Ring of Terror

Alpha Video's Ring of Terror (1962) release is one of a handful of features in its library that comes with the original trailer. This alone makes it notable among low-priced public- domain DVD titles. Actually, the movie used to turn up every so often on New York's WOR-TV Channel 9, looking about as good (or bad) as this print. It comes complete with a large vertical scratch down the right-hand side of the screen in one very brief shot, before stabilizing over what looks to be a badly transferred day-for-night shot of a procession walking into a graveyard. The source print looks and sounds very good from that point on. The rest of the film has the same badly matched day-for-night shots (especially in a scene where a snake slithers into the hero's car), but mistakes like that are made up for by the presence of such goofy delights as performance clips featuring the "Campus Cool Cats," perhaps the dullest student band ever seen in a feature film, and the oldest looking bunch of medical students in screen history. The standard Alpha Video six chapters are adequate to the movie, and the simple menu is easy to access and maneuver around. This disc claims a running time of 66 minutes, but clocks in about two minutes short of that.