Poor Guy Carrell (Ray Milland!)

The character at the center of the 1962 Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, The Premature Burial, Guy spends his days terrified of being buried alive.  Like his father before him, Guy suffers from a disease that can make him appear to be dead despite actually being alive.  Guy is convinced that his father was buried alive and swears that he could even hear his father crying for help inside of his tomb.  Though his fiancée, Emily (Hazel Court), insists that Guy is driving himself mad with his fears, Guy continue to spend his time trying to invent a coffin from which one can easily escape.  Even after Emily and Guy are married, Guy continues to obsess.

Finally, faced with the prospect of opening his father’s tomb to discover whether or not his father truly was buried alive, Guy appears to drop dead of a heart attack.  But is he really dead or is he about to be buried alive!?  And who is responsible for the series of mysterious events that apparently drove Guy to collapse of fright?  Watch the film to find out!  Or read the Edgar Allan Poe short story.

This was the third of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations and it’s the first one to not feature Vincent Price as the lead character.  For the most part, the members of the small cast all do a good job with their roles.  Ray Milland is both sympathetic and a little frightening as the obsessed Guy.  Heather Angel is properly enigmatic as Guy’s overprotective sister and Hazel Court will keep you guessing as far as her character’s motivations are concerned.  Dick Miller has a small but key role as a grave digger who seems to take just a little bit too much enjoyment from his work.  The film’s atmosphere is properly gothic and, if the film isn’t as visually audacious as the first two Poe films, Corman still finds time to include a creepy and psychedelic dream sequence.

That said, Vincent Price is still very much missed.  Corman reportedly wanted to use Price but, because Corman produced and financed the film  himself, Corman’s former business partners at American International Pictures would not allow Price to appear in the film.  (Price was under exclusive contract to AIP.)  By the time Corman and AIP worked out their disagreements and again joined forces, Ray Milland had already been cast in the lead role.

While the actors all do a good job, it’s hard to deny that Guy Correll would have been an ideal role for Vincent Price, even if it would have meant essentially re-doing his performance from The Pit and the Pendulum.  It’s not just that the film misses Price’s theatrical acting style.  The film also misses the energy that Price brought to the previous two Poe films.  The Premature Burial moves at a stately pace and, in the end, it’s a bit too slow and respectable for its own good.  Price would have jazzed things up and made a decent film into a truly memorable one.  Fortunately, Price would return for the later Poe adaptations.