I Bury the Living

Awesome intriguing picture in which filmmaker Albert Band takes a cemetery and a few fine actors conjuring up some thrilling , terrifying and nail-biting scenes . At the beginning a text is shown : Science has learned that man possesses powers which go beyond the boundaries of the natural . This is the story of one confronted by such bizarre forces within himself , as Robert Kraft (Richard Boone) and the caretaker , Andy McKee (Theodore Bikel) walk to the Immortal Hills Cemetery office building and then happens a lot of disturbing occurrences . As cemetery manager Robert Kraft starts unraveling cryptic and increasingly terrifying secrets about the cemetery when he sticks pins in his map of a graveyard and then people mysteriously start to die . As director of a cemetery starts beleving that he can cause the deaths of living owners of burial plots by merely changing the push-pin color from white to black on a large wall map of the graveyard that notes those plots . Shocks that challenge the imagination !!!. Thee most spine-chilling cry that ever froze the blood !... Out of a time-rotted tomb crawls an unspeakable horror! A creature to freeze your blood! A story to chill your soul!

A tense , intriguing , mysterious and well performed terror thriller . As a newly-elected cemetery director's haunted by some unfortunate tragedies through a series of macabre coincidences , including intrigue , turns , a lot of twisted incidents , at the same time charged with tension , unflinching depictions with plenty of suspense in which the viewer could really enjoy . A great successful film with abundant shocks and deliciously twisted happenings , being compellingly directed with well staged set pieces and plenty of startling visual content and imagination enough . Above average horror movie in which the frightening , strange happenings developing themselves little by little , at the beginning alarming hints of an eerie and well-planned events begin to emerge , enfolding our starring in a shroud of suspicion and mental agony until a surprising conclusion . The film has engaging and interesting scenes as title and credits run over a section of granite headstone and as the map on the wall becomes slightly larger in each progressive scene , symbolizing it slowly controlling him . The story is well paced , suffering from some disturbing incidents of varying quality. There are some really creepy scenes with extreme terror , ghastly surprises and outstanding the pleasantly visual look as well . Interpretations are uniformly good . Richard Boone is terrific as the manager who discovers that by arbitrarily changing the status of plots from empty to occupied on the weird planogram causes the death of the plots' owners . Bury the Living (1958) is even referenced by Stephen King in the foreword to a short and early story written by himself .

The motion picture was well directed by a veteran filmmaker , Albert Band , who was one of Hollywood's most prolific directors who started his career in the early 50s and continuing the legacy , his son , the equally prolific producer/director Charles Band. Albert Band began financing a number of motion pictures through the seventies and eighties and helped his son , Charles , and both of whom bring together his own production company, 'Empire Pictures', in the early eighties . Upon the collapse of Empire Pictures in the early nineties, Band continued to work with his son and help bring a number of low-budget and medium budget films to the Hollywood screen and direct to video releases . Band directed some Westerns such as : ¨She came to the Valley¨, ¨Massacre at Grand Canyon¨, ¨The Young Guns¨ and ¨The Tramplers ¨ at his best . Furthermore , he made terror and Sci-fi , such as : Aliens Gone Wild , Prehisteria , Prehisteria 2 , Robot War , Doctor Mordrid , Ghoulies II , Satán's Dog and all kind of genres . Rating : 7/10 , good . The flick will appeal to Richard Boone fans . Worthwhile watching.

... that protagonist being Richard Boone of "Have Gun Will Travel" fame as the member of a prominent small-town family. Years ago, before WalMart and Best Buy, each town would have a department store, usually owned by local people. Such a department store is the source of the Kraft family wealth, and since the source of their wealth is local, it matters to the Krafts how they are perceived in the community. Thus a town committee of seven local wealthy people, including members of the Kraft family, take turns doing public service. One of these public services is managing the local cemetery. Thus it becomes Bob Kraft's (Richard Boone's) turn to do this task. The job isn't difficult and only requires a few hours a month. It is explained to Bob by the grounds keeper that a map of the cemetery on the wall basically does your work for you. A white pin is inserted on grave sites yet to be occupied. Black pins are inserted on grave sites that are already occupied.

So Bob reluctantly takes up this task when along comes his first two customers - a member of the committee and his new wife. It was a stipulation in the young man's father's will that he buy graves for himself and his wife as soon as he married before he could collect his full inheritance. In his haste or sloth, whatever it may have been, Bob Kraft puts black pins in where white pins should have been, and in twenty four hours the young couple is dead from a horrific traffic accident. Bob is a bit unnerved by this, feeling that he somehow mystically "marked the couple for death", but as the pin misplacements continue and the bodies pile up so does Bob Kraft's panic. He even calls the local police and asks them to investigate these deaths as homicides. The police don't exactly call him a crackpot because of his prominence, but they can't ignore the up-tick in the death rate either.

