MACABRE

“Ladies and gentlemen, for the next hour and fifteen minutes you will be shown things so terrifying that the management of this theatre is deeply concerned for your welfare…”

In the quiet but surprisingly busy small town of Thornton, local doctor Rodney Barrett races against time to save his daughter, who has been kidnapped and buried alive by a deranged killer. His frantic search coincides with the approach of midnight, when a bizarre funeral will take place. Back stories are revealed, suspects are ruled out, and Death itself seems to hover patiently on the sidelines, ready to claim more than one of the players as the thriller moves implacably toward its denouement.

Perfect viewing for November, this, the first of producer/director/impresario William Castle’s notorious gimmick movies. The film was ballyhooed with the announcement a $1,000 insurance policy taken out to cover any member of MACABRE’s audience who died of fright. Some audiences also saw nurses and hearses at the theatres where the picture was playing. Even without such elements physically present in the room with the viewer today they seem to hold a presence.

Based on a novel by at least a dozen authors, the movie's plot is all over the place, with a number of digressions into the past informing the story of the present. These flashbacks gives us relief from the race-against-time narrative, but each time we return to the present there's that damn funeral parlor clock again to remind us where we are. But Castle isn't simply jerking his audience around, and he quickly shows that he's smart enough not to depend solely on gimmicks for his movie's effects. His touch with his cast is surprisingly strong; the actors all make several chapters of exposition go down smoothly, and sweat and struggle admirably as the vise of the story tightens. (William Prince is solid as Barrett, mired in both a small town's gossip mill and a psycho's demented kidnap plot; Jacqueline Scott is particularly strong as the lovelorn but determined nurse who follows him deep into the dark.)

The late-50s meat-and-potatoes acting keep it all grounded, but Castle expertly entwines some semi-Brechtian devices that only enhance the prevailing mood of cinematic dread; the thing often feels like an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents directed by Lars von Trier. But even though Castle on occasion goes deep into the dark aspects of the human psyche – greed, jealousy, lust, envy – he turns out to be too much of a good-natured showman to kick us into the dark and leave us there. There’s a genuine sense of grateful release when the clock is finally stopped on this tale, and we’re rewarded with a spookily charming end credits sequence that gives the living, the dead, and the movie’s creative team a well-earned curtain call.

Here in the House the whole thing provided an excellent Halloween hangover, a spooky thriller loaded with atmosphere, a perfectly chilly entertainment for the deepening autumn. Out of respect for the filmmakers' wishes, your proprietor will keep the secret of the story's ending to himself. Also per their wishes, though, I'm here for you if the fright turns out to be too much. See you in the dark.