The Grave

Yes, sir. That’s the end of that.

The Grave. My favorite Twilight Zone episode. I haven’t the foggiest notion why it doesn’t turn up on a lot of top 5’s in Twilight Zone fans’ lists of favorites episodes. This, my friends, never fails not to deliver the goosebumps. There are just certain episodes of this classic series that leave an indelible mark on me never to leave. The Grave, in my opinion, should work its spell best around Midnight, the dark, the pouring rain, all alone to yourself. Sit and watch it. You can thank me later.

*****

What a cast! It doesn’t get any better than this, folks. Such amazing faces. Lee Marvin. Strother Martin. James Best. Lee Van Cleef. Elen Willard (who may not have as recognizable name but leaves her stamp, let me tell you). An abundance of riches for western fans here.

We even get an old fashioned gunfight to kick this episode off. A notorious outlaw named Pento Sykes often returns to his home town to visit (well, he just takes it over and the township typically are too afraid to stand up to him), but 8 citizens gather to surround and gun down this outlaw, putting an end to his burdensome presence among them. He’s the kind of outlaw that leaves a legend, perhaps a legacy so entrenched in the minds and fears of those who live in his town and the surrounding territories that even after death they are too scared to go near his grave at night.

 Also born in this town was a bounty hunter named Conny Miller, paid by the locals to find and kill Pento. Conny, to them, was always truly afraid of Pento,; therefore, it explains why he was never successful in his quest. When Conny returns, Pento dead and buried, a slight few still awake and in the saloon, fill him in on what Pento had to say prior to his final breath, thirty minutes left him to say his final goodbyes to his sister and father. He had some choice words against Conny; in particular, Pento claims Conny knew he was in Albuquerque yet was too timid to confront him.

 After a bellyful of Pento-talk, and a wager from Johnny Rob (Best, guitar in hand, a bit of a weakling but courageous enough to be open and honest to Conny) to visit the dead outlaw’s grave, Conny has something to prove. Mothershed (Martin) is the one that really stirs up the hornet’s nest by giving Conny all the details, and when Pento’s sister Ione (Willard) enters the bar for some rye, mocking him about what her brother said about grabbing him from beyond the grave, this fuels his ire further. Only to add fuel to the fire, Steinhart (LVC), always with business on the mind, wishes to wager Conny, also.

This herein lies what makes The Grave such a thrill to me. I wish I could put into writing what that dust wind, the way it gusts so and the eerie sound of it, gives this episode. We already have that grave and this warning on our minds. Lee Marvin, to me, can really do no wrong. He can walk into a saloon, and the whole film gravitates towards his person. He rides up on his horse, the town gripped in a dark windstorm, the blood spilled on the dirt street of Pento Sykes fenced off by the locals, and he catches the figure of a grinning Jasen (William Challee). Jasen already establishes how the others inside the saloon feel…that Conny couldn’t get the job done, turned up the very night after Pento was killed, and was/is simply afraid of the quarry he was supposed to eliminate. I love how faces and demeanor (this is what you get with such talent) speak volumes with those congregated in the saloon, and how they seem eager to confront him with what Pento said.

Best and Martin are fun to me because both seem to damn near explode with desire to spill the beans on Pento. I always loved this episode because Marvin has such a macho bravado about him—of course, it is in that confrontational, stand-offish manner where he seems emboldened to protect his image against the backlash of tension ever-present in the room—but there’s this truth that seeps out even as he tries to conceal it behind his toughness…that fear of Pinto. When people challenge your ego, your courage, in the format of *a friendly wager*, pretty much saying you were a coward when it come to one particular person, it does often provoke a defense mechanism to protect your own honor; pride is a peculiar emotion that has you committing to a cause that could ultimately lead to your own demise.

Serling coming out of the barn was a nice, surreal touch.

What an ending. Steinhart considers the “crime scene” merely death by fright, but Ione is quick to detonate his seemingly plausible explanation of what they see before them. The hunting knife stuck in the grave (through Conny’s coat), a body flaccid in a peculiar position, a fear that was palpable; it would be easy to surmise that Conny succumb to that terror weighing heavy on his mind. Ione, however, makes a comment on the wind pattern and how it was impossible for the coat to be in the position needed for the knife to be buried in it. The way she is amused while the others are lost for words, the camera taking to the heavens, into space as Serling’s voice closes the episode, The Grave is a humdinger.

Season Three: Episode Seven