To me, this movie is perfection.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

I caught this randomly of TCM. I was thinking of turning off the television set when suddenly I saw William Castle's name and got intrigued. I have previously seen 'The House on Haunted Hill' and I think it's a pretty great, genuinely CLASSIC horror film, and overall I have found Castle's career to be extremely compelling and kind of funny in a way. Castle was a filmmaker who grew to be iconic largely b/c of his gimmicks, which perfectly encapsulate the atmosphere of horror cinema at this time in filmmaking history ("this time" referring to the 1950's to the mid-1960's), and I was totally hooked on watching this film once it began, w/a shot of a large clock on a clock tower as a narration informs the viewer that over the course of the next hour and fifteen minutes prepare to be horrified or something along those lines, and amusingly suggesting that I, the viewer, calm whoever I am sitting beside in the theater if they get too visibly scared and that, and I just found this hilarious and felt like I was in for a comedic (if only ironically so) treat. Well, what I got was something quite unexpected and different than what my mind had planned. There were quite a few unintentionally amusing moments here and there, but the overall film was super dark. Like, it tackled some extremely disturbing topics in a really weird and eerie (if oft cheesy) way. I don't exactly know how I feel about this film, beyond knowing that I liked it, despite there being various extreme plot holes and the overall fact of its ending (which that same narrator from the beginning urges his audience to not spoil any of there friends, and to tell said friends to go see the picture for themselves, which I also found pretty funny) being less-than-satisfactory if (at least sort/kind of) unique/interesting/unexpected/fittingly-melancholic-in-a-way. Sometimes, watching films at total random can be a real experience, and this certainly was one. Full of surprises, unintentional laughs, genuine moments of shock and near actual fright...it's a time to be had for sure.

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.

Like many teens of the time, I was pulled in by the heavy-handed ad blitz on TV. Needless to say, once past the ticket-taker, my pulse never lapsed once, so their insurance policy was safe by me. I recall having trouble following the many plot complications then, and still do. But the narrative is not the movie's strong point, anyway—something about an unpopular doctor having only a few hours to save his daughter from being buried alive. Meanwhile all these people keep dropping in and out in none too cogent fashion. Had the narrative developed the characters more distinctly, the whodunit part could have excelled. Nonetheless, director Castle shows he's still got the visual style he had in the classic 1940's noir series The Whistler. So there're a number of creepy visual set-ups that help redeem the title. The ending is still a grabber that I didn't see coming even if I couldn't quite figure out the logic. Anyway, with more work on the screenplay, this could have been something memorable instead of the okay thriller it is. I'm just sorry Castle traded his very real talents to become the 50's premier huckster of movie gimmickry.

Learning of a great treachery against his daughter, a man and his wife race to the graveyard containing her before a deranged madman can win out in his quest for revenge.An exceptionally flawed and not really all that worthwhile William Castle gimmick effort, only this time the gimmick isn't that great and the movie's little better. The central premise to this one is quite chilling, with the abduction of the daughter and being buried in a grave that requires a man and wife to find her, means we get some incredibly wonderful Gothic atmosphere with the scenes in the cemetery that are quite creepy in design and chilling in how the story's built up. These scenes here and their bantering about where she is and where to dig are really the only parts of this that's worthwhile, as the rest of the time it doesn't have a whole lot to really get interested in. As it goes around with all the potential suspects and why they're interested in seeking revenge, the flashback nature of these participants and why they're out for revenge is not in the slightest bit interesting and drags the movie to a halt as it goes about this section of the movie, dropping all potential horror angles and does so for the majority of the film's running time. Even more so, the fact that the central premise doesn't allow for a lot of time dealing with the graveyard search forces this upon the viewer, a rather unfortunate handicap right off the top. It's got its moments, but not a whole lot of them.Today's Rating: Unrated/PG: Mild Violence and children-in-jeopardy.