BURIED ALIVE
US, 1939, 62 minutes, Black and white.
Robert Wilcox, Beverly Roberts, Paul Mc Vey, Ted Osborne, George Pembroke, Stephen Chase, Wheeler Oakman.
Directed by Victor Halperin.
In the 1930s, there were a lot of small-budget prison films. Some of them, like this one, took a stance against capital punishment.
The opening gives a setting for this perspective, the criminal to be executed, the executioner quite agitated, not wanting to do the job, vocal in his criticisms. Also in the room are the chaplain, the warden, the doctor. Then the press file in and the executioner does his job.
After the execution, he gets a lift to a bar so that he can drown his sorrows. He is driven by one of the trustees, a young man who has committed a crime but is soon to go on parole, well trusted by the warden. The young nurse in the prison, who is certainly the subject of attraction by the doctor and the executioner as well as the young trustee, is also in the car.
The executioner has been drinking, becomes the butt of jokes by the press, especially by one who is targeting the governor of the state as well as the warden for his “softer� approach to prisoners. A brawl starts in the bar and the young driver comes in to help the executioner, punches the newspaper man who then knocks him down and the driver has to go to hospital at the prison, cared for by the nurse – who realises she is in love with him and he with her. They make plans for a happy life together when he obtains his parole.
However, the newspaper man writes articles attacking the authorities as well as the executioner and the driver. While the warden is a friend of the Governor, the situation is too political, especially with the press, so that when the young man comes before the parole board, his parole is denied. He bursts out with anger.
There is a further complication when on his return from the hearing, he sees the nurse and the chaplain in a silhouette-embrace and interpret it very, very badly. However, thankfully for the audience, the nurse is a good woman and is able to explain exactly what happened.
But then there is a kind of Of Mice and Men subplot (with an explicit reference to the novel). The young man is very concerned about a fellow prisoner, a kind of Lenny from Of Mice and Men, big, slow-witted. The young man has asked the chaplain after his holiday to make representation to help the prisoner. However, there is an altercation with a tough guard and when the bars are open, the prisoner attacks the guard, the young man trying to help him, injuries and death. The young man receives a life sentence.
However, the former executioner does the right thing and, though the young man is taken right to the chair, the press present again, including the writer of the vicious articles, everything is changed by the authorities bringing another fellow prisoner who has always been critical of the young man, disliking him intensely, who had witnessed the altercation, to view the execution. A rather bookish prisoner had goaded him and tried to provoke his conscience. It is only when the executioner has done his duty that the angry prisoner admits that the young man was innocent – but, of course, it has been set up to get his confession. And while the doctor and the executioner have to let go of their attraction to the nurse, the two younger people go off to a happy future.
