Before They Were Famous: Frank Darabont's Buried Alive

Frank Darabont, the Oscar-nominated writer director of such films as The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, and the man behind the first season of the ground-breaking TV series The Walking Dead, cut his teeth writing horror films, like The Blob (1988) and A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors (1987).

But before he directed such critically-acclaimed films as the two aforementioned Stephen King adaptations, he made his directorial debut with Buried Alive, a TV movie produced for the USA cable network, and released in 1990.

On the surface, the film, about a woman who poisons her do-gooder husband to run away with her sociopathic lover, only to discover that her husband isn’t quite dead and is back for revenge, sounds like just another cheesy 90’s made-for-TV movie. Cue the bad synth score, the has-been TV actors struggling through their middle-ages crises, and the horrible dialogue. But, Buried Alive proves to be much more than that.

Milking the limited budget and the twisty script by Mark Peter Carducci for all their worth, Darabont injects this modest thriller with tons of energy, style, wit, and transforms what could have been a forgettable B-movie into a minor suspense classic.

Good performances by Tim Matheson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and William Atherton, and the moody score by Michael Colombier, also help. But this is Darabont’s show, and you can see glimpses of his filmmaking prowess showing through the trappings he tries to transcend.

An atmospheric piece of American Gothic, Frank Darabont’s Buried Alive is worth rediscovering.

Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2024.

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Book Review: CAGE OF NIGHT By Ed Gorman. **** out of *****

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Ed Gorman is a master. During the 1980’s and 90’s, his books were constant “mid-listers”, which means somewhere in the middle of the bestseller lists. He never had a huge hit (like some of his contemporaries Stephen King, Peter Straub, and Dean Koontz), but his short, infinitely readable novels were – and still are – a treasure trove for the discerning reader. Cage Of Night is no exception.

Written in Gorman’s minimalist, smooth prose, and comprised of short, punchy chapters, this is a mesmerizing, haunting, and endlessly compelling tale about a young man returning from his sojourn in the military, to his small home town, only to get entangled with a seductive young woman, who may or may not be insane. And what is that entity dwelling in that old well that calls for him? To say any more about the plot would be unfair to the book and the reader, but suffice it to say, this is a brilliantly crafted tale of suspense, with a dash of Jamesian psychological horror to spice things up.

If you’ve missed Ed Gorman, you’ve missed something very special, and Cage of Night is a fine example of what this talented author has to offer. Highly recommended for fans of Dean Koontz, Ira Levin, Charles L. Grant, and Cornel  Woolrich.

Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2014 - 2022.

Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of several short films and a feature, which was released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. He is also the host of The Dark Fantastic Podcast. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @Dark.Fantastic.AK·Writer

Flashback Review: CUTTER'S WAY (1981) *** and a 1\2 out of *****

A hidden gem from the 1980's, Cutter's Way (1981), based on Newton Thornburg's novel Cutter and Bone, is too good to be forgotten.

Starring Jeff Bridges and John Heard, and directed by Ivan Passer, the film is part psychological thriller, part character study, and part buddy movie, and is an atmospheric and intelligent thriller with a twisty plot and a moody, enigmatic quality all its own.

The plot: Richard Bone (Bridges), an unemployed, womanizing scoundrel, is wrongfully suspected of murdering a teenage girl. Not knowing what to do, he seeks help from his best friend, Alex Cutter (Heard), a disabled Vietnam veteran with a terrible temper and occasional paranoid delusions. Together they try to uncover the identity of the real murderer before it's too late for both of them.

The plot, though original enough, is not the main thing here. What sets this movie apart and makes it a unique thriller, are the performances (especially Heard's as Cutter) and the stylish, nuanced direction by Ivan Passer. The enigmatic and shocking ending is also great.

Although it downplays the novel's complex themes and politics in favor of a more streamlined approach, many of the book's characters are wonderfully brought to life by a great cast and stylish direction. A dazzling paranoid thriller that deserves to be rediscovered.

Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2021. (An earlier draft was published on Bitlanders.com)

Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of several short films and a feature, which released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @Dark.Fantastic.AK·Writer

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Book Review: Space On My Hands. By Frederic Brown

Back in the 1950's and 60's, Frederic Brown was considered a master of suspense and dark fantasy, mainly because many of his stories were made into episodes of Hitchcock Presents, and other popular anthology shows. I've always found him to be a master of the short story, with most of his tales having a nasty bent to them, a brooding atmosphere, as he had a knack for nihilistic, dark endings that made his stories linger in the memory. That's not to say Brown is another H. P. Lovecraft. Not at all. Many of his stories, especially his most well-known ones, are light, snappily-plotted ones, but as many are dark and complex.

The collection Space On My Hands a collection of mainly Sci-Fi tales, is a mixture of both. You have the lighter ones (Pi In The Sky, a brilliantly sarcastic tale about advertising; All Good Bems; Nothing Sirius; Crisis, 1999, a clever sci-fi/detective tale involving hypnosis; and Star Mouse), and the darker-toned ones (Knock; Something Green; and the closing tale, Come And Go Mad, a masterpiece of psychological horror).

So if you are looking for some vintage mystery/Sci-Fi from the Golden Age (this collection was first published in 1951), Space On My Hands is a good choice.

Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2013.

Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of several short films and a feature, which was released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @Dark.Fantastic.AK·Writer

Book Review: THE MONK. By William H. Hallahan

William H. Hallahan is hardly a prolific author. In the past forty years, since the start of his career as an author, he has written a dozen books (fiction and non-fiction); the most well-known is the supernatural thriller, The Search For Joseph Tully, considered by some to be a minor masterpiece of atmospheric horror.

The Monk, published in 1983, is another of what Hallahan calls his "occult novels", books which feature demons, psychics, astral projection, and epic battles between forces of Good and Evil. The Monk tells the story of a young man with a purple aura, a supremely benevolent human being destined to end the war between Satan and God's angels, led by fallen angel Timothy. Across thousands of years, the battle has raged on, with Satan and his minion, The Black Hawk, managing to kill each and every one of the children born with  purple auras, before Timothy and his familiar, a dog named Repentance, could get to them and complete the ceremony required to win the war against The Devil. What ensues is partly a chase novel, partly a metaphysical/mystical thriller, about a young man trapped between two warring cosmic forces that both want him for their own.

The Monk is a bizarre book. It is a sprawling and somewhat disjointed story, jumping from the creation of Man, to Heaven and Hell, to present day New York, to set-pieces featuring demons, banshees, and devils, to a love story between the book's protagonist and his lover, to a monastery which houses a possible Satan-worshiper! That is not to say that The Monk is a bad book, or even an average one. Far from it. This is an endlessly compelling story, energetically told. But Hallahan's straightforward prose occasionally is too flavorless for its own good, while the novel's first part is so convoluted that I almost gave up on it before getting to the good stuff, about halfway into the book.

But what Hallahan has going for him is the sheer readability of the book. No matter how strange and disjointed the story gets, one just can't stop reading! Which, I guess, is a sure sign of a good book, or, at least, a hell of an entertaining one.

Although flawed, with the climax being especially disappointing, this is one fun ride, with scenes of brilliantly conceived suspense, and a hypnotic, dreamy atmosphere. Recommended.

Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2013

Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of several short films and a feature, which was released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @Dark.Fantastic.AK·Writer