16 October 2024
I Bury the Living (1958)
77 min.
Directed by Albert Band.
With Richard Boone, Theodore Bikel, Peggy Maurer, Herb Anderson, Howard Smith, Robert Osterloh.
Interesting low budget horror from 1958.

As member of a rotating advisory committee, local businessman Robert Kraft (Booth) becomes the new manager of the Immortal Hills cemetery.

The part-time job is supposedly a piece of cake: just supervise the on-site groundskeeper, and keep track of the burial plots via a map on the wall.

White stick pins in the map symbolize those folks who have reserved plots (but are still alive). And black pins in the map mark those who have died.

But when Robert inadvertently sticks a black pin in a white plot marker, he discovers he can cause the death of the grave owner.

Disbelieving, he decides to test the outrageous theory that he can control life on the whim of a pin...and soon, more people die.

This entertaining '50s terror achieves a certain sense of dread due mostly to its stark execution, dank graveyard setting, and feeling that it's a kind of low rent Twilight Zone episode.

But unfortunately, the well-crafted supernatural focus inexplicably crumbles with the cop out finale.

Still, worth a look see.

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