Auteur/Perpetrator: Albert Band
Star of Shame: Richard Boone
Monster(s): Push pins
“Plot”: A cemetery caretaker discovers an awesome, terrifying power that is available at your local stationery store
By Richard Romano
It’s Halloween here at Movie Mis-Treatments (and, I suspect, elsewhere as well) and as with last year’s The Skull, we present a horror movie that is a touch above the normal fare to be had here (not like that’s hard). This year’s Menacing Movie Mis-Treatment is the 1958 creepfest I Bury the Living, the movie whose potential tagline “You’ll never look at push pins the same way again!” will set your teeth on edge. (I could say that it will keep you on pins and needles, but I don’t think I’ll say that.) It’s actually a pretty good movie—until...
Until, sir?
Until that day over Macho Grande.
Over Macho Grande?
No, I’ll never get over Macho Grande.
Sorry...where was I? Oh, right...Until the exceedingly lame ending, which pretty much derailed everything that came before it.
By the way, I do have a bit of career enhancement advice. If you are at a networking function and you are asked, “So, what do you do?” it is perhaps unwise—though fun—to reply, “I bury the living.” This is the sort of business advice that’s hard to get for free, and yet is why I am one of the most successful business consultants around, with a clientele consisting entirely of Fortune 500 companies. (Well, no, not really. Actually, all my clients are Misfortune 500 companies.)
Anyway, on to burying the living.
Ah! A lion! Oh, it’s just an MGM picture. Whew! On to the main titles and what forebodes terror more than tuba music? The production manager is Clark Paylow. At least the crew knew what they were getting themselves into. Written by Louis Garfinkle. Of the folk-rock duo Sumon & Garfinkle. And directed by Albert Band. I think I saw the Albert Band at SPAC a couple years ago.
And we get an on-screen graphic. Hoo boy. It’s always a bad sign when the movie has to go to great pains to explain its premise. “Science has learned that man possesses powers which go beyond the boundaries of the natural.” Or even tasteful. “This is the story of one confronted by such strange forces within himself.” Or, in other words, “I’m never eating that again.”
And we are in a cemetery. And there are two living people walking through it. Bury them! “Welcome to Immortal Hills, sir,” says one to the other. A bit presumptuous, aren’t you?
They walk up to a building, presumably the cemetery office. One large lumbering man in plaid—Andy McKee (Theodore Bikel)—points out a name plate next to the door. “It’s all by way of making you feel right at home, Baldy.” Baldy? But the guy has tons of hair. “Mr. Chairman,” he adds. Ah. Does one really want to be made to feel right at home in a cemetery? Oh, his name is Bobby. That is, Robert Kraft (Richard Boone), heir to the processed cheese empire. Well, no, actually heir to the cemetery chairmanship. He surveys his new office. McKee explains that Kraft has to be sworn in by the committee, and he proceeds to list all the committee members. His accent is a strange combination of Scottish and Eastern European.
Kraft is immediately drawn to a large map of the cemetery on the wall of the office, dotted with black and white pins. What in the Hec Ramsey is this? “This map’s going to be a big help to you, Bobby,” says McKee, dripping with irony. He explains that the black pins denote plots that are already taken, and the white pins denote plots that have been reserved, but are as yet unoccupied. For now. Bwa-ha-ha!
They then discuss McKee’s retirement, coming after forty years of devoted service. McKee seems to think that Kraft will have no trouble finding a replacement. “There must be plenty of young and hard-muscled toughs that’d give their eye teeth for my shoes.” And vice versa. It’s a pretty bad job market, so he may be right.
Kraft becomes immediately obsessed with the map. McKee also makes it a point to show Kraft that there is a revolver in the desk. Yep, have gun will travel. “In case of an emergency, though we’ve had none yet.” Gee, I wonder if we’ll be seeing that gun later on?
There is a muffled and generally unidentifiable sound coming from outside. “That sounds like Stu Drexel,” says Kraft. Poor guy.
They open the door and a few seconds later a car pulls up. What was that noise then, if the car hadn’t pulled up yet? Stu Drexel apparently just got married. His new wife is not happy. “I think it’s perfectly awful.” Well, he is. Just look at him. “Getting a cemetery plot as a wedding gift.” I guess that would literally be a “plot point.” Stu then points out that it wasn’t really a “gift” from his father, and then goes on the describe the elaborate legal arrangements behind the plot. They should not let lawyers write screenplays. McKee babbles something in his impenetrable pseudo-brogue (it’s more of a broke, I think). He sounds like James Doohan as Scotty imitating Bela Lugosi. Stu babbles some more legalese and then they drive off.
