Yesterday, I received a press release about escape artist Curtis Lovell II planning to be buried alive onstage in Grand Terrace, Calif.’s Pico Park on Halloween, and I got to wondering: What are the best buried alive scenes?
Rewatching this clip of Nick Stokes (George Eads) being rescued in CSI‘s Quentin Tarantino-directed fifth season finale made me whimper just now.
What scenes still haunt you Buffy and Bones fans? Movies are eligible, too.
Kill Bill Vol. II.
I guess our friend Quentin has somewhat of a preoccupation, no?
Bones indeed – that was the first thing that sprang to mind, the episode where Brennan and Hodgins were buried in a car and Booth was going nuts trying to find them before it was too late.
There was a great episode of Alias where Sydney was buried alive. The uber-geek-tech-head Marshall found her, making him hero of the day for once. Awesome!
So it wasn’t exactly a burial but the end of season 1 of Veronica Mars. She’s trapped in a refrigerator and being burned alive while here father here’s her screaming over a walkie-talkie. Amazingly creepy.
Even though it was just in a coffin, I’ll add David Fincher’s The Game in there – Michael Douglas wakes up in a grave in Mexico (but he does get a great t-shirt at the end of it all.)
I absolutely hate buried-alive scenes, but I have to say the one that freaked me out the most was actually from “Heroes”–that part where immortal villain Adam got buried in a coffin under fresh-poured concrete. That just really got me because of the immortality factor, I think–I mean, buried alive is bad, but buried alive FOREVER?
“The Vanishing” (the Dutch original). I don’t want to give away the ending because it’s chilling, but given the topic of this post, I guess I already did.
I think I remember a cheesy buried alive story on Days of our Lives – I think it was ‘Carly’ who was buried.
Anyway, here are my top 3 ‘Best Burials’
3. Bones & Hodgins buried in the car
2. Alias: Sydney buried alive with Marshall as her only hope
1. Nick Stokes on CSI – that was just so chilling! Very well done by Tarrantino.
Christian Bale being buried alive in The Prestige. “How fast can you dig?”
I’ll give a vote to the US version of The Vanishing. I was never so happy to see someone get a shovel in the face as I was Jeff Bridges in that movie.
Lost- Nikki and Paulo. They were thought to be dead but were really paralyzed by venom. To see Hurly throwing dirt over them from their point of view sent chills down my spine. No one ever realized the truth.
Sloane in the series finale of Alias.
Just deserts and irony? Delicious.
Kill Bill Vol. 2. I knew she’d get out, but I was still really uncomfortable during the process.
The burial that always stands out in my mind (probably because it was my first) is Vivian burying Carly alive on Days of Our Lives. The coffin was equipped with oxygen, audio and video (if I’m not mistaken) so that Carly could experience everything that she was missing above ground. It was classic soap camp, but it was great to watch.
At the risk of ruining the movie, definitely the original version of The Vanishing. Still the only film that has made me squirm with discomfort every time I see it.