Businessman Robert Kraft (Richard Boone) takes over for a year as the trustee manager of the Immortal Hills cemetery as part of his community duties.
Kraft idly sticks a couple of black pins (meaning “occupied”) in a large wall map of cemetery plots instead of white pins (“vacant”).
The two owners of those cemetery plots both die in a horrific traffic accident.
He does it again and the next man drops dead of heart failure.
Kraft believes he has been given a supernatural power to inflict death with the pins and becomes beset with guilt until he’s verging on a complete breakdown.
Most of the film is a particularly effective exercise in low-key terror, and it’s a pity that the ingenious scriptwriter (Louis Garfinkle) couldn’t provide a more satisfactory ending. The climax really lets the film down.
The cemetery scenes were filmed at the Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Robert Kraft
Richard Boone
Andy McKee
Theodore Bikel
Ann Craig
Peggy Maurer
George Kraft
Howard Smith
Jess Jessup
Herbert Anderson
Lt. Clayborne
Robert Osterloh
Henry Trowbridge
Russ Bender
Elizabeth Drexel
Lynette Bernay
William Isham
Cyril Delevanti
Bill Honegger
Ken Drake
Charlie Bates
Matt Moore
Stuart Drexel
Glen Vernon
Director
Albert Band