Diary of the Dead (1976 film)

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Diary of the Dead
Directed by	Arvin Brown
Produced by	Charles B. Moss Jr.
Written by	I.C. Rapoport Robert L. Fish Ruth Rendell (novel One Across, Two Down)
Starring	Geraldine Fitzgerald Hector Elizondo Salome Jens Joseph Maher Austin Pendleton Kate Wilkinson
Music by	Jacques Urbont
Cinematography	Robert M. Baldwin, Jr.
Editing by	Murray Solomon
Distributed by	B.S. Moss Enterprises
Release date(s)	1976
Running time	93 min
Country
Language	English
IMDb profile

Diary of the Dead is a 1976 neo-noir film directed by Arvin Brown, based on the novel One Across, Two Down by Ruth Rendell. It was made by Jessica Productions, produced by Charles B. Moss. Robert L. Fish, author of Mute Witness, the basis of Bullitt, contributed to the screenplay, though his name is in much smaller text than that of I.C. Rapoport.

[edit] Plot

In the film, Stan (Hector Elizondo) and Vera (Salome Jens) live with Vera's mother, Maud Kennaway (Geraldine Fitzgerald), who has already suffered a stroke. Maud bought them the house in New Haven, Connecticut, and has vast savings that she will not share with them. She is openly contemptuous of Stan because he has lost his job and is also infertile, and therefore, to her, useless. She cares more for their next door neighbor, Walter Johnson (Joe Maher).

Eventually, Stan decides to dump Maud's nitroglycerine pills in the toilet and replace them with sugar substitute pills. When Maud's best friend (and Vera's godmother), Ethel Dean (Kate Wilkinson) comes to visit when Mrs. Patterson's (Joyce Ebert) boarding house is not ready, she can't find her own pills, and dies on his couch during an attack. He tells 911 operators that the deceased is Maud Kennaway, and Dr. Klein (Austin Pendleton) provides the necessary paperwork for her remains to be taken away for cremation. Maud wakes up, finds the body, and accuses him of murder, and tries repeatedly to strike him with her cane. He manages to dodge all the blows, which causes her to stumble and cut her head on the radiator. He buries her in the backyard and plants the new tree he purchased some time earlier on top of her remains.

Stan goes to Mrs. Patterson's to collect Ethel's things, impersonating a Southern Social Security investigator, and has to bribe her. After Maud's will is read, in which Vera's portion is to be held in trust for natural born children, an investigation is opened to find Ethel Dean in order to provide her with her portion. Things begin to look very bad for Stan as his self-incriminating acts begin to work against him.