Monday, March 9, 2015
Unburied Alive!
K. Kendall emailed me looking for a Twilight Zone story she remembers about a woman terrified of being buried alive! Sounds more like a Night Gallery story, but I think I have what you're looking for-- from the November 1975 issue of Twilight Zone #67, atmospheric art by Jose Luiz Garcia-Lopez.
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Well, it's certainly a story :)
The art is great in this. Garcia-Lopez had a little trouble with Serling's face, but other than that, gorgeous art.
The reveal of the coffin being in the living room is the best part of the story, the absolutely out of the blue motivations is the worse part, but the art saves this one.
Yeah, that's why I mentioned Night Gallery
Pretty sure that the line "and then, as her hands became her eyes in that Stygian darkness..." is there to indicate that she, in fact, actually cannot see in the dark. But people might have complained about panel after panel of sound effects over undifferentiated black panels, so the artist took a little license with the third-person omniscience. As one does.
Also, yeah, I think anything with a spring release can pretty much be considered latched shut when that release isn't triggered. It's why so many kids used to die in refrigerators. Why you'd make a coffin like this is unknown--maybe to contain expanding gasses? Seal out adipocere-building moisture? Furthermore, why the hell would anyone make a refrigerator like this, either?
Hey, the twist ending got me! I guess I've just gotten so used to the idea that dead spouses reanimate just to seek marital revenge that I was completely blind-sided by the Scooby-Doo switcheroo here. I think the story should go one more page, where we find out she really did die after all, but her ghost so expected to be buried alive that she's still convinced that's what happened. Spoookieee!
Much better ending... most of these TZ comics are pretty tame, but still fun, and the covers are incredible. Same can be said for most Gold Key / Whitman titles like this, I guess.
There was a comic taken from a Ray Bradbury story about a woman being buried alive by her husband. A little girl hears the woman calling from her grave in a vacant lot or woods & runs home to tell her father. He doesn't believe her until he tells him the woman was singing a song & he realizes its a tune he wrote for an old girl friend that only she would know. They dig her up, and I believe, save her life. I cant recall if this was an EC or one of the much later Warren magazines. I think the artist was Joe Orlando.
it was also remade for TV a couple times, Fran... I fondly remember the 70's version starring Olivia de Havilland. It was also an episode of Ray Bradbury Theatre starring Drew Barrymore
Burp valves! That’s excellent! But yeah, you are absolutely right, the locks and seals on caskets are certainly for keeping moisture and ground elements out of the box, not for keeping gasses in. I assume that’s also the reason the lady didn’t suffocate, because coffins themselves have to breathe. Good call, man. Light tightness is easy enough to achieve with a mere curtain, and I don’t remember the story making any claim about her coffin being soundproof--it’s very clear that he can hear her pounding away inside it, for example; and later he is pretty certain, when there’s a “sudden silence”, that she has died.
Here’s a handy little amateur video demonstrating the complicated-looking locking mechanism in modern caskets. In the good old days, there would just be a latch and release sunk into a mortise cut in the pine lid; and to this day, simple locks laid into the wood to join two edges meant to join (in cabinets, panels, set back-drops, you name it) are still referred to as casket locks.
Those wardrobe changes the story gives Myra in the early scenes are entertaining - they're meant to show how well-off she is, and you know that's the point, but the idea still works. Especially the riding clothes.
I've been going to a DARK SHADOWS blog, and coincidentally, just recently I saw an episode that tries to emphasize Carolyn Collins as a "spoiled rich girl," and sure enough, she's in a riding outfit. The funny thing is, probably no other episode shows her dressed that way or even suggests that the family has horses at all! But again, it's shorthand for "rich girl."
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