I Bury the Living [Reviewed by Lackey]

77 min., 1958
Directed by Albert Band
My rating:
IMDB • Netflix

Once again, convention gets in the way.

* * *

Premise

Department-store president Robert Kraft has taken over as chairman of a local cemetery. In his office caretaker Andy McKee has hung a map of the grounds, with white pins marking purchased but unoccupied plots with white pins and occupied plots with black ones. When Kraft accidentally marks a newly-purchased plot with a black pin, the newly-married couple who bought it soon die in a car accident. The owners of other graves similarly marked die as well. Can it truly be that the map gives Kraft the power of life and death?

Review

I Bury the Living seems to be a bit ahead of its time, and suffers a bit for it. If it had been conceived a few years later, it would have made a great episode of The Twilight Zone; a few decades later, and it would have made a terrific X-File. There’s a specific kind of story it wants to tell–unfortunately, the tropes and expectation of how a movie like this made in the late ’50s get in the way somewhat.

Stephen King (in Danse Macabre) opines that in the last twenty minutes or so, “[t]he movie turned into a big pile of shit!” and I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that. But the resolution is a bit muddled–I wasn’t really sure what various things had to do with other various things. I really like the climactic reveal (although I can imagine it eliciting a few groans). But writer Louis Garfinkle and director Albert Band (father of cult figure Charles Band) end up trying to deliver too many answers for a mystery that only needs one, and try too hard to wrap up too much while simultaneously being ambiguous. Can’t always have it both ways.

That being said, the first hour or so of the film is quite solid. Richard Boone (Paladin in the TV version of Have Gun–Will Travel) does a good job as Kraft; he makes for a convincing romantic lead, and does a fairly good job portraying Kraft’s gradually disintegrating mental state. The supporting cast is also strong, particularly Howard Smith (of the ’60s sitcom Hazel) as Kraft’s no-nonsense uncle and mentor and Hebert Anderson (father of Dennis the Menace) as a newspaper reporter. Peggy Maurer, as the love interest, is occasionally a bit flat, but she’s got decent chemistry with Boone which makes up for it.

The only duff performance comes from comically miscast Theodore Bikel (best known for playing Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof when Chaim Topol isn’t available) as McKee. Bikel was in his early thirties, but McKee is 60 at the very youngest; Bikel’s makeup job bears a slight resemblance to the Gremlin from “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” The less said about his atrocious fake Scots accent, the better.

Band’s direction is very effective and atmospheric, showing command of light and shadow in the black-and-white medium (including one shot that points toward Psycho); there are only a few sets, and most of the action is confined to the cemetery office, which becomes increasingly more claustrophobic as the film progresses. (Watch the map carefully: it gets larger as the film goes on, eventually taking up the entire wall, and also occasionally appears to be backlit.) There are a few cheesy camera effects, but nothing that detracts too much from the overall experience.

If Band and Garfinkle had allowed I Bury the Living to be a bit more unconventional, it would have been one of the era’s seminal exercises in suspense and horror. As it stands, it’s an enjoyable enough B-movie, not as good as others, but a lot better than most.

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