So the question becomes, since these are obviously natural deaths and it couldn't be some Mr. Hyde version of Bob running around and killing people and not remembering it, is he killing these people, some of them total strangers, with the power of his mind in some unconscious matter? Is this a case of "monsters from the ID"? With only a few cheesy special effects and very little action this movie manages to convey man's fear of that which he cannot control - his own subconscious and death itself.

The dialogue is rather spartan but well presented with one exception. Bob is engaged, and every conversation he has with his fiancée might as well be in another language as none of their dialogue makes any sense - it sounds like something Ed Wood would have written. The minute either talks to someone else the conversation becomes comprehensible again. The reason for this I have no idea. If you like the old 50's low budget horror films, I think you'll like this one.

'I Bury The Living' is a good example of a 50s low budget genre movie that despite a few creaks still holds up all these years later. Richard Boone ('Hombre'), best known as a star of Westerns, is solid as a businessman who is obligated to serve on the committee of a local cemetery, and inadvertently discovers that by using the map of the graves available he has the power of life and death. Boone is supported by Theodore Bikel ('The Defiant Ones', Zappa's '200 Motels') is an eccentric turn as an ageing Scots grounds keeper, and several half remembered TV character actors. The movie's director Albert Band ('Zoltan, Hound Of Dracula') is the father of 80s trash king Charles Band ('Trancers', 'Re-Animator', 'TerrorVision'). I surprised myself with just how much I enjoyed this modest thriller. Especially recommended to fans of early Roger Corman or (the original) 'The Twilight Zone' or 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' TV series.

In my opinion, good film operates on the level of dream, and is not constrained by mundane logic and consistency. By this standard, a good horror/thriller should function as a nightmare, in which each inconceivable fear finds inevitable expression, and the protagonist finds him or herself helplessly drawn to the next shock, without any hope for escape until the climax and resolution (awakening). By taking this kind of narrative technique, adding a bizarre and haunting score, repeating certain eerily iconic images and superimposing a decidedly downbeat and pragmatic dialogue, Albert Band created a uniquely dreamlike horror picture that broke through the cliched 50's take on the genre.

Working with a cast of almost unknown character-actors, and the makeup of Jack Pearce, Band's vision finds expression through action focused almost entirely in one room, a room dominated by a map of a graveyard. The map itself is defined by a kind of Magical Sigil, a map of some unexplored part of the human brain, a symbol more deeply meaningful than any modern writing, and far more inscrutable in meaning. It isn't long before Kraft, the oddly un-heroic (and unattractive) protagonist learns that this map contains the power to kill, and he is drawn back, time and again, to use its power in spite of himself. As if to emphasize the powerlessness implicit in the nightmare, it is usually at the bidding of others, not his own volition, that he uses the dread power.

Band cues us many times to the nature of the dream. Kraft complains of deja-vu, as if the dream is a repetitive nightmare. The room he works in is constantly cold at night: for some reason the heater does not function after dark. A homicide cop advocates the existence of paranormal powers that can cause death. A reporter calls Kraft from inside his own (Kraft's) home without a word of explanation. Each time Kraft suggests a thing, that thing invariably happens – just as is often the case in the best and worst of dreams.

The end of the film simply makes no sense, breaks all the rules established by the narrative, falls apart into a tangled mess. This seems acceptable, however, because our dreamer is waking up, struggling to find resolution so that he may repress the dream to go on with the business of the day. The feeling lingers, however, that as night falls and the heater once again fails, Kraft will find himself, again, in that half-remembered room with the looming image of his own mind bringing fear and powerlessness.

I Bury the Living is an enjoyable and creeper chiller from 1958. I've seen this a couple of times.

A chairman is newly appointed the head of a cemetery and there is a map with pins on it in the shed. Black pins are for empty plots and white pins for taken ones. Something strange then starts happening: when the chairman puts pins in the empty plots, the owner of that plot dies. Several deaths occur and the police come to investigate. Has the chairman got supernatural powers?

I Bury the Living is very creepy, helped by the music score. That map gives you the creeps too.

The cast is led by western actor Richard Boone and is joined by Theodre Bikel, Peggie Maurer and sci-fi/horror B-movie regular Russ Bender (It Conquered the World, War of the Colossol Beast).

I bury the Living is worth tracking down. Very good.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.