Inside the office, McKee offers Kraft some Scotch. Because he’s Scottish, you know. McKee continues to wax poetic about how wonderful the cemetery is. “A fine place to slip away from the cares of the world.” Um, yeah, but not in a good way. McKee points out where the Drexels’ plots are, and Kraft inadvertently (?) sticks two black pins into the map. Bwa-ha-ha!
We then go downtown to Kraft Department Store, where your stereotypically doughey 1950s businessman is reading another legal document. I think the movie tie-in for this film was a set of court papers. Kraft is being appointed to the chairmanship of the cemetery and he really doesn’t want it. He is read the riot act by his uncle George, played by the über-doughey Howard Smith, who was also in the Twilight Zone episode “A Stop at Willoughby.” “Your great-grandfather, your grandfather, and your father all served on every community project, board, and committee that was ever created.“ He adds, “It’s a push, push business—push and drive—all the way, all the time. Push, push, push.” Next stop, Willoughby. Finally, after much delay, Kraft is sworn in.
Kraft then gets a call. “There’s a guy named Watson on the phone.” Says someone called and said “Come here, I need you.” That rings a Bell. Turns out it is Watson of Olds & Watson, undertakers. “Swell,” says Kraft. And some bad news: Stu Drexel and his wife are dead. That was fast. How does that saying go, live young, die fast?
Some time later, Kraft is in the cemetery office with McKee. Jessup, a newspaper reporter, enters. McKee, who only knows people by where their cemetery plot is, proceeds to identify Jessup’s plot location. Too bad he can’t identify the movie’s plot location. Kraft tells McKee to change the Drexel pins on the map from white to black. Turns out, they had already been changed. Bwa-ha-ha-ha! Kraft is curious. “I must have picked up the wrong color.” He then muses about the coincidence. Jessup, the hard-bitten newspaperman, waves it off. “So what?” “It just made me feel a little eerie, that’s all.” “I think it means he felt he marked the young couple for death,” says McKee ominously, as the cellos grind away on the soundtrack as punctuation.
Jessup says, “If he starts playing around with those pins again, keep him away from the west slope.” Bwa-ha-ha-ha! And then Jessup leaves. Why was he there again?
And then Annie arrives, who is Kraft’s fiancée. She is slightly upset over the death of the Drexels, and then asks Kraft why he is upset. Um, hello? They coo and yammer and paw at each other for a while, then she goes to freshen up while he obsesses about the map again. He replaces the white pin in the plot marked W. Isham with a black pin, for some reason. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!
We then go to the office of W. Isham, and it clearly and helpfully says “W. Isham” on the nameplate on his desk. He is played by Cyril Delevanti, another Twilight Zone veteran who was literally born at the age of 80. He is performing an emergency tracheotomy on a teddy bear. Well, it was he 1950s. Even stuffed animals smoked back then.
We zoom into a close-up of Isham’s hands and, as he is inserting an eye into the face of the bear, his hand starts convulsing, conveying, I would imagine, that he is having a heart attack or something. You have to hand it to him. And he slumps over. He’s dead, Jim.
The next day, McKee is polishing the Drexels’ headstone and singing badly. Happily, he is interrupted by Kraft pulling up. Kraft wastes no time in asking if McKee has found his replacement yet. One could hardly blame him. They go into the office, where McKee tells him that there was only one death recently. And then Kraft finds out it was W. Isham. Bwa-ha-ha-ha!
Kraft confesses about the haunted map to Jessup, who is naturally skeptical. “Coincidences are part of everyday life.” Kraft then confesses to an eerie sense of déjà vu in which he is convinced that he has walked through a cemetery and heard the sound of a name being carved into a headstone before. Didn’t he say earlier that he had spent much of his childhood there? It’s not really déjà vu if it’s something you actually have already experienced.
Later on, in his department store office, he is telling his uncle George about the map, the pins, and the dead people, and his uncle laughs off the coincidences. “You don’t really believe that stuff?” he says, adding, “It’s a push, push business—push and drive—all the way, all the time. Push, push, push.” “I think I’m learning something about myself,” says Kraft. Uh huh. His uncle then says he is going down to the cemetery. “What for?” “It might be fun. I’ve been looking for a way to wipe out our competition for years.” Waka waka. Kraft glares after him as he leaves. I see a black pin in his future.
