Macabre (1958)
Throughout the 1940's and 50's, William Castle toiled on and on as a journeyman Grade C director. He tirelessly cranked out dozens of rock-bottom, poverty budgeted little movies meant to serve as the bottom half of double features.
A carnival barker at heart, Castle took note of the overwhelming international (and American) success of the French suspense shocker 'Diabolique'. And he sensed that U.S. mainstream audiences had an appetite for jump scares and plot twists.....so why not give them their very own made-in-the-USA horrors?
So began Castle's new career as a kind of low-rent, bargain basement Hitchcock, pumping out wildly lurid, painfully cheap overhyped thrillers......and always accompanied by some outrageous, cheesy showbiz gimmick to fill up the theater seats.
Compared to later, crazier Castle shlockers ("House on Haunted Hill", "The Tingler", "13 Ghosts", "Homicidal"), 'Macabre' is a mild, ticky-tacky little melodrama with scarcely a scare in sight.....but still oddly watchable.
And how could anyone resist a movie that guarantees you a Lloyds of London 1 million dollar life insurance policy if you die of fright while watching it?
Breaking news: the only deaths involved were to the reputations of the actors who worked on the film.
A small town doctor Rodney Barrett (William Prince) marries into a wealthy family with two heirs to the patriarch's fortune, the doc's wife Alice (Dorothy Morris) and her blind younger sister Nancy (Christine White).
Both sisters somehow die tragically...Alice in childbirth and Nancy from a possible abortion). Their deaths put Dr. Barrett in the cross hairs of his mortal enemy, town sheriff Tyloe (Jim Backus). The sheriff had unsuccessfully courted both sisters in the past and now holds Barrett responsible for their deaths.
And now Barrett's got even bigger problems. Someone's kidnapped his toddler daughter Marge and buried the child alive somewhere in the small town.....but where? Barrett's desperate hunt, aided by the loyal nurse pining for him (Jacqueline Scott) leads to the town's fog-shrouded cemetery, a rickety studio set that appears left over from Ed Wood's "Plan 9 From Outer Space".
The blatant overacting and cheeseball theatrics provide a small measure of guilty pleasure fun......but the film, overwrought and dumb-as-a-rock, begins to feel like a waste of time ten minutes after you've started watching it. And we can safely promise you that Lloyds of London will NOT have to cough up a million bucks to cove your demise.
Yes, there's a twist, if you can stay awake for it. But by all means, don't miss the bizarre, cartoony credit crawl at the end, which points out that the bulk of the supporting cast ends up dead at the climax, as if Castle was spoofing a Shakespearean tragedy.
Hmmm.....maybe Producer-director Castle should have chose 'Titus Andronicus' as his next film instated of "House on Haunted Hill". (He could still use the skeleton on a wire, flying across the theater....)
As for 'Macabre', strictly for Castle completists only.....1 & 1/2 stars. (*1/2).
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