interested in collective complicity: nobody acts alone, and the murders are as orderly as municipal business. The town's undertaker sits at the centre of it. The form belongs to the horror wave of the early eighties: practical makeup effects, foggy streets and sudden violence. The killings are built out of everyday objects, a camera flash, a needle, fire. The most discussed thing about it is the credits. The screenplay carries the name of Dan O'Bannon, who wrote Alien; O'Bannon later expressed reservations about how much of it was actually his. The makeup effects are by Stan Winston, then the most sought-after name in American horror. Gary Sherman directed. James Farentino plays the sheriff and Jack Albertson the undertaker. Who it is for: viewers who like eighties practical-effects horror and small-town dread. Who it is not for: anyone looking for logic. How the town works is never explained and the ending answers nothing.