Please, Don't Bury Me Alive! is a 1976 independent film directed by and starring Efraín Gutiérrez and written by Sabino Garza. It is considered to be the first Chicano feature film. In its first four months of showing, the film made $300,000 at the local box offices where it was shown.Please, Don't Bury Me Alive! was considered lost since 1980 following Gutiérrez's departure from the film industry. The film was "re-discovered" by University of California, Los Angeles professor Chon Noriega in 1996. Noriega, the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center then restored and re-released the film.In 2014, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".