DVD Review - The William Castle Collection
Filmmaker Used Outrageous Stunts to Push '50s, '60s B-Movie Shockers
Oct 9, 2009
If cigar-chompin', hard-drivin' indie filmmaker William Castle hadn't existed, Hollywood would have had to invent him. Castle's outrageous, inspired movie promotions -- most based on audience participation -- delighted moviegoers for years.
William Castle an Icon of Lovably Tacky Cinema
The amiable hustler was a pioneering producer of schlocky shockers. His cinematic Reign of Dreck began with 1958's Macabre. Each theatergoer was offered a $1,000 life insurance policy from Lloyd's of London. The catch: for beneficiaries to collect, the death had to come from fright.
(Insert evil "boo-ha-ha-ha" laugh here.)
Castle turned out film after film, from the late 1950s into the 70s. None could be confused with art. Instead, each offered a good-natured wink at the audience, and was considered must-see viewing for Castle's target audience of pubescent males.
The new DVD box set is a mother lode of cinematic mayhem, containing eight of Bill Castle's, um, "best." They are:
13 Frightened Girls (1963)
Swiss boarding school girls on vacation in London get involved in an international spy plot, presumably because the early Bond films were doing so well. (Castle proved that imitation is the sincerest form of robbery.) Murray Hamilton -- later immortalