'I Bury The Living' (1958) - Albert Band.

This remains an eerily effective, deceptively haunting 50s Zombie horror from one of B-Hollywood's most prolific genre producers. Suspenseful, paranoiac and downright unsettling, the creepily compelling 'I Bury The Living' is everything one could wish for in a modestly budgeted horror quickie! The basic premise has Richard Boone's caretaker discovering that he quite literally has the power of life and death, an arbitrary gift that morbidly manifests itself via the implausible, but enormously fun conceit of abstractly sticking pins into his ancient, well-worn cemetery plot schematic. It's this ominously off-key horror film's palpable sense of imminent hysteria, and oppressive doom that made such a deep and lasting impression on my spook-loving mind. And while Albert Band is clearly no Jacques Tourneur, the capable director successfully ekes out every last vestige of nerve-shredding terror from this shockingly simple, yet sublimely skewed premise. I readily admit that being a lifelong fan of Albert Band's creepy classic 'I Bury The Living' makes my positive take on it somewhat less than objective.