Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on the new internet machine.
When William Castle is at the helm of a movie, you’re pretty much guaranteed to go to some strange and interesting places. You might get a special viewer to see ghosts, or the chance to have a shocker placed under your theater seat. Or, in the case of the version of 1958’s Macabre that I found, a film with an American cast that has been for some reason dubbed into Italian. I don’t know why this was in Italian. Regardless of that, though, this was actually the first of Castle’s “gimmick” films. Theater goers were given a $1000 insurance policy against “death by fright,” a policy that actually existed with Lloyd’s of London.
Like most (possibly all) of William Castle’s films, the hype is far better than the actual film that we’re presented with. The idea here is a really fun one. It’s just not nearly as scary as Castle wants us to believe, even for 1958 standards.
