I Bury the Living is a corker of a horror-thriller that draws you in, but ultimately lets you down with an “explanatory” ending that just doesn’t fit. Made quickly on a shoestring budget, it was one of an onslaught of small-scale drive-in flicks that poured out of scrappy independent studios in the 1950s and early 1960s, most of which were immediately forgettable. I Bury the Living, though, has the kind of style and pacing that overcomes its budgetary limitations and minimalist script—it’s a throwaway, but a good one.

Richard Boone, a stoic, craggy actor known primarily for commanding roles as generals and leaders in war movies and Westerns, is perfectly cast against type as Robert Kraft, an upright, no-nonsense businessman who becomes the chairman of a cemetery owned by his family business. It’s a temporary rotating job and shouldn’t amount to much more than signing checks. In the film’s opening scene, Robert meets the cemetery’s slightly off-kilter Scottish caretaker, Andy McKee (played by versatile character actor Theodore Bikel) and then lets him go after 40 years of service (with full pension, of course).

But, things start getting strange when Andy shows Robert a map of the cemetery that hangs on the wall in the office. Each plot is represented with either a black pin (meaning it’s filled with a body) or a white pin (meaning the plot has been purchased, but not filled yet). When Robert accidentally places two black pins where white ones should go and the owners of the plot die almost immediately in a car accident, it seems like just an eerie coincidence. But, when it happens again … and again … and again, Robert becomes convinced that either he or the map (or both) have a supernatural ability to cause death.

It’s a creepy premise, to be sure, and one ripe with possibilities. For most of the film, screenwriter Louis Garfinkle builds the tension by making it more and more obvious that Robert is dealing with forces outside of his control—something he is clearly not accustomed to. Veteran schlock director Albert Band, then a novice with only one film to his credit (1956’s juvenile delinquent Western The Young Guns), shows a sure hand in maintaining the film’s ever-increasing pace. He knows to keep it slow at the beginning and let the scenario take hold before letting Robert slide into a spiral of existential despair. He also cranks up the atmosphere with creative stylistic choices, such as shooting the cemetery map in extreme close-up and using angled lighting on the hundreds of pins to make them look as if they are somehow alive.

All of this works surprisingly well, giving that the movie’s premise isn’t much more than fuel for a half-hour episode of The Twilight Zone. Yet, just when you think the filmmakers have pulled off something really good, the last 10 minutes slam down on you like a lead weight, offering a credulity-stretching explanation for everything that has happened that simply defies logic, not to mention crushes the supernatural aura that made the film so watchable in the first place.

The Hand is more of a mystery story than a horror movie, but it doesn’t come anywhere close to I Bury the Living’s engrossing B-movie charm. Rather, it is quite dull, dragging through a rote murder-mystery plot that, despite the movie’s brief running time, is still quite convoluted and not terribly convincing.

The movie opens in Burma in 1946, with three British soldiers having been captured by the Japanese. In an attempt to torture information about them, the caricatured Japanese officer (played by clearly non-Asian Walter Randall) cuts their hands off with a samurai sword. Flashforward to the present day (in this case, 1960) in London, where two Scotland Yard investigators are looking into a mysterious case in which a homeless drunk was paid 500 pounds to have his hand amputated and was then murdered. More murders ensue, and it’s no surprise that the investigators are led back to the men we met in the prologue.

The Hand is a rarely seen potboiler, and, despite the generally monotonous nature of the narrative, it has a few striking scenes (and at least one memorably gory moment involving a severed hand in a box). Director Henry Cass had already directed more than a dozen cheapie programmers, including 1958’s Blood of the Vampire. Unlike Albert Band, though, he is a largely uninspired director, clearly more interested in just getting the project done than investing it with even a modicum of style. The screenplay by Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton has its share of dry British wit, including some amusing back-and-forths between the two investigators regarding the younger’s devotion to his girlfriend. Unfortunately, it’s not nearly enough to redeem this run-of-the-mill quickie.

©2003 James Kendrick