Macabre

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

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

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.

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.

I remember the hype surrounding this movie when we were kids. It was said that people were dying in movie theaters, it was so frightening. Little children would have heart attacks. Naturally, we all begged to go. We never let up and so our mothers eventually said yes. I saw it at the River Park Theater in South Bend, Indiana, on a Saturday afternoon. The place was packed with kids. Movies cost 35 cents in those days, and the parents didn't come in -- they just dropped you off and picked you up. I remember being thrilled with anticipation, then keeping my face in my hands for about half the movie. I've never forgotten Macabre. Now Matt Drudge says a lady died in the theater watching Mel Gibson's "Passion." As far as hype goes, we've heard this one before.