Kraft accompanies uncle George to the cemetery. McKee lets them into the office, and then is dismissed. Kraft and his uncle walk up to the map. “I’m going to convince you,” says his uncle, “that there’s nothing out here for you to worry about.” George then decides to replace one Henry Trowbridge’s white pin with a black pin. “If Henry Trowbridge even looks a little peaked tomorrow, you can resign and I’ll back you up.” He then adds, “It’s a push, push business—push and drive—all the way, all the time. Push, push, push.” Kraft then suggests that he should be the one to replace the pin. “If you do it and nothing happens, it won’t be conclusive.” George hands him the black pin. “By all means,” adding, “It’s a push-pin, push-pin business—push-pin and drive—all the way, all the time.” And in the pin goes. “Call Henry and tell him what we did,” says Kraft. Yeah, I can see that phone call. “Hi, we tried to kill you! Have a nice night.”
That night, Kraft is at home, and he calls Trowbridge’s house. His wife offers to go get Henry. “He’s upstairs reading in bed.” Uh huh. Interesting euphemism. As Kraft is hanging on the line, he glances at the clock, which is ticking loudly. Suddenly, he imagines the second hand turning into a large black pin. Does that mean he’s killing time?
Henry’s wife comes back on the line. “He’s- he’s not breathing, Bob,” she gasps. Does he usually? Well, I guess that answers his question about the pins.
Here’s my question. What if he replaced the black pin with a white pin? Would that bring the dead guys back to life? I mean, it’s worth exploring. Or, maybe, use a red pin. Would they all get bad rashes or start blushing uncontrollably? Or a blue pin, would they all start singing Morrissey songs? What about a lavender pin?
The next day, McKee is singing again while carving Trowbridge’s tombstone. A police car pulls up—you know, I guess that town saved money by hiring generic police, which are just as good as the name brand. A detective, Lieutenant Clayborne, strides into the cemetery office; apparently, Kraft has ratted his pins out to the police. “Let me get this straight, Mr. Kraft,” Clayborne says, “You mean to say that every time you stick a black pin in the map, people turn up dead?” Yep, that’s the premise, and it’s the only one we’ve got, so we’re milking it for all it’s worth. Clayborne is not buying it. The Drexels died in a car accident, Isham died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and Trowbridge of a coronary thrombosis. Thus: no evidence of homicide, no need to investigate. Jessup the reporter shows up to insist that there’s no story there. Why is he there, then? Does he only go where stories aren’t?
Kraft goes to his office at the department store. Uncle George and Annie are there; George has arranged to send Kraft off on a holiday and think he should get away for a while. He’s even packed an etui for his pins. And some crossword puzzles, since he now knows what an etui is. George remembers his promise to let Kraft resign; Kraft refuses to resign. “Possibly something real, unreal, I don’t know, is waiting to kill one of us every time I jab a black pin in that map.” Word of advice: keep him away from the stapler. Annie is having none if it. “The poor man died of a heart attack. Heart disease is the country’s number one killer.” She then brings up a PowerPoint presentation on leading causes of death in the U.S., cross-tabulated by age and ethnicity. “Maybe not in Milford,” says Kraft. “Oh, Bob, you can’t believe that map is literally killing people.” Figuratively, yes, but literally, no. Anyway, why doesn’t he just burn the map?
Ah, but maybe it’s him and not the map. He tries to use as evidence the fact that the other day he had willed her to visit him and she felt compelled to see him...despite the fact that they are engaged to be married and had a lunch date.
Later that day, uncle George, Charlie Bates, and Bill Honegger—“the committee”—are in Kraft’s office trying again to convince him to resign, but he won’t. They relent, but insist that they all go down to the cemetery and change all of their white pins to black. Shouldn’t George be a tad leery of this? Or is it “Push, push, push”? “We feel that you should do as Bill said,” says George, “because it will put an end to this business once and for all.” It will thin out the cast, at any rate.
So Kraft goes down to the cemetery and switches the pins. What he should have done is only switch two of the pins; that way he has one sort of witness, or can at least go “nyah nyah.” But, last but not least, he push push pushes George’s black pin into the map.
