i bury the living

Despite what the exciting poster above may lead you to believe, B-movie director / producer Albert Band's I Bury the Living (1958) suggests horror more than it actually shows.  It's slow and moody, a bit like a protracted "Twilight Zone" episode.  Richard Boone plays the newly appointed director of a cemetery where, in the pre-computer days, people's graves are kept track through a push pin method (white push pins for the living who have reserved headstones; black for the dead and buried).  A series of macabre "coincidences," leads Boone to believe he can control fates by putting black push pins on the names of people who are still alive. The movie asks... can we will things to happen with our minds? (a la "dream boards" and The Secret).  The twist that comes at the end still leaves a lot unanswered--almost to the point that you can have many different interpretations.  It's funny how films (and many movies of this era seemed to play with this) can sometimes distort reason: making the implausible reason more plausible to us than what the film ultimately reveals. **1/2


-Jeffery Berg