Sadly Over-hyped

Dreadfully Boring

Absolutely brilliant

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Gimmick Master William Castle's first "Chiller" except it's not, it's really a mystery and not a very good one.This is very much a lesser Castle entry with no sympathetic characters and a short running time of 67 minutes on DVD, so there is no time to develop characters. The flashbacks just flesh out the running time and don't really add anything to the plot.The one of William Castle's "Chiller" films that somehow always eluded me in watching, now i've seen it i feel i needn't have bothered. Average and forgettable.

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.

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.

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.