When I was a child I stayed up to watch this movie on the old Syracuse Baron Damone show, -- before the show moved to afternoons. I was really scared by it, but fell asleep before the end. Today I watched it on Comet and saw the end. What a horrible ending. It makes no sense. Somehow the old man who was being told to retire killed all the people that Richard Boone put the black pins on. It doesn't square up with the rest of the movie at all. While I watched the end I saw where it was going and thought that it might be saved if somehow the person with the extra sensory killing power was the old guy. But no. It almost seemed like the movie maker got tired and just tried to throw some ending together so he could just go home. Also, when in the end Richard Boone decides to put white pins back where he had put the black pins to see if he could bring them back to life, the ending really goes goofball. First of all you see the graves opening of their own accord, that is really scary and my hopes that it will succeed as a scary movie rise. Then Richard Boone runs out and sees that every grave where he exchanged pins is now open. Looking like we are in for a frightening finish, right? Nope. Boone returns to the building and the old guy comes in and says he killed them all with a scarf and was upset that he was being forced to retire. OK, then how did the graves start opening up by themselves? How did he kill several people without leaving a single clue? The old guy is covered with dirt, somehow implying that he dug all the people up. Why would he do that? That doesn't get his job back? How did he know that Boone had replaced the white pins with the black ones? He did this in a matter of an hour or so? He dug up several graves and removed the coffins in that short a period of time? The movie has now gone from a horrifying movie to a horrible movie. The old guy then falls against the map of the graveyard and is dead without really any reason why he would suddenly just die.The cops then come in and say they knew all along that the old guy was the killer even though there was no hint of this earlier in the movie.
I read in another review that the original ending of the film was to have the people that Boone had marked for death and then marked for life (and who had risen from their graves) stand outside of the building Boone is in. then the risen Zombies chant that Boone is to join them and then Boone shoots himself in guilt, grief, and insanity. Now that would be a scary ending.
The acting is pretty good, the direction is pretty good. So that took it to a potential 7 stars, but the story's ending is absolutely horrible. the most I can give it is 5.
I read in another review that the original ending of the film was to have the people that Boone had marked for death and then marked for life (and who had risen from their graves) stand outside of the building Boone is in. then the risen Zombies chant that Boone is to join them and then Boone shoots himself in guilt, grief, and insanity. Now that would be a scary ending.
The acting is pretty good, the direction is pretty good. So that took it to a potential 7 stars, but the story's ending is absolutely horrible. the most I can give it is 5.