There is a knock at the door, and it is a nervous McKee, who insists that Kraft get out of there, “Or who knows what may happen to the lot of us.” Which pin will kill that lousy accent? And just as he ushers McKee out, the phone rings. Now what? It’s Jessup. “Is this the Immortal Hills Cemetery?” You just called it! “Bob, I’ve been looking all over town for you.” But obviously not in the one place he has barely left for a week. “I’m at your place,” says Jessup. Why? He’s not a very good reporter if he a) doesn’t realize what phone number he has dialed, and b) can’t find Kraft in the one place he has found him a half dozen times already in this movie. Anyway, Kraft admits to Jessup what the committee had him do. “Nothing’s going to happen to them, Bob.” Doodly doodly doodly...something’s happened to them! “I think they did you a big favor.” Heh, I bet. “I’ve never heard of a coincidence of three people dying all at once.” Oh? Doesn’t he read newspapers? Bombings, car accidents, natural disasters... any of this ring a bell? Again: not a good reporter.
Jessup is yammering away and suddenly the line goes dead. Did Kraft stick a pin in the phone?
Jessup walks away from the phone to reveal a sad clown painting on the wall. Hmm...I guess Kraft stuck a black pin in his sense of artistic taste.
Alone in the cemetery office, Kraft tries to light the space heater, but it won’t ignite. He must have stuck a black pin in the instruction manual. He tries repeatedly to call Lieutenant Clayborne, but with no luck. Ah, relics of an earlier time: the rotary dial phone and the busy signal. The good old days.
Then he tries calling Bill Honegger, one of the black pin guys. Then he calls the police again. Then the phone rings. Kraft answers it by saying “Something happened to Bill Honegger.” Well, usually people say “Hello” or perhaps even “Pahoehoe,” but to each his own. Anyway, it’s Jessup. “I’ve been trying to reach Lieutenant Clayborne,” says Kraft. “Clayborne is with me,” says Jessup. “Put him on.” “He’s not here.” But you just said he was with you! So he doesn’t even know when people are actually with him or not? He must be a really bad reporter. Says Jessup, “Bill Honegger is dead.” Are you sure about that? “Charlie Bates?” asks Kraft. “The same.” “George?” As soon as Jessup told George about Bill and Charlie, he took off and no one can find him. Have they looked at his house?
Soon, the cemetery office door bursts open and it is George in robe and pajamas. He staggers over to the map. For some reason, Kraft’s hand reaches into the desk and grabs the revolver. “You three men made a terrible contribution to this town tonight, whether you meant to or not,” says Kraft. What? “We’re both waiting, waiting to see if you escape,” Kraft adds. “Escape dying? Nobody escapes that, my boy,” says George. He’s talking about right now, you dork! Push, push, push! “The only question is,” says Kraft, “does a man die in his own time or the map’s? So far everyone has been forced to conform to its schedule. Everyone but you.” Okay, I think our movie’s hero has gone round the bend.
Actually, I bet if they remade this movie today, instead of a printed map they’d have one of those GPS navigation systems calling out the names of people it wanted to kill. Hmmm...That could explain those people who blithely follow their GPS directions into rivers or off cliffs.
George does the smart thing: he takes his black pin out of the map. George then gets defiant. “From now on, if you want to see me, you’re going to have to come down to the store.” So...like always. “I won’t make another special trip on your account.” So, again...like always. “The next time I see you, George, we’ll both be right here.” And George leaves.
Kraft dials the phone again. “Office Max? I need more black pins.” Oh... He calls Clayborne and suggests he have someone keep an eye on George. Who would want to?
Two hours later, Clayborne calls Kraft; no one has been able to find George. “He’s not on the road, and he’s not home.” Something dawns on Kraft. “Hold the wire, Lieutenant.” He goes outside and comes across George’s car—and George is lying dead on the front seat. So much for taking the pin out. Kraft puts the black pin back in the map. Great; kill the guy twice. Push, push, push!
And Jessup apparently got his story after all: “Death Removes Committee.” Sometimes that’s what it takes. Oh, but I kid the Saratoga Film Forum Board of Directors.
The next day, McKee is carving another headstone and singing—which finally gets to Kraft. Pin! Pin! Pin! For some reason, McKee is the only person who can get the heater to work. It’s an odd supernatural power to have, but a useful one, I’ll give it that.
