Must See Movie...

Let's be realistic.

best movie i've ever seen.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Director William Castle's first gimmick film("fright insurance" was offered to moviegoers if they died of fright!). Little chance of that happening though, since this tepid film only has two scare scenes of note. Plot involves an unpopular small-town doctor(played by William Prince) whose daughter was claimed to have been kidnapped by a mysterious phone caller. He and her nurse(played by Jacqueline Scott) race to the town cemetery to locate the coffin she was said to be buried in. Meanwhile, numerous flashbacks give the back story to the characters, including the sheriff(played by Jim Backus) and a blind woman named Nancy, also deceased. Only the amusing illustrated end credits are of note here.

So far, this is the best Castle film that I have seen; I personally think it is quite a bit better, more believable, and way more involving then any of his other films (well, the one with Joan Crawford was pretty dang good!)Also, without giving too much away, the ending caught me completely off guard too. The DVD print is frigg'n AMAZING! I thought it was a Blu-ray it looked so sharp and detailed. At first, the dialog seemed a little clumpy and stiff, but as you get into the story and begin to understand the relationships and history between the characters, it starts to smooth out a little.Another thing that surprised me was the 'adult' nature of some of the story content. Not anything visual; nothing like that, but some of the situations that the characters got into were rather sordid and seedy for 1958 I would think! Probably the weakest point of the film is the acting and to a lesser degree the script; again a bit stiff. But, interestingly as you get more and more into the story and the search for the little girl, you DO indeed get drawn into and become more involved in what is going on.This movie is of course not of the FILM NOIR genre, which ended just about the time this movie came out. But, the dark edge that many of the characters have and some of the shadowy photography reminded me somewhat of the genre. Primarily the flashback sequences and the morally dubious tone of a lot of the people. There are some similarities to films in the latter NOIR period.Anyway, not that I am really an expert on William Castle or anything, but so far amongst his films that I have seen, I feel that this one is far and away the more serious and classier of them. I know that many feel that 'THE TINGLER' and 'HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL' are Classics, but personally I found the acting and dialog in them quite sub-par compared to this one...So, if you are in the mood for an older Suspense / Mystery Thriller with a dark NOIR edge and can put up with a little stiff acting (and NO, I do not mean this is a porn film...) and if you would like to see what a Castle film is like BEFORE he started introducing all the heavy CHEEEEEEEZ, then you should find it quite entertaining...

Like many teens of the time, I was pulled in by the heavy-handed ad blitz on TV. Needless to say, once past the ticket-taker, my pulse never lapsed once, so their insurance policy was safe by me. I recall having trouble following the many plot complications then, and still do. But the narrative is not the movie's strong point, anyway—something about an unpopular doctor having only a few hours to save his daughter from being buried alive. Meanwhile all these people keep dropping in and out in none too cogent fashion. Had the narrative developed the characters more distinctly, the whodunit part could have excelled. Nonetheless, director Castle shows he's still got the visual style he had in the classic 1940's noir series The Whistler. So there're a number of creepy visual set-ups that help redeem the title. The ending is still a grabber that I didn't see coming even if I couldn't quite figure out the logic. Anyway, with more work on the screenplay, this could have been something memorable instead of the okay thriller it is. I'm just sorry Castle traded his very real talents to become the 50's premier huckster of movie gimmickry.

It is one of the quirks of movie history that the main reason this pot-boiler of a mystery is remembered is because it was the first of producer/director William Castle's gimmick scare films. The gimmick?--A $1,000.00 life insurance policy issued by Lloyd's of London given to each lucky theater patron to insure them against death by fright. A safe bet, since the movie delivers only one brief shock moment in its 70-odd minute running time. The gimmick, aided by the movie's rivetingly eerie advertising poster (featuring a hooded grinning skull and the faces of three screaming gals) helped bring in droves of customers to theater box-offices all across 1958 America.Based on a round-robin mystery, "The Marble Forest", written by members of the Mystery Writers of America, "Macabre" presents the dilemma of a small-town doctor whose three-year-old daughter goes missing, presumably kidnapped, and is possibly buried alive! Other characters include the doctor's office nurse, the unsavory sheriff, the attractive other woman, the creepy housekeeper, the creepy undertaker, the creepy but expendable cemetery-keeper, and the aging millionaire with a cardiac condition. There are flashbacks, hysterical outbursts, melodramatic utterances, frantic diggings in a very dark and overgrown cemetery, and anyone could be a suspect. That being said, it also follows that nobody in the movie is a very sympathetic character, and the movie doesn't show off director Castle's talents as a scare-meister to great advantage.Still, it's worth a watch, to see what all the brouhaha was about. After all, it was made quickly and cheaply, and made back something like $5 million in box-office revenue. The DVD has just been made available by Warner Bros. on-demand, so why wait?