IslandGuru Who payed the critics

BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted

talisencrw The only way the so-called 'Ring of Terror' could have been even worse is if it had been hemorrhoidal in nature.When I was in my undergraduate days, I took my girlfriend out for Chinese food, and my fortune cookie read: 'You see the good in everything.' Indeed that was true, and especially in my movie-watching, I try to imagine all of the effort, and the blood, sweat and tears, that goes into a film's gestation. Thankfully, I paid very little for this film (director Paylow's only cinematic feature), and it only took 71 minutes of my time.To its credit, it had an intriguing start, with an eerie atmosphere to its opening credits. But the introduction by the cemetery's custodian, 'R.J. Dobson', (complete with his crazed cat, 'Puma') was the first clue to me that something just wasn't right. But openings like that, with Dobson showing a tombstone, starting to explain how the death at such a young age occurred, then the flashback occurring, at least gave me the false hope that this could be a 'horror anthology', and that no matter how bad a piece was, at least others would come that might be better. But no.This had no credibility in any manner whatsoever. In its depiction of college life, particularly for the medical students (who bizarrely were all male), it was obvious the filmmakers had no idea whatsoever of human nature, or the way that people of that age group interacted. There were no horrific aspects whatsoever, and all of the resoundingly minor attempts at comedy fell disgustingly flat. Any high-school play from the era would have more life. What makes this the second-worst film I have ever seen is that, for all intents and purposes, everyone involved thought they were making something credible, and were giving it their all (nothing could surpass Lena Dunham's 'Tiny Furniture' as the very worst film of all time IMHO). What surprises me is that Paylow would eventually be involved, in different capacities, in two of the very best films of the 70's ('Close Encounters of the Third Kind' and 'The Conversation'). Obviously he was a talented man who, at least in the director's chair for this film, didn't deliver the goods, though by no stretch of the imagination was it his fault alone.

amosduncan_2000 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.

calvinnme I'm going to give this three stars just because it is a rare chance to see what has completely disappeared from this earth - the B film made by the small independent making largely drive-in fare with players so anonymous that you wonder why they bothered giving them names in the film different from their actual names. Actually, I think the credits didn't bother after all.The borrowing from Ed Wood I speak of is an intro - that really drags by the way to the tune of five minutes- and and outro given by a mortuary custodian who recites some stream of consciousness dialogue accompanied by him searching for his cat among the headstones - it reminded me of Criswell in Plan Nine From Outer Space. The custodian finds the cat near the headstone of Lewis Moffett, who died at age 22 according to the engraving. Then starts the flashback of what led to Lewis' demise.Lewis was a medical student who showed no fear, even when fear would be a reasonable reaction. His fellow students take notice, and the medical student fraternity to which he is pledging (medical student fraternity???) comes up with a hazing device that is sure to reveal if Lewis is just faking it or really is fearless.The medical students are not just old - but so mixed in age you'd think someone would notice. They seem to range from 20 to 40 years of age. Their girlfriends are always nagging them about their studies getting in the way of their fun, and there is a very long and lame section about a frat party, a beauty contest, the world's ugliest cupid (in diapers), and tons of footage of overweight students overeating. There is an autopsy, oddly performed at night, where apparently the morgue stripped the John Doe corpse naked but left his gold ring on his finger! I thought the black and white cinematography, score, and atmosphere were quite good and set the right mood for a horror film. What the filmed lacked was a decent script with good dialogue, pacing, and acting. The most natural performance was turned in by Puma, the mortuary director's cat. Watch out for that cat, by the way, he actually plays a relevant part in the plot.

sculptagain-1 I can't think of ever seeing a worse movie than this. I tried to find some redeeming parts and came across only one: During the beauty contest the boy that likes heavy women had some honest and truthful things to say about the heavy-set girl. Those words seemed to have come from his heart. Other than that moment, the rest of the movie was an embarrassment to American film making. The acting, per se, was not that bad - but the parts and the scripts were terrible. Someone actually thought (at the time) that college kids acted like this. Which makes me wonder about their mental state. It was as if Mormons or some Southern Baptist Women's association wrote this movie. They were such Prudes and self-centered about 20-something kids that they failed to see the truth. This movie was made in 1962 - just a Very few years prior to our Viet Nam War days. I'm sure many of these kid-actors were actually drafted and probably died in Viet Nam. Yet the writers made them out to be Sterilized SouthPark children. I gave this a 1 out of 10 on IMDb's scoring. Too bad there wasn't a lower score.