For those hording toilet paper

The cemetery, a prominent setting in Castle's Macabre (1958)

 William Castle and writer Robb White made sure to throw a lot into their horror film: the cemetery, mausoleum, kidnapped child, blackmail, mortuary, coffin searches, grave searches, accidental murder, adultery, love triangles, murder plots for inheritance, graveside funeral at midnight, and a gimmick clock telling us that as the film approaches a certain time something big will be revealed. The ballsy decision to make the lead the ultimate villain, along with that clever knockout of closing credits with the animation titles of who is dead and living (and The End), I think are what make the film stand out, even though Macabre (1958) is not on the tips of tongues when ask about William Castle's resume. The lead played by William Prince, the town doc whose wife died giving birth to his daughter, is a sonofabitch. He's not a nice guy. But he is out and about during the film supposedly trying to find his missing daughter, with the help of his secretary (Jacqueline Scott), who is in love with him, and father-in-law (Philip Tonge), having already lost both his daughters, with incentive to make sure his granddaughter isn't a third victim.

When you have watched the film all the way through, seeing how Prince concocted everything to secure his father-in-law's money, including making sure he had a heart attack thanks to seeing a grotesque doll created by a desperate funeral home proprietor in financial dire straits, all the arrangements he made can be noticed. So the doctor had been secretly seeing another woman (Susan Morrow) while his sick wife (Dorothy Morris) was practically bedridden, not with Morris during the night she would have the baby and die from the difficult childbirth. He would use an audio recording called to his secretary, at his house, threatening the life of his abducted child buried alive some place. He fakes his own terror, made sure his maid (Ellen Corby) and secretary were terrified for the little girl's safety. And the whole race against time was a plot orchestrated by him to give his rich father-in-law a coronary! Prince was a serious scumbag. The coroner finally putting an end to this charade at the end was a little too late...Philip Tonge dies of a heart attack right after seeing the doll in a coffin Prince digs up!

The film is really loaded with melodramatic acting. That's just par for the course in the golden age of Hollywood. But the plot, really a hybrid of Gothic horror and soap opera, seemed fitting for this kind of performance.