Clayborne drives up, with Jessup and Annie in the police car. Is he a taxi service? Clayborne asks Kraft if he knows someone named Mittel. “William Porter? Yeah.” What? “He’s in Paris.” Clayborne hands Kraft a black pin. “Better strike him out.” Huh; so people die even if they don’t get a black pin stuck into their cemetery plot first? How strange. Kraft does the honors, and asks how he died. “He isn’t dead, at least not yet.” What? Um, haven’t they learned anything in this movie? “I know what you’re thinking. We tricked you into killing Jacob Mittel. Well, you’re 100% right. Try to relax. This one is on the police.” Huh? Surely this crosses a line. “See, Jacob Mittel is in the prime of life, no previous major illnesses....And he’s in Paris with all that ocean water to protect him from this mess. Up until now, all the deaths have been confined to the local area. If it strikes somebody on another continent, then we’ve really found something.” He does have a point.
Why does McKee look so worried all of a sudden? Hmm... “I know I should have gotten rid of those pins four days ago.” Well, why didn’t you? Now it’s all coming out. Clayborne is beating around the bush, but it sounds like he is accusing Kraft of killing the seven people who have died. “Who put in those pins? You. All seven. Chairmen have been putting pins in that map for years and nothing happened.” So...suddenly Clayborne buys what Kraft has been saying all along? “It isn’t impossible for a certain kind of man to be endowed with powers that nobody ever dreamed he could have.” How true, how true... “A lot of scientists claim that.” No they don’t! The only one who did was that text at the beginning of the movie. “Maps and pins can’t kill alone.” Now he’s just sound really goofy. “The power of a human brain has to be behind it.” Would this be admissible in court? “Like in the Indies, those voodoo dolls you hear about.” Clayborne checks his watch, and turns to leave. “You’ll hear from me the moment we have word.” And he and Jessup leave. McKee leaves, too. It’s all very awkward.
That night, Kraft is again alone in the cemetery office, trying to light the heater. He finally gives up and kicks it over. Oh, just stick a pin in it! He putters aimlessly, then walks up to the map again. “I destroyed them,” he says to himself. “Something in me killed them. But I couldn’t refuse the job.” I’m going to go out on a limb and say that most people who don’t refuse jobs tend not to kill people. “Not a man with my reasoning power.” I think he’s about as successful at getting his brain ignited as he as at lighting the space heater. “If I have the power of death using the black pins, I must have the power of life using the white pins.” And the power of limbo using the beige pins. So he takes out Isham’s black pin and replaces it with a white pin. Same with the other six people he had killed.
So this is going to be a kind of Twilight Zone/“Monkey’s Paw” kind of thing, where he brings them back to life but they are hideous zombies or something. That can happen.
Kraft frantically draws the shutters, bolts the windows, and stacks furniture against the door to protect him from the army of the undead he thinks he has just unleashed. If he’s that scared of them, why did he decide to reanimate them?
There are odd noises in the cemetery, for some reason, William Isham’s tombstone falls over, and the ground below the Drexels’ tombstone cracks open.
To keep warm, Kraft chops up a chair and sets it on fire, then is surprised when the room fills with smoke and he starts choking. He didn’t quite think that through, did he? Then again, that could be the tagline of this movie. (Read in deep, dramatic movie-announcer voice: “I Bury the Living—He didn’t quite think that through.”) But it does give him a reason to leave the office, and he dashes through the graveyard. His coat catches on one of the gravestones and it is pulled off. Great; by the time he visits all seven graves he’ll be nude.
He spies the Drexels’ tombstone and looks at it curiously. The graves have been dug up, and there are now only two empty holes. He runs over to Henry Trowbridge’s grave. Yep: dug up and empty. We waste a bit of time as he checks the other graves.
He runs back to the office, takes out the revolver, and waits nervously. I guess he was quite surprised that this actually worked. Kind of the like the surprise I always feel when I upgrade my operating system and I can actually print something.
If he really wanted to bug everyone, he could go and put the black pins back. And then, when they all died again, put the white pins back. And repeat. Heh heh heh.
There is, actually, a very cool shot of Kraft silhouetted against the map, where the spiral roads make it look like two great big eyes staring at him.
He puts the gun to his head and is about to kill himself. Why doesn’t he just put a black pin in his own plot? It’d be less messy than the revolver.
He is interrupted by the ringing of the phone. It is Rosamunde Mittel. Jacob Mittel, the guy in Paris, died. That’s going to blow Clayborne’s mind.
