Ring of Terror

Life must have been very, very tough in the early 1960s, as the college students in this film look older than me in many cases--and I'm 45! In addition, the 'students' talk very much like a square adult's idea of what 'those crazy kids' should sound like! Frankly, it was a bit embarrassing seeing these middle-aged folks cavorting about and acting like Archie, Jughead and the gang! The focus for this film is on the medical students (most of which look like they will be collecting social security benefits very, very soon). The class is beginning their work on cadavers and they are naturally far from excited about this--except for Moffitt who seems to enjoy the whole thing.

As far as the plot goes, I think my daughter summed it up best near the end of the film when she yelled out "can SOMETHING interesting happen soon?!". The answer, sadly, was NO--at least not until 53 minutes into the film! The film just meanders and is boring beyond belief....and occasionally offensive (such as during the beauty(??) pageant). At the 53 minute mark, there is very bad recreation of an old urban legend about the cemetery and the grave site---but, frankly, at this point in the film, who cares?! Overall, a really dull dud...and nothing happens to justify watching any of this schlocky film.

As the end credits rolled to the execrable Ring Of Terror the first thing that occurred to me was that it had not succeeded to be any genre of movie at all, and I don't mean that in the good Donnie Darko way either.

The main problem is that it is essentially a Twilight Zone style set-up/payoff story but the film skirts so lightly over the setup (our main character has no fear) that the final pay-off seems utterly unconnected to anything. On top of that the payoff happens so swiftly that there's no dramatic tension at all.

The second problem is the tone. The movie starts off as a horror. Well, if you can class a campy actor looking for his cat (Puma!) in a graveyard while spouting nonsense actually horror. But once the opening credits have played the movie swiftly becomes a teen high school movie, so by the time the climax wrenches the viewer awkwardly back to horror we'd forgotten anything horrible was ever supposed to happen.

All of the other usual b-movie flaws are also evident - the bad acting, incredibly hittable 'comedy' characters, cheesy script. On top of that most of the college kids are played by really old actors. I'm not talking Danny and Sandy old here, these folks are literally in their forties with wrinkles and receding hairlines. It makes it very difficult to get into the story when they're so clearly not college kids.

In short don't think of watching this without the MST3K crew to help you along. It's easily one of the worst I've seen on MST3K.

This is pretty bad, but in the most ridiculous, inconsequential way. Even though it was set in the fifties, the person who put it together must have had no inkling as to how human beings treat each other. This is a mess. You have a bunch of young women dating medical students (the big wage earners of the future) who have a need to party at the "Cafeteria." When the guys get their assignment to view an autopsy, one of the major events in their education, the girls go all ballistic because they were left at the dance. You can't tell the faculty from the students because they are all in their thirties or forties. The main character is traumatized by a fear that his grandfather will jump out of his coffin and throttle him. Let's face it. Ozzie and Harriet was more exciting. The dialogue is atrocious and the believability of the whole thing stretched to the limit. One of the most memorable scenes is the fat guy and his large girlfriend in the bushes, moaning, eating hot dogs. If this isn't Freudian, I don't know what is. It's really a mess, but sort of "mess"merizing.

There is one good thing about this movie, I only paid 50 cents for it at the dollar store. (Even the dollar store discounted it) The comments on this site about this film are right on target (and hilarious). It did seem like the entire movie was going to center on the caretaker calling his cat. The "college kids" were closer to retirement than graduation. The best acting was done by "John Doe". He should have had top billing. I have seen "bullet bras" in 50's films, but this was the first time ever to witness an "ICBM bra". Don't miss the dance scene. The dance tune, featuring a trumpet as the lead instrument, is performed by a band not having a trumpet. The goofy girl with pony tails, the nerdy guy, and the overweight couple were obviously added for comedy relief. Relief from what? I had to use the fast forward several times just to get to the "action", only to slip right passed the "action" without noticing it. This film is best viewed in "fast forward", and don't worry about missing the sound, it doesn't add anything to the plot. The dollar store won't refund my 50 cents.

This murky film with terrible sound looks like it was filmed around 1939. It's about a bunch of geriatric medical students eagerly awaiting their first autopsy. One unshakable elderly boy's creeped-out girlfriend wishes he was studying anything but medicine. So why is she dating guys from med school? Is she going to medical school too? Or is this a college where you can major in being a doctor, with a minor in communications? It's hard to tell, and the women in in this movie don't seem to ever have to go to class.

Anyway, some middle-aged fraternity pranksters make the elderly boy steal a ring off a corpse, an urban legend that should take five minutes to tell and doesn't bode well stretched out to feature length. I'm not going to give away the ending, suffice to say the old man's weak ticker factors into the plot.

To pad out the running time, lots of time is spent dwelling on the two fat characters, exploring the theme that fat people love to eat and should be mocked for trying to do anything other than that. There's also a lengthy intro (and outro) by Bob Dobson, a creepy, cemetery-dwelling loser who stomps on his cat Puma's tale and mocks the dead. He must be the Crypt Keeper before the Crypt Keeper died and rotted and gained a penchant for bad puns.