An action-packed slog

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

"Welcome to a trip down graveyard lane!" So asks the Criswell like host who pops up behind a desk rather than a coffin to make this statement. Then, a clumsy man who steps on his kitty's tale and follows the scared putty tat into a cemetery. Bored college kids plan for another dull evening as swinging music plays in the background. Somebody's life is about to change as the two seemingly unrelated events intertwine. A medical student (Joseph Conway) is parking near the cemetery with his girlfriend (Ester Furst) when out of nowhere a rattlesnake appears and he kills it. This is just another seemingly unrelated incident, but as word gets around, it puts ideas into the minds if other students to test the smart Conway. Things get out of hands of course, leading to a prank that gets out of control and results in pure terror for someone. The ring seen on the finger of a corpse plays an important part in the gag and leads to the hero thinking that he is going mad.This is a drive-in style movie that seems to have been made on a fine, this is pretty entertaining for the type of film it is. But it's a jip-off plot-wise, reminding me of those intelligently written film noir where it all turns out to be a dream and leads the leading hero into making a sensible choice. That's not really what happens here, but it gives you a key to just how this tripe is dealt with. Not badly acted but not extremely well written or plotted either. It just takes a while to really develop into anything resembling a plot line and the inclusion of so many unnecessary devices just distracts. A scene with a doctor performing an autopsy, however, is quite funny, reminding me of the opening of the T.V. series "Quincy".

If you have trouble falling asleep some night, try watching "Ring of Terror" - it will put you to sleep faster than a handful of Ambien. This supposedly "thriller / shocker" movie is just unbelievably dull. It starts out with some cemetery groundskeeper stumbling around in the dark looking for his cat. We are treated to about 5 minutes of this dolt calling "Puma" as he shambles around looking for the cat, at one point even stepping on it. We (as part of the camera) are led around to view a few gravestones, and the groundskeeper tells us "Ah, I remember him!" The rest of the movie is a long, incredibly dull story about some gerontological med school students who are pledging to join a fraternity. The pledges must do various silly tasks, one of which is to raid the local morgue to retrieve something from a body.This movie is a real snoozer, it isn't thrilling or terrorizing at all. The only other movie about pledging to a fraternity / sorority that I can think of which is as incompetent as Ring of Terror is Paris Hilton's "Pledge this!" (2006). Actually Pledge This is better because at least it has some nice boobs occasionally to break up the monotony - Ring of Terror has nothing going for it at all. Horrible in every way.

While I wouldn't call this the greatest movie ever made, it's not anywhere near as bad as other reviewers have made it out to be. An average rating of 5 or 6 stars would be fair, but 1.5 is harsh and totally undeserved.Ring of Terror feels like an episode of The Twilight Zone stretched to an hour. In fact, it's so much like a TV show that one wonders if it might not have been originally created as a pilot.If you're a fan of 1950s horror/suspense series like Thriller, The Veil, One Step Beyond, Tales of Tomorrow, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, you'll likely find this a pleasant way to spend an hour, as I did.Normally I would only give this film 6 out of 10 stars, but because others have been panning it so unmercifully, I'm giving it a 9.

If you took a print of "Ring Of Terror" and put it next to a print of an actual horror film (say, the American remake of "The Ring"), I believe that the two film prints would annihilate other as if they were "matter" and "anti-matter", and the resulting flash of energy would create a crater a football field wide and 100 feet deep. And everyone within a mile of the blast would be deaf and blinded for a month. Oh, and also retarded.OK,I exaggerate. But only a little.The movie barely has enough plot for a 22 minute segment of a television horror/suspense anthology, but the director and screenwriter pad it out to just over an hour by adding a pointless, badly done framing sequence that obviously is meant to evoke "Tales From The Crypt". They also add an extremely irritating, contrived and unconvincing back story/sub plot involving the least believable "college students" in the history of cinema,who have to say and do things no human being has ever done in recorded history. I've seen this a couple of times (don't ask) and the second time around, all I could think was that either the "actors" called upon to work this screenplay either had no idea what they were doing and how bad it was (highly possible) or they DID suspect it, but soldiered on as best they could for the paycheck.In spite of the fact that the film features a cat, this film is a dog in every derogatory sense of the word. All that saves this from a one star rating is some moody B&W photography in the final "crypt" sequence, and the fact that I seem to feel sorry for the poor actor who played "Lewis Moffett" and struggled gamely with his thankless part. Poor guy.