I love you, so I must bury you alive?

February 13, 2012 3:57 PM

My wife thought Last of the Mohicans had a scene where the heroine was buried alive to protect her from an Indian raid, with only a reed to breathe through. I just watched the movie, and didn't see anything like that. Is she thinking of another movie, or a (very) different cut of the film?
posted by bullitt 5 to Media & Arts (12 answers total)

I think they did something like this in the animated version of Robin Hood.
posted by andoatnp at 4:11 PM on February 13, 2012 [3 favorites]

I'll bet she's thinking of the scene in The New World where Pocahontas hides underwater while breathing through a reed.
posted by bubukaba at 4:12 PM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

They also did this in one of the Davy Crockett movies that were on the Disney Sunday Movie in the late 80's. He pretends to shoot her, and then buries her with a basket over her face so she can breathe. That would have aired in the late 80's or very early 90's. It's not on IMDB, but I think it was Davy Crockett: Guardian Spirit.
posted by KGMoney at 4:25 PM on February 13, 2012 [1 favorite]

Now I'm having second thoughts about my answer. Before posting it I asked two of my roommates if they remembered this scene, and both said they did - but looking for evidence of it online doesn't seem to turn anything up! I *do*, however, remember another instance of this motif from an old "in the land of the Indians" themed Uncle Scrooge comic book! So it's definitely a thing.
posted by bubukaba at 4:33 PM on February 13, 2012

I am a, uh, devoted aficionado of the Michael Mann/Daniel Day-Lewis Last of the Mohicans and I can say authoritatively that your wife is not thinking of the theatrical release or the director's cut of that particular version, although there are several adaptions, so it might be an older film.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 4:40 PM on February 13, 2012 [7 favorites]

She is definitely thinking of another movie. Or she might be thinking of the TV mini-series of The Last of the Mohicans; I have never seen that, so can't comment if a scene like that was introduced (it's not in the book or any of the movie versions).
posted by Sidhedevil at 4:51 PM on February 13, 2012

Pocahontas hides underwater while breathing through a reed

James Bond does this too, in Dr No.

Maybe someone literate could chime in here about the novel of The Last of the Mohicans -- is this scene in the original text?
posted by Rash at 5:01 PM on February 13, 2012

I am myself only indifferent literate, but I can assure you that no such thing happens in The Last of the Mohicans. In fact, the two young female protagonists--half-sisters Cora and Alice Munro--are captured by the Hurons three or four times in the course of the novel, on one occasion surrendering themselves so the men in the party can escape.
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:20 PM on February 13, 2012

KGMoney has it. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0233529/ He pretends she's been shot and killed and buries her with the basket over her face so she can breathe and then unbury herself when it's safe.
posted by lemniskate at 5:39 PM on February 13, 2012

Nthing. Just wanted to add another voice to the chorus. I've seen this movie 1857 times, and no such scene exists.
posted by anonnymoose at 5:53 PM on February 13, 2012 [2 favorites]

It's not what she's thinking of, but as an aside, Charles Portis (the author of the novel True Grit, on which the films were named), in his fantastic autobiographical essay "Combinations of Jacksons," about growing up in rural, post-WWII Arkansas, writes about playing a game like this as a child:

I MADE MY first experiments in breathing underwater at the age of nine, in 1943. It was something I needed to learn in life so as to be ready to give my pursuing enemies the slip. At that time they were Nazi spies and Japanese saboteurs.

The trick looked simple enough in the movie serials, which pulled me along from one Saturday to the next with such chapter titles as "Fangs of Doom!" and "In the Scorpion's Lair!" First you cut a reed. You put one end of the reed in your mouth and lay face up, very still, on the bottom of a shallow stream. The other end was projected above the surface of the stream, and through this hollow shaft, as you lay buried alive in water, you breathed.

It continues on about that and many other things. I really can't over-recommend the essay.
posted by ecab at 6:55 PM on February 13, 2012 [6 favorites]

As far as I can remember, this does not happen in the Cooper novel either.
posted by amcm at 10:58 PM on February 14, 2012