In the background, we can see that someone—blurred but you can still make out the plaid—enters noiselessly. “Impossible!” says McKee. “Impossible he canna be dead.” Great, now his accent is getting more Italian. He then explains that—oh, come on! Sorry—flag on the play. Dig this:
Says McKee: “The only power you and that map had was me, as far as killing goes. You marked them for dead, Mr. Chairman, but who did the deed? Andrew McKee.” But...but...but... “Why?” is the only question Kraft can think to ask. I can think of about a hundred. “You and your high and mighty committee, turning out the man with forty years of service on the grounds.” So McKee killed seven people because he didn’t want to retire?! Why didn’t he just say “no.” He drones on for a while about how much he liked being a caretaker and tending the grounds. Okay, so he’s now going to explain how he killed everyone, right? Like the guy who had a cerebral hemorrhage (which we watched), or the one with pulmonary thrombosis and who was in his upstairs bedroom at the time. “I snuck up on each one of them when they was alone, and I held them fast like so until they went.” He demonstrates with a black cloth that apparently he used to strangle them. But that kind of thing usually leaves marks—unless I’ve never seen an episode of Quincy or CSI—that homicide detectives can usually detect. And this movie went out of its way to tell us that the police found no evidence of foul play. And what about the Drexels who were in a car accident? How did he arrange that?
Another thing. In most of the cases, how did McKee know who Kraft had marked? Especially the first case, the Drexels, where McKee was nowhere near the map and had no reason to expect that Kraft would have used the wrong color pins? And Isham was a random selection and McKee was nowhere around. “What about Mittel?” asks Kraft. McKee is at a loss to explain that. But he’s certain the map is innocent.
And, hey, what about the empty graves? Did McKee dig them up? And he would have had to have dug up seven graves and hide the bodies in the space of about two minutes.
Kraft insists that McKee talk about something else—anything, I guess, to avoid confronting the illogic of it all. “Please talk about anything else,” Kraft insists. “Why?” Yeah, why? “Because I caused you to kill those people.” Kind of like a motivational speaker. “You heard that Lieutenant. It’s possible for people to have some things inside them that make other thins happen.” Parasites? So it was all a really bad E. coli outbreak? And what “things”? “I know you, Andy, and you’re no killer.” He’s sure as heck no singer, either. “You talked me into killing them?” McKee asks, confused. I guess he’s not buying it either.
They finally notice that in the background is a noise like someone hammering constantly. Kind of like my neighborhood. All they need are chainsaws going 24/7. McKee barricades the door. Oh, no! The dead have risen and they’re doing home improvement projects!
McKee freaks and swings his hand, nailing the lighting fixture. As the lamp swings, the light reflects off the pins in the map, which is kind of cool.
There is then a weird montage of McKee’s face, pins, and his own gravestone. Finally, a hand pushes a giant black pin into McKee’s headstone. They never explain what the noise is.
McKee flails around and ends up with his back to the map. Pinned to the wall, I guess you could say. The door bursts open and it’s not the army of the undead, but rather Clayborne, some cops, Annie, and Jessup. McKee slumps to the ground, dead.
“Exhibit A, he really didn’t need it. They died of fright first,” says Clayborne, holding McKee’s cloth, “just like he did.” Oh, come on. “You’re forgetting about those seven trips to the mausoleum,” says Jessup. He is? “Seven bodies, seven trips.” For seven brothers. Clayborne then admits that Mittel, the guy in Paris, isn’t dead, that they staged the phone call. “It was the best way to make McKee come out in the open.” Was it?
Jessup then adds that they watched McKee dig up all seven of the bodies. Oh, come on. It must have taken quite some time. And couldn’t they arrest him just for that? “I wonder what got into him?” asked Kraft. Maybe it was one of those mysterious “things” that make people do those other “things.” Or maybe it was just The Thing. Or It. Or Them.
“It was the white pins,” says Kraft. He’s back on that kick again? I thought that had been dismissed three explanations ago. Clayborne smiles patronizingly and leaves. So who had the weird “things” or powers? Was it Kraft or McKee? Or both? Neither? I don’t know. Help me, Spock!
Kraft and Annie walk out the door, but Kraft has lost his overcoat. “I think I can find it myself,” is his closing line. Well, thank god that plot thread was tied up.
And we zoom into the map, and it falls to the floor with a crash.
The end.
Like most movie scripts, the one for I Bury the Living—which, by the way, was an adaptation of a Staples catalog—went through a number of revisions. It took them a few drafts to settle on an ending that was as preposterous and unsatisfying as the one they chose. Some of the proposed endings in previous drafts were:
Posted 10/31/09
