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 (as George Mather)
Austin Green	...	Carl
Esther Furst	...	Betty Crawford
Norman Ollestad	...	Lew's Roommate
Lomax Study	...	Professor Rayburn
Pamela Raymond	...	Alice Lund
Jerry Zinnamon	...	(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 G. Martin	...	(as 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:

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

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Genres:

Drama | Horror

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Certificate:

Unrated

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

February 1962 (USA)

Also Known As:

Кольцо террора

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?

Trivia

This movie was parodied in season 2 episode 6 of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

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Goofs

These "college" students are clearly in their 40s.

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Quotes

[first lines]
R.J. Dobson: Good evening friends. Let me invite you for a stroll down graveyard lane, where beauty and love abide. And in death, we are born into eternal life.

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Connections

Referenced in Mystery Science Theater 3000: Pod People (1991)

User Reviews

Graveyard Tales

*****SPOILERS***** Let me invite you for a stroll down "Graveyard Lane" so starts the movie as were introduced to R.J. Dobson the custodian of the Raven Hill Cemetery.

Dobson tells the audience about the secrets of the cemetery by saying: Each marker, tombstone, withholds many stories some filled with happiness some filled with sorrow. I wonder what they would do if they had the chance to re-live their lives again! What would you do? All of a sudden Dobson stops his monologue and starts calling for his cat Pumha. Walking through the graveyard after accidentally stepping on the cats tail he finds the kitty at the headstone of Lewis B. Moffitt a medical student who died at the age of 22 in 1955, and so the story begins.

Lewis B. Moffitt wanted to become a doctor for all the wrong reasons. As a young boy he developed a fear of the dark when his grandpa died and was left to lay in state in his parents living-room.

Terrified of the dark his mother told him that if he turned on the lights his grandpa would get out of his coffin and whack him. As Lewis grew up he wanted to become a doctor to overcome his fear of dead bodies like the fear he had of his grandpa when he was laying in state. What he liked to do most at the medical collage was to participate in dissecting of human bodies.

Most of the students who were in the gallery watching these dissecting would get sick and leave the room but not Lewis he was fearless. A body that was dissected just before there was to be an initiation into the collage fraternity had a gold ring on it.

At the initiation the next night Lewis was told that he had to go into the Raven Hill Cemetery Mausoleum where they keep the recently interred and bring the gold ring back to be accepted into the fraternity. Going into the cemetery that night Lewis finally makes it into the mausoleum and finds the body with the gold ring that he was looking for.

As Lewis was about to get the gold ring off the finger of the body he hears a shriek of what turned out to be the custodians cat Pumha and as he turned in surprise the dead mans hand fell and grabbed Lewis. All of a sudden the fear that Lewis suppressed all these years since he was a little boy of the dark and dead bodies came back to him like a bolt of lighting and he fell to the ground dead, dead of fright.

So ended the story of Lewis B. Moffitt the young man who tried to show that he can take the fear of being around dead bodies by ending up dead because of one. By the way on Moffitt's headstone was carved out the epithet "I FEARED NOT".

Far better then you would expect from the down right awful rating the movie has from the IMDb voters. "Ring of Terror" plays like one of those 1950's mystery/suspense shows like "Inner-sanctum" and " Strange stories" and is much better then most "Twilight Zone" episodes that I've seen.

"Ring of Terror" did have an interesting story that didn't need any special effects and the acting was surprisingly good especially George Mather who played Lewis B. Moffitt. Watching the movie and knowing how bad the reviews about it were I expected to see a first-class bomb with the only redeeming value in it being some unintentional laughs but instead I was pleasantly surprised.