I Bury The Living (1958)
Through a series of macabre "coincidences," the newly-elected director of a cemetery (Richard Boone) begins to believe that he can cause the deaths of living owners of burial plots by merely changing the push-pin color from white (living) to black (dead) on a large wall map of the cemetery that notes those plots.
SHOCKS THAT CHALLENGE THE IMAGINATION!!!
Robert Kraft: Andy, you better get this straight right now. You heard that lieutenant. It's possible for some people to have things inside them that make other things happen. Nothing is impossible for a man like that, if he thinks about it hard enough.
Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery, 1831 W Washington Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90007, United States
(cemetery-scenes)
Stephen King says he was thinking about this film when he wrote his short story "Obits", about a young writer who discovers he can kill people by writing an obituary about them. The short story is in King's Bazaar of Bad Dreams collection. He references the film in the foreword to the short story.
As the film progresses and Kraft gradually comes to believe that the map controls him, the map on the wall becomes slightly larger in each progressive scene, symbolizing it slowly controlling him.
When Bob Kraft (Richard Boone) waits for phone calls at his desk, on the wall behind him is a picture of John Wilkes Booth.
The phone number Bob calls for the police is 666.
The cemetery scenes were filmed at Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles. At that time it was called Rosedale Cemetery but in later years it was bought by Angelus Funeral Home and the name was changed to Angelus-Rosedale Cemetery. The cemetery office/shack was likely built for the movie. It does not exist today.
Revealing mistakes
At 14 min Robert Kraft randomly placed a black pin in the cemetery map plot of W ISHAM and removed the white pin. At 21 min Kraft stated he took a white pin out "quite at random" and put a black pin in its place. Reverse of what he actually did.
At 14 min Robert Kraft tests a theory that he can cause a death by placing a black pin in the cemetery plot map and removing the white pin. To make the selection he looks away so as to make it appear to be random. At 15 min the camera zooms in on the map to reveal about 9 pin holes in the selected plot, W ISHAM. Obviously, random selection requires practice.