Macabre (1958)

Dr .Rodney Barrett (William Prince) is a small town doctor. Nobody likes him because they blame him in the deaths of two sisters. He also has an adorable little girl of his own. One day he returns home to find his child is missing. then his friend gets a phone call telling her that the child has been kidnapped and buried alive. The doctor has four hours to find her before she dies.Ideal set-up for a great horror film fails. The acting is terrible, the pace lethargic and the countless flashbacks add nothing to the story. I had figured out halfway through who had done it but didn't know the reason why. This was in the famous movie where viewers were given an insurance policy assuring them that their relatives would receive money if they died of fright. The only thing that anyone would die from would be boredom! Skip it.

My brother took me to this movie when it first came out and I hated it. I thought that it might have been because I was very young and didn't understand it. I came across it on TV today and watched it again to see if I missed something. I shouldn't have wasted my time. It was just as confusing as I remember it. The plot was hard to keep track of and most of it didn't make much sense. The idea wasn't bad and could make a decent movie if it was rewritten and made be a better group, but in this one the plot jumped around and the characters were not well developed or portrayed and the ending was obvious. It is probably the worst movie I ever saw.

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

So far, this is the best Castle film that I have seen; I personally think it is quite a bit better, more believable, and way more involving then any of his other films (well, the one with Joan Crawford was pretty dang good!)Also, without giving too much away, the ending caught me completely off guard too. The DVD print is frigg'n AMAZING! I thought it was a Blu-ray it looked so sharp and detailed. At first, the dialog seemed a little clumpy and stiff, but as you get into the story and begin to understand the relationships and history between the characters, it starts to smooth out a little.Another thing that surprised me was the 'adult' nature of some of the story content. Not anything visual; nothing like that, but some of the situations that the characters got into were rather sordid and seedy for 1958 I would think! Probably the weakest point of the film is the acting and to a lesser degree the script; again a bit stiff. But, interestingly as you get more and more into the story and the search for the little girl, you DO indeed get drawn into and become more involved in what is going on.This movie is of course not of the FILM NOIR genre, which ended just about the time this movie came out. But, the dark edge that many of the characters have and some of the shadowy photography reminded me somewhat of the genre. Primarily the flashback sequences and the morally dubious tone of a lot of the people. There are some similarities to films in the latter NOIR period.Anyway, not that I am really an expert on William Castle or anything, but so far amongst his films that I have seen, I feel that this one is far and away the more serious and classier of them. I know that many feel that 'THE TINGLER' and 'HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL' are Classics, but personally I found the acting and dialog in them quite sub-par compared to this one...So, if you are in the mood for an older Suspense / Mystery Thriller with a dark NOIR edge and can put up with a little stiff acting (and NO, I do not mean this is a porn film...) and if you would like to see what a Castle film is like BEFORE he started introducing all the heavy CHEEEEEEEZ, then you should find it quite entertaining...