Macabre

I dragged my mother to the Cedar Movie Theater in Minneapolis to watch a triple feature horror show. There was a casket in front of the theatre. I wonder where they got that. The Attack of the Crab Monsters was one film; this one was the second; the third I can't remember. She slept through all three. I was only 10 at the time. We had seen the hype for this on TV. Lloyds of London, a million dollars, all you had to do was to die of fright. Anyway, what turned out to be a pretty average movie with the "buried alive" thing at the center wasn't nearly as interesting as those talking crustaceans. This is really a police mystery. It does have atmosphere. There is a lot of rain. Why do these graveyard things always have so much rain? It is suspenseful at times but terribly talky as well. At my age, seeing a corpse was pretty frightening. When I had a chance to see it again about thirty years later, it really seemed ordinary.

A doctor in a small town has done a good job of making himself hated because of his role in the deaths of two sisters. When his daughter disappears and a caller announces that she has been buried alive, will the unpopular doctor uncover the MACABRE scheme, or will the cute little girl die a horrible, frightening death?

Any movie that dares cast the lovable Jim "Mr. Magoo" Backus as the sort of brutish sheriff that Sterling Hayden could have done in his sleep does have something going for it. Any movie that features a slutty rich blind girl (who makes time with the pool boy AND Jim Backus AND our surly doctor hero) has a definite noir appeal. And the attention paid to clocks and the passing of time shows that the director at least has a concept of how a film might generate suspense.

But, a movie with the amount of bad, bad acting this one does, indicates a director perhaps more concerned with the promotion of his movie than the making of it. The logical flaws of the film are really extraordinary, beginning with small things, such as the distance between the small town and its old creepy graveyard, and advancing to the large, such as our hero's steadfast refusal to call the cops. And the final resolution, alas, is more disappointing than surprising. The best thing that can be said about the "promotional" aspects of the film -- mostly a rather campy opening announcement about how really truly scary all this is going to be, and a Charles Adams - like animated closing credit sequence, is that these campy things really don't get in the way.

Worth seeing, because the Jim Backus performance is the sort a revelation that can happen when a good character actor is totally cast against type. But the world won't come to an end if you miss this.

William Castle's first excursion into the horror genre is not really scary at all. It's a mild murder mystery about several dislikable characters, one of them presumably having committed a grizzly crime. It gets bogged down midway with some flashback sequences which really don't help the narrative THAT much. The performances are well acted and the film manages to keep a decent level of intrigue and curiosity throughout. It's also unusual to see Jim Backus in a rather unlikable role. However, being advertised as a "horror" film, it fails to provide enough ample shocks to please in that department and it lacks some of the chills and humorous touches of Castle's later work. Still, it's worth a look as the first of the William Castle "gimmick" films.

William Castle, the Sultan of Schlock, proudly presents a movie so horrifying that you might want to take out life insurance before watching! The young daughter of a man with enemies disappears and a mysterious caller reveals that the girl is buried alive with only enough air for five hours. The frantic search begins, the clock on the funeral parlour marks the passing time, and everyone is a suspect. I lived through the movie but, as requested by Castle himself (in a brief voiceover epilogue), won't reveal the ending. If you don't think about it too hard the plot is interesting (although the climactic revelation generates as many questions as it answers), there are some effective scenes as people desperately search for the girl in the creepy local cemetery, and some of the characters quite intriguing (notably, the fast-living blind girl). Stick around for the amusing credit sequence (including typos).

i remember "macabre" when the ads for the movies first appeared.one consisted of a sad looking man with a top hat driving a horse drawn hearse containing a flowered draped casket. under the title"macabre" was this line "see it with someone who can carry you home". I remember the front of the theater had a real casket on display. it was opened and it was a hideous looking corpse with the Lloyd's of London policy displayed on the inside of the lined lid of the casket. I wanted to go see it that weekend, but my mother said to me "do you want to die?"so I chickened out. I later heard from my school chums that the movie was a big disappointment and don't bother to see it. I finally got to see it during halloween of 1960 at the same theater where it first opened. there was no casket there to greet me.so i just had the movie to deal with. In watching it I was waiting for the shock moments to occur, but there were just not there, except during the scene in the casket room, and the one in the mausoleum and of course the grand finale with the graveside service at midnight and the discovery of the small casket with it's horrible contents that managed to issue a scream or two from the rather small audience. I still enjoyed the movie regardless of it's shortcomings and can hardly wait till it makes it on DVD.