J'enterre les vivants

'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.

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.

These sorts of films were mass produced in the late fifties and early sixties, and while many of them are in good standing today; I Bury the Living has strangely managed to fly straight under the radar. It's a shame, too, as this film is at least as good as many of it's quickie contemporaries. The film utilises a graveyard as it's central location, and this represents one of it's major assets; as graveyards often make for intriguing horror locations, and when combined with the atmospheric cinematography and the brilliantly compelling story; I Bury the Living becomes more than it's B-movie status suggests it should be. Of course, I'm not claiming this film to be a great masterpiece; but for what it is, it's very good. The plot follows a man who becomes the chairman of a cemetery. This cemetery has a map of it's plots on the wall, with filled ones represented by a black pin, and ones owned by people who are still alive being represented by a white one. After accidentally inserting a black pin into the plot owned by a newly married, and very much alive, couple; the man is astonished when they turn up dead...was it merely coincidence, or can he control who lives and who dies?

The film was obviously shot on a low budget, and as such; most of the murder scenes take place off-screen, and the film lacks a certain bite. However, it really doesn't matter because what we do see more than adequately carries the film, and director Albert Band always ensures that the plot moves well and the film stays on track. Richard Boone takes the lead role, and his morbid presence does the movie no end of favours. It is important that you get the right leading man in films like this, and Richard Boone is definitely that man. The rest of the performances range from good to not that good, but nobody particularly stands out as being terrible. The plot lines really manages to get the audience thinking, which is always a positive element in a film; and while this has nothing on similar films about similar topics, such as Dellamorte Dellamore, it holds it's own as a thought-provoking drama. My only real criticism of the film is that it takes itself a bit too seriously. This tone is better than a jokey one; but it could have lightened up just a little. Overall, I Bury the Living is well worth seeing and comes with high recommendations from me.

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.

... 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.