MovieChat Forums > Dead & Buried (1981) Discussion > Question about Janet and Sheriff (possib...

Question about Janet and Sheriff (possible spoilers)


I have a theory, that is, admittedly, far-fetched. Based on the background provided by Dobbs to the Sheriff in the big expository moment, I think that Dobbs may have created (not preserved) his own community based on his envisioning of an old-fashioned seaside New England town.

Consider that Dobbs tells the Sheriff that he gave Janet to him after perfecting her, and that he (Dobbs) found Janet after her car accident. He describes her bloated condition. Why would Dobbs tell the Sheriff that Janet was a gift to him, if the Sheriff and Janet were already married? How would the Sheriff, or anyone else, not have stumbled across Janet's accident? Based on Dobbs' statement that she had been rotting in the water for awhile, she obviously would have been missing and given the small size of the town and the fact that her husband was the Sheriff, it would seem likely that someone other than Dobbs would have come across her. It's possible that Janet was just passing through town like the hitch-hiker or photographer.

Also, the video shown of the Sheriff and Janet seemed similar to the first set up, when the blond nurse entrapped the photographer. The video, I believe, was shot at a rundown home, and not the house we saw the Sheriff and Janet "living" in. Perhaps the Sheriff was just a passerby, or someone who used to live in the town who had returned. Based on Dobbs' re-engineering of George into Freddie, it's plausible that the entire town was not preserved, but actually engineered by Dobbs into Potters Bluff.

This background suggests that the Sheriff and Janet might not have even been married or known each other in their pre-Potters Bluff days. Did Dobbs create relationships among random undead townspeople or outsiders converted to undead townspeople and give them false memories? Again, this seems far-fetched I know. Maybe I'm reading too much into Dobb's grand revelation.

Regardless, I enjoyed this film quite a bit even though I thought the gore was excessive.

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Idziub,

There is nothing far fetched about your conjectures. It probably happened just that way. In fact the town's name "Potter's Bluff" is just as revealing. Every city has an area where unidentified bodies are buried at cities expense called a "Potter's Field". The name "Potter's Bluff" may mean exactly that, a town of dead people who are not really dead, a "bluff" if you will.







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Another possibility if they were married before becoming "undead" or "re-living" or whatever is that they were both in a car wreck at the same time and the Sherriff was thrown out of car before it went in water.


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i think your analysis might be right

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"Frie and burn indefinetly you *beep* traitor slum albino ....." those exact words was never spoken , and i dont think vittorio gassman was in the movie "a bridge to far" however "a man got to do what a man got to do" those words was not spoken either .....

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I like this theory too. That would make Dead & Buried a great successor to alot of Twilight Zone episodes (and a predecessor to Blade Runner and Dark City, not just The Sixth Sense!)

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I think you pretty much nailed what probably happened. The ending also answered my question on my Janet would settle for the sheriff - a man visibly older than her - 17 years in real life.

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Thanks for posting this. I had never really given it this much thought but after reading your ideas here, that is probably exactly what the script writer had in mind.

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The video of Janet seems like it was way older.The one where she was found dead. I always thought she died years earlier. Then The sheriff before he was the Sheriff showed up as a tourist and Janet along with the other reanimated town folk killed him like they showed on the other video. He was brought back as one of them but with more memories and other memories the Dobbs gave him. I really doubt anyone in that town is alive. Another option is the Sheriff was born there and left town like the had mentioned but that was before the town was over run. Then he came back and they killed him. Gave him memories of him living there back along with other things...

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