Ring of Terror (1962)

A group of medical students undertake some silly and frightening endeavors in order to pledge a fraternity.

Director:

Clark L. Paylow

Writers:

Lewis Simeon (original story), Lewis Simeon (screenplay),

Stars:

George E. Mather, Austin Green, Esther Furst

Cast

Cast overview:
George E. Mather	...	Lewis B. Moffitt
Austin Green
Esther Furst	...	Betty Crawford
Norman Ollestad	...	Lew's Roommate (as Norman Ollstead)
Lomax Study	...	Professor Rayburn
Pamela Raymond	...	Alice Lund
Jerry Zinneman	...	(as Jerry Zin)
Joseph Conway	...	R.J. Dobson
June Smaney	...	Rag Doll Milford
Ed Erwin	...	(as Eddie Erwin)
Ann Morgan	...	Coed Waitress
Tom Brandt
Hal Hoover
Charles Martin
Ollie O'Toole	...	Dr. Walsh

Storyline

Med student Lewis Moffitt harbours a secret fear of the dark stemming from a traumatic childhood incident involving a corpse. Nonetheless, he pretends to be unaffected during the first autopsy witnessed by his class, and generally affects an attitude of fearlessness. This, however, inspires his would-be frat brothers to conceive a particularly morbid initiation ritual -- one which will, inevitably, go horribly awry.

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Plot Keywords:

autopsy | fear of the dark | fraternity | initiation | medical student | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

February 1962 (USA)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Playstar

Technical Specs

Runtime:

71 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Goofs

In the dance scene, the band members' movements have nothing to do with the music played. While saxophones can be heard, the sax players are shown with their instruments on their knees. Later, there is a tune featuring a trumpet, but there isn't even a trumpet in the band.

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Connections

Featured in Mystery Science Theatre 3000: Ring of Terror (1990)

User Reviews

Ring of Tepid

This is one of those rare horror movies..the ones that try to bore you to death. This movie is one long snooze-fest, as it follows the adventures of an over forty, robotic med student, his ditzy girlfriend, and his 'frat buddies', all also over forty but amazingly childish. Looks like they all got stuck at about the age of eight emotionally.

The film starts out on a graveyard(great place for it), with a skinny caretaker deliberately stepping on his poor cat's tail, this after he'd spent ten minutes calling the thing "Pe-yuma!" he caroled over and over, until the viewer has the urge to reach into the screen and slap him hard. And then he trods on the cat's tail, after he went to all that trouble to find it! All to set up a really stupid scene where he talks about the life of the guy who's tombstone he ends up leaning on after he chased the (rightly) outraged cat through the cheap cardboard tombstones.

The med student who's life and death he details might already have been dead, so wooden and dull is he. Even when he's fishing a six foot rattlesnake out of the back of his car(well, at least it interrupted the incipient make out scene), he never bats an eye or emotes at all. How much Robitussen did this guy drink before he went on set?

This mook wants to join a fraternity at his college(a fraternity for guys over the age of forty but still in school, apparently). As part of his initiation, he has to endure whatever hazing his not very imaginative colleagues come up with. They tell him he has to retrieve a ring off the finger of a corpse, the dead guy being the body they'd seen dissected a few days ago as part of their classes. He goes and does it, but apparently Mr.Nerves of Steel is afraid of enclosed spaces and the dark, and so is scared to death when the corpse's arm brushes his. Lame. We spend sixty minutes wading through the plodding set up for this? This trite, heavy handed 'ironic' ending? Where's John Belushi when you need him?