Macabre tells the tale of a small town doctor who gets a cryptic message telling him his small daughter has been kidnapped and buried alive. He has to find her before time (and her air!) runs out.William Castle started as he meant to go on, with a low budget, yes, but also with the ability to direct and photograph what counts: tight dramatic scenes, stark lighting and shock effects. I am sure the audiences loved this when it first came out. It's pretty short and actually quite low on action, even tough it's central idea (death of a child by suffocation in a coffin) is quite nasty.The acting is variable. Jacqueline Scott overacts rather as love-lorn nurse Polly, whereas William Prince tends to keep things fairly wooden as the tormented doctor. They are better supported by the rest of the cast, who all do great work, especially Ellen Corby who I love as the child's elderly nursemaid. Castle always seems to get quality actors for the small parts in his movies, even if the leads can be a bit flakey.There's lots of acton set in a graveyard as the cast equip themselves with spades and torches to search for the missing child, and in a nice touch the film only covers a period of about 5 hours in time (a clock reminds of of this), although two fairly long flashback fill in some details of past intrigues. The film only really boats a handful of shocks, the notable one being some hilariously gruesome remains found inside a coffin, and a dead body found suddenly in a dark corner. Short enough and silly enough to be entertaining, it shows that William Castle knows how to make a movie.

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.

"Macabre" is the first entry in William Castle's cycle of horror films and it isn't bad; it's better than "13 Ghosts" but not as good as "I Saw What You Did" and nowhere near as intense as "The Tingler." A lot of the right elements are in place for a good thrill; the photography is excellent, there is plenty of claustrophobic atmosphere and the first two thirds of it is completely credible, though as a kind of detective picture rather than horror. One has to accept the fact that Dr. Barrett is a lousy detective, and that even though there is the frantic search for the missing girl, with the clock ticking, it has to be set aside periodically to allow for other plot points to go by; maddening. But ultimately Castle takes the easy way out when just a little more effort would have made "Macabre" a great film. And judging from some of his other work, Castle had it in him, it's just that at a certain point the film begins to undermine its own potential with ludicrousness. Christine White is marvelously sexy as a blind girl with a taste for adventure, and it's fun to see Jim Backus in a role as a heavy, speaking in his natural voice. Ellen Corby is stronger than the part that she is given, which could have been more consequential if she hadn't been awarded such a limited and repetitive repertoire of lines to say. "Macabre" isn't successful at all at passing the blame for its caper on individuals not involved in the situation, and that's fine; the confusion about where the girl is, who might have taken her, and why is enough to instill a kind of unsettled confusion that sets the right mood. It's definitely worthwhile as a kind of period piece as it works towards its Cold War-ish conclusion, but one wonders how well it would play if Ingmar Bergman had taken a look at the script, and it wouldn't have taken a lot to bring it up to that level; "Macabre" just falls short.

A doctor in a small town has done a good job of making himself hated because of his role in the deaths of two sisters. When his daughter disappears and a caller announces that she has been buried alive, will the unpopular doctor uncover the MACABRE scheme, or will the cute little girl die a horrible, frightening death?Any movie that dares cast the lovable Jim "Mr. Magoo" Backus as the sort of brutish sheriff that Sterling Hayden could have done in his sleep does have something going for it. Any movie that features a slutty rich blind girl (who makes time with the pool boy AND Jim Backus AND our surly doctor hero) has a definite noir appeal. And the attention paid to clocks and the passing of time shows that the director at least has a concept of how a film might generate suspense.But, a movie with the amount of bad, bad acting this one does, indicates a director perhaps more concerned with the promotion of his movie than the making of it. The logical flaws of the film are really extraordinary, beginning with small things, such as the distance between the small town and its old creepy graveyard, and advancing to the large, such as our hero's steadfast refusal to call the cops. And the final resolution, alas, is more disappointing than surprising. The best thing that can be said about the "promotional" aspects of the film -- mostly a rather campy opening announcement about how really truly scary all this is going to be, and a Charles Adams - like animated closing credit sequence, is that these campy things really don't get in the way.Worth seeing, because the Jim Backus performance is the sort a revelation that can happen when a good character actor is totally cast against type. But the world won't come to an end if you miss this.