The Grave (The Twilight Zone)

"**The Grave**"
"The Grave"
The Twilight Zone episode
	Lee Marvin as Conny Miller
Episode no.	Season 3; Episode 7
Directed by	Montgomery Pittman
Written by	Montgomery Pittman
Production code	3656
Original air date	October 27, 1961
Guest appearances
	Lee Marvin; Lee Van Cleef; James Best; Strother Martin; Stafford Repp; Elen Willard;
Episode chronology
← Previous; "The Mirror"	Next →; "It's a Good Life"
	The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series) (season 3)
	List of episodes

"The Grave" is episode 72 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It originally aired on October 27, 1961 on CBS. This is one of two episodes that were filmed during season two but held over for broadcast until season three, the other being "Nothing in the Dark".

Opening narration

Normally, the old man would be correct. This would be the end of the story. We've had the traditional shoot-out on the street and the badman will soon be dead. But some men of legend and folk tale have been known to continue having their way even after death. The outlaw and killer Pinto Sykes was such a person, and shortly we'll see how he introduces the town and a man named Conny Miller, in particular, to the Twilight Zone.

Plot

The outlaw Pinto Sykes is ambushed and killed by the men of a small town in the Old West. Some time later, gunfighter Conny Miller, who had been hired to track down Sykes, arrives in town. He goes to the saloon where the men who hired him are gathered, and is angry to learn that they had killed Sykes themselves. Moreover, on his deathbed Sykes accused Miller of being a coward, saying he had waited for Miller in Albuquerque, New Mexico and even sent word of where he was, and threatened to reach up from his grave and grab Miller if the latter ever approached it.

Miller says that Sykes was a liar, claiming he went to Albuquerque and found no sign that Sykes had ever been there, and also denies that he is at all frightened by Sykes' threat of vengeance from beyond the grave. After Sykes' vengeful, eldritch sister Ione confronts Miller, the men say they are not convinced of Miller's story, openly admitting they themselves are frightened of Sykes. They bet Miller $20 that he is too scared to visit the grave, giving him a knife and telling him to drive it into the earth there as proof of his visit. Miller accepts the terms and departs into the cold, windy night; he reaches the grave at midnight and plants the knife as instructed, but as he attempts to leave, he is suddenly pulled back down.

When Miller fails to return the next day, Ione and the townsmen travel to the cemetery in search of him. They find him lying dead atop Sykes' grave, the knife driven through his coattail and pinning him to the ground. One man theorizes that Miller had not buttoned his coat and that the wind blew its tail over the grave; after planting the knife, Miller mistook the pinned tail for Sykes' grasping hand and died of fright. However, Ione demonstrates that the wind direction that night would have blown Miller's coattail away from the grave, not over it, and then laughs mockingly at the stupefied men as Ione's cloak blows in a manner similar to that of the Grim Reaper.

Closing narration

Final comment: you take this with a grain of salt or a shovelful of earth, as shadow or substance, we leave it up to you. And for any further research, check under 'G,' for 'ghosts'...in the Twilight Zone.

Cast

Lee Marvin as Conny Miller
James Best as Johnny Rob
Strother Martin as Mothershed
Elen Willard as Ione Sykes
Lee Van Cleef as Steinhart
William Challee as Jason
Stafford Repp as Ira Broadly
Larry Johns as Townsman
Dick Geary as Pinto Sykes

"The Path Through the Cemetery"

Leonard Q. Ross published a similar story in 1941, called "The Path Through the Cemetery." The tale, set in Imperial Russia, describes a very timid man named Ivan, who responds to a similar challenge from a Cossack officer in the Tsar's Army (some printings identify this officer as a captain, some as a lieutenant) with the sword he receives from the Cossack officer for the purpose, and meets a similar fate.

"The Dare"

Maria Leach authored a compilation of ghost stories called The Thing at the Foot of the Bed and Other Scary Tales in 1959 that included a story called "The Dare", in which a group of kids sitting in front of a fire telling ghost stories dare one of the group to go to the grave of a man who was just buried earlier that day. The boy takes the dare, states he will stick a knife in the grave to prove he was there, and then proceeds to meet the same fate that night.

References

DeVoe, Bill. (2008). Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0
Grams, Martin. (2008). The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0
Ross, Leonard Q. "The Path Through the Cemetery." Saturday Review of Literature.; 29 Nov 1941, Vol. 24, p12. ISSN 0147-5932.
Leach, Maria (1959). The Thing at the Foot of the Bed and Other Scary Tales (First ed.). Cleveland, OH: The World Publishing Company. ISBN 9780529035455.

External links

"The Grave" at IMDb

v t e The Twilight Zone (1959) episodes
Season 1	"Where Is Everybody?" "One for the Angels" "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" "The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine" "Walking Distance" "Escape Clause" "The Lonely" "Time Enough at Last" "Perchance to Dream" "Judgment Night" "And When the Sky Was Opened" "What You Need" "The Four of Us Are Dying" "Third from the Sun" "I Shot an Arrow into the Air" "The Hitch-Hiker" "The Fever" "The Last Flight" "The Purple Testament" "Elegy" "Mirror Image" "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" "A World of Difference" "Long Live Walter Jameson" "People Are Alike All Over" "Execution" "The Big Tall Wish" "A Nice Place to Visit" "Nightmare as a Child" "A Stop at Willoughby" "The Chaser" "A Passage for Trumpet" "Mr. Bevis" "The After Hours" "The Mighty Casey" "A World of His Own"
Season 2	"King Nine Will Not Return" "The Man in the Bottle" "Nervous Man in a Four Dollar Room" "A Thing About Machines" "The Howling Man" "Eye of the Beholder" "Nick of Time" "The Lateness of the Hour" "The Trouble with Templeton" "A Most Unusual Camera" "The Night of the Meek" "Dust" "Back There" "The Whole Truth" "The Invaders" "A Penny for Your Thoughts" "Twenty Two" "The Odyssey of Flight 33" "Mr. Dingle, the Strong" "Static" "The Prime Mover" "Long Distance Call" "A Hundred Yards Over the Rim" "The Rip Van Winkle Caper" "The Silence" "Shadow Play" "The Mind and the Matter" "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?" "The Obsolete Man"
Season 3	"Two" "The Arrival" "The Shelter" "The Passersby" "A Game of Pool" "The Mirror" "The Grave" "It's a Good Life" "Deaths-Head Revisited" "The Midnight Sun" "Still Valley" "The Jungle" "Once Upon a Time" "Five Characters in Search of an Exit" "A Quality of Mercy" "Nothing in the Dark" "One More Pallbearer" "Dead Man's Shoes" "The Hunt" "Showdown with Rance McGrew" "Kick the Can" "A Piano in the House" "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" "To Serve Man" "The Fugitive" "Little Girl Lost" "Person or Persons Unknown" "The Little People" "Four O'Clock" "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby" "The Trade-Ins" "The Gift" "The Dummy" "Young Man's Fancy" "I Sing the Body Electric" "Cavender Is Coming" "The Changing of the Guard"
Season 4	"In His Image" "The Thirty-Fathom Grave" "Valley of the Shadow" "He's Alive" "Mute" "Death Ship" "Jess-Belle" "Miniature" "Printer's Devil" "No Time Like the Past" "The Parallel" "I Dream of Genie" "The New Exhibit" "Of Late I Think of Cliffordville" "The Incredible World of Horace Ford" "On Thursday We Leave for Home" "Passage on the Lady Anne" "The Bard"
Season 5	"In Praise of Pip" "Steel" "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" "A Kind of a Stopwatch" "The Last Night of a Jockey" "Living Doll" "The Old Man in the Cave" "Uncle Simon" "Probe 7, Over and Out" "The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms" "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain" "Ninety Years Without Slumbering" "Ring-a-Ding Girl" "You Drive" "The Long Morrow" "The Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross" "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" "Black Leather Jackets" "Night Call" "From Agnes—With Love" "Spur of the Moment" "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" "Queen of the Nile" "What's in the Box" "The Masks" "I Am the Night—Color Me Black" "Sounds and Silences" "Caesar and Me" "The Jeopardy Room" "Stopover in a Quiet Town" "The Encounter" "Mr. Garrity and the Graves" "The Brain Center at Whipple's" "Come Wander with Me" "The Fear" "The Bewitchin' Pool"