Dead and Buried(1981)

This movie has been lost in time and it is a shame as it is entertaining and creepy. It is directed by Gary Sherman who also directed Poltergeist 3. It was on the list of 'video nasties' during the 1980's but now, it is a cult classic. It stars James Farentino and Melody Anderson. In the town of Potter's Bluff in New England, there are murders happening. The Sheriff of the town, Dan Gillis(Farentino) tries to find out why. Strangers in the town are being killed. We find out that the victims are photographed before they are killed. The Sheriff works with the coroner and the local mortician, Mr. Dobbs(Jack Albertson) to try and solve the mystery. The murders begin to come daily and they are very gruesome. His wife,Janet(Anderson), is acting very strangely also and Dan is left puzzled. He finds that she has books on voodoo and the occult and he wonders if she is having an affair. We can see that the murders are being carried out by the townspeople, but the sheriff doesn't know that. He doesn't seem to realise that the people he see every day are the ones who are making his job so difficult. Gradually, he becomes suspicious and we see him beginning to open his eyes to the oddness of his little town and the people in it.He hits somebody with his car and he sees a severed arm stuck to his car and it is twitching as if still alive. He finds that the flesh on the arm has been dead for a month. The sheriff is shocked and he feels like he is living in the town with people he doesn't know or want to know, even his own wife. He finds out that Dobbs is the mastermind behind it all. He has discovered a way to reanimate the dead and he has used it on the people in the town.The entire town is comprised of the living dead and he has been living among them. He is sickened to hear that Dobbs has been preserving these dead people for years and he considers himself an artist. He needs more corpses for his work and that is why he sends his zombies out to kill more people.The sheer horror of what he is faced with brings Sheriff Gillis to breaking point. He can't take it in and he is horrified.In the ending, we see that he is one of the living dead himself. His wife had murdered him and he had been brought back to life by Dobbs. He sees that his hands are going to rot so Dobbs takes a look at them for him...... This is an unsual movie, but it is creepy and fun. There are plenty of twists and turns in this movie, so that you are kept guessing until the end. I will give this an 8/10.