"Welcome to a trip down graveyard lane!" So asks the Criswell like host who pops up behind a desk rather than a coffin to make this statement. Then, a clumsy man who steps on his kitty's tale and follows the scared putty tat into a cemetery. Bored college kids plan for another dull evening as swinging music plays in the background. Somebody's life is about to change as the two seemingly unrelated events intertwine. A medical student (Joseph Conway) is parking near the cemetery with his girlfriend (Ester Furst) when out of nowhere a rattlesnake appears and he kills it. This is just another seemingly unrelated incident, but as word gets around, it puts ideas into the minds if other students to test the smart Conway. Things get out of hands of course, leading to a prank that gets out of control and results in pure terror for someone. The ring seen on the finger of a corpse plays an important part in the gag and leads to the hero thinking that he is going mad.This is a drive-in style movie that seems to have been made on a fine, this is pretty entertaining for the type of film it is. But it's a jip-off plot-wise, reminding me of those intelligently written film noir where it all turns out to be a dream and leads the leading hero into making a sensible choice. That's not really what happens here, but it gives you a key to just how this tripe is dealt with. Not badly acted but not extremely well written or plotted either. It just takes a while to really develop into anything resembling a plot line and the inclusion of so many unnecessary devices just distracts. A scene with a doctor performing an autopsy, however, is quite funny, reminding me of the opening of the T.V. series "Quincy".

The awful "Ring OF Terror" would probably be forgotten about were it not for the excellent MST show it was transformed into. Yet it is an odd genre film with a feel all it's own, a tawdry, inept, bad film to be sure. We keep coming back to the boring issue, and surely it is that. What no one mentions is the whole thing builds to a SLOW climax regarding the death of Moffit, but the crux of the whole thing is how Moffit accidentally scared himself to death, and it feels like at that point the intention was to explain how he did it (they certainly didn't explain it very well) but at that point the old cemetery narrator has to rap things up fast: the movie has wasted too much time endless scenes of unfunny comic relief, lackluster talk, and slow moving unnecessary pacing. In short, it's a casebook example on how not to make this kind of movie. Some of the actors went on to have kind of careers, which is nice. And as others have stated, this looks like it was made some years before it's actual release/escape. It does have a sense of dullness all it's own, but check out the MST3K version if you need to slog through it. And kill that guy.

I watched this movie at 2:00 AM on DVD. It's one of those public domain cheapies that you can buy in the bargain bins. I got mine as part of the 50 movie megapack "Nightmare Worlds" for which I paid $20 for. So this movie basically only cost me 40 cents.The best part of the movie is the graveyard caretaker who opens and closes the movie. The setting up of this character really does provide the mood and atmosphere. While not the greatest movie, I found it entertaining nonetheless and I was wondering how the protagonist was going to have his demise.For fans of 'retro horror' this might be worth a look.

I wouldn't call this the worst movie ever made (I'd save that dubious honor for "Shriek of the Mutilated," which I once made the mistake of watching on a local MST3K-type show called "Schlock Theatre" in San Diego in the early 1980's) but it's certainly right up there. Starting with the ponderous opening scene in the cemetery with that idiot narrator (who makes Criswell's contribution to "Plan Nine from Outer Space" seem brilliant by comparison) chasing his cat around the set (the cat, showing more intelligence than any of the humans connected with this film on either side of the camera, kept trying to get away), to the sequence in which the narrator gives away the entire plot (you can't write a "spoiler" about this film because the filmmakers already did it for you!) to the main part of the film in which a bunch of distinctly long-in-the-tooth actors you never otherwise heard of attempt to impersonate college students, to the soporific pacing and dialogue delivery and the fact that nothing happens until the very last few minutes of the movie, this film is just dull, dull, DULL! You keep wondering where's the ring, where's the terror, and what's the point of this film's existence. Even the MST3K crew couldn't make this entertaining, though they did have a lot of fun lampooning the, uh, "advanced" ages of the cast members.