Padme's Library: 📘🎥Friday's Film Adaptation🎥📘: The Premature Burial by Edgar Allen Poe

Friday, October 18, 2019

📘🎥Friday's Film Adaptation🎥📘: The Premature Burial by Edgar Allen Poe

Summary:
In "The Premature Burial", the first-person unnamed narrator describes his struggle with things such as "attacks of the singular disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy", a condition where he randomly falls into a death-like trance. This leads to his fear of being buried alive ("The true wretchedness", he says, is "to be buried while alive".). He emphasizes his fear by mentioning several people who have been buried alive. In the first case, the tragic accident was only discovered much later, when the victim's crypt was reopened. In others, victims revived and were able to draw attention to themselves in time to be freed from their ghastly prisons.

The narrator reviews these examples in order to provide context for his nearly crippling phobia of being buried alive. As he explains, his condition made him prone to slipping into a trance state of unconsciousness, a disease that grew progressively worse over time. He became obsessed with the idea that he would fall into such a state while away from home, and that his state would be mistaken for death. He extracts promises from his friends that they will not bury him prematurely, refuses to leave his home, and builds an elaborate tomb with equipment allowing him to signal for help in case he should awaken after "death".

An artist grows distant from his new wife as an irrational horror of premature burial consumes him.

Release Date: March 7, 1962

Release Time: 81 minutes

Cast:

Ray Milland as Guy Carrell

Heather Angel as Kate Carrell, Guy's sister

Hazel Court as Emily Gault, Guy's wife

Alan Napier as Dr. Gideon Gault

Richard Ney as Miles Archer

John Dierkes as Sweeney

Dick Miller as Mole

Clive Halliday as Judson

Brendan Dillon as Clergyman

Author Bio:
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Poe died in Baltimore at age 40; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol poisoning, brain congestion, cholera, heart disease, and rabies.