Macabre

What set this film apart from all others playing at the time, was an insurance policy, issued by Lloyds Of London, given out at the box office, and insuring the patron against "death by fright" during the viewing. Of course, I doubt that anyone's relatives managed to collect the one million dollar face value, but it certainly managed to lure in a packed house.

One scene ,in particular, caused a few hesitations in my cardiac functions, despite the films generally boring overtones. One of the many false leads in the search for the missing child, led to a graveyard. An interrment was taking place during a dismal rainstorm,and the child supposedly was buried in the open grave. The camera was positioned up in the trees, as the would be rescuers dug frantically at the grave, rapidly filling with rainwater. As the coffin was unearthed and opened, the camera zoomed in for a closeup of the morbid contents, prompting ear splitting screams from the audience,and raising me out of my seat. Although only a partially melted wax doll, it did resemble a decomposing corpse.

This excellent use of the element of surprise and shock, made this ordinary film, memorable.

For whatever reason, "B" movie film-maker (of mainly epic, Western and noir fare) Castle changed pace here with a horror outing, whose box-office performance encouraged him to largely stick to this genre thereafter – aided, to a considerable degree, by the showman-like gimmicks which accompanied most of them (in this case, it was insurance against death-by-fright)! Anyway, being the first of its kind, one can perhaps excuse its essential naivete': for one thing, it is not the least bit scary, though the plot of a race-against-time to literally unearth a missing child seemed intriguing enough…

The film – watched via a Czech TV screening sporting obtrusive subtitles in that language, not to mention an excessively hiss-laden soundtrack! – evokes the small-town atmosphere so redolent of its ilk, where skeletons in the closet abound (usually relating to an eminent family) and people bear a grudge (often of a romantic kind) which naturally spells disaster before long. So far, so good: only the narrative does not sufficiently engage the viewer – much less elicit sympathy for its myriad characters – throughout! Indeed, it is rendered even more awkward by being padded (despite being a mere 68 minutes in length!) with flashbacks that seem to make no real point other than to expose the sordid details of some of the main character's personal lives. Acting, too, leaves a lot to be desired – with perhaps the major culprits being the patriarch, always on the verge of expiring from a cardiac arrest, and the leading lady, who melodramatically faints while listening to a purportedly maniacal phone-call (only very briefly heard via a recording at the climax) and is then made to clumsily describe it to the hero! Indeed, the most notable – and effective – cast member is Jim Backus, who gets to physically assault the male protagonist following the death at childbirth of the latter's wife (a doctor, he had preferred spending time with his girlfriend rather than see to his marital and professional duties!) and the former's own ex-flame.

In the end, the movie deserves its pride of place as a trend-setter (the villain's identity, at least, proves audacious if hardly sensible), which the director invariably improved upon in subsequent forays down the path of ghoulish chills – a number of which I will be checking out presently on the occasion of his centenary

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 finally saw this on TV several years ago and wish I had taped it. It's got strong story elements that could have been developed into something really great.

The idea of a funeral to be held at night because the deceased, the daughter of a very wealthy man, had been blind sets the tone. Add a race against time to save a kidnapping victim who's been buried alive and you've got the elements of a tidy thriller.

My understanding is that the novel this was based on, THE CONCRETE GARDEN if I remember the title correctly, was actually written by several mystery writers. It was a project where writer A came up with the concept and wrote opening, then passed it to writer B who developed it and threw in complications that would make writer C sweat bullets to resolve. The fact that there were so many writers involved seems to have made it very difficult to get the rights to the story, and that's why it's the only one of William Castle's thrillers not available on video.

We've seen remakes of several of Castle's works. Maybe someone will discover this one and get the rights issue resolved.

In the old days shockers sometimes gave you more than nightmares for your fifty cents. You also got an experience and sometimes and a goody that would later be worth a ton on ebay.I still have my barf bags from Mark Of The Devil,my Ghost Viewer From 13 ghosts and a pair of scratch and sniff 3d glasses from a showing of Gorilla At Large. Castle set a standard for hype when he came up with the ad campaign for Macabre.He had already been cranking out low budget mystery flicks during the forties and tried his hand at the gimmicky 3D craze of the fifties what could be done to reel them in now?It was easy. Castle made the main thread of this so-so film about a kidnapped child buried alive so that kids would fill in the scares with their minds then added the trick of insuring the audience against death by fright to make you think you were gonna get more than what was actually shown.Castle and his ad man were also shrewd about placing many TV ads during weekday dinner time so that the kids would bug mom all week about it and then Castle himself would go on local TV dance shows even kids clown programs and dare us to get the pants scared off ourselves.I remember him making an appearance on The Chucko The Birthday Clown show.When Chucko put on the special glasses they showed a happy ghost bopping around.When I got to the show and saw skeletons and head choppings I just about crapped. Years later when I saw what a Leave It TO Beaver type of affair 13 Ghosts is I realized what a genius Castle was especially since the ghost remover never completely removed them.Macabre is talky and draggy even at 72 minutes but I've seen much worse and the art direction and moody photography is nice and spooky.

Dukey