Welcome to Public Domain Theater, your home for the wonderful world of films that have (in the United States, at least) fallen into the public domain, and are free for everyone to see!
For this month’s feature film, we have the 1958 suspense flick I Bury the Living. That’s quite a crackerjack title, with an equally neat-o premise: guy working at a cemetery discovers that, if they mark vacant gravesites down as filled, the owners of those plots will fall dead within the day, providing corpses to fill the graves. As our lead tries to keep their sanity while thrust into this proto-Death Note situation, the performances, music, and cinematography work together admirably to create a taut and effective little thriller.
In place of our usual opening short, we’ll be doing something a bit different for Public Domain Theater, and bringing you the first chapter in a film serial. Yes, it’s Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe – Chapter 1: “The Purple Death!”
This is the third in a series of film serials starring the character of Flash Gordon, most well-known nowadays for being one of the main inspirations for Star Wars. The previous film serial sent our hero to Mars, but Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe has Flash Gordon, Dale Arden, and Dr. Zarkov return to the planet Mongo, to once again liberate it from the malignant might of Ming the Merciless!
(If you’re wondering how Ming is alive and ruling Mongo here, after earlier serials killed them off, the answer given is, essentially, “Somehow, Palpatine Ming returned.”)
So if you’re in the mood for a spooky thriller or a goofy space adventure, why not spend some time at Public Domain Theater, and see what the good ol’ PDT has to offer.
Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe – Chapter 1: “The Purple Death!”
Feature Presentation:
