Two vintage Roger Corman thrillers put an Oscar winner to good use
Ray Milland gets hoisted high on his own petard in two vintage thrillers produced and directed by Roger Corman. In The Premature Burial (1962) and “X”: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes (1963)—both of which arrived on Blu-ray last week courtesy of Kino Lorber—Oscar-winner Milland plays men forced to lie in the beds they’ve made. This is literally true in The Premature Burial, in which Milland is Guy Carrell, a prosperous painter whose very particular phobia of being placed in the ground before his time haunts his every waking moment. (Oh mother, he can feel the soil falling over his head). In response, he creates a tricked-out, personalized mausoleum specially designed with escape hatches in the event that he’s buried alive—but you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men. While not quite as visually sumptuous as some of the other Edgar Allan Poe adaptations signed by Corman in his heyday, The Premature Burial still comes steeped in the kind of thick, foggy atmosphere that can make even a minor horror movie feel like a late-night classic. And Milland, who was pinch-hitting for Corman’s usual star, Vincent Price, makes for a credible and desperate cataleptic, popping his eyeballs in fear at the claustrophobic fantasies he’s worked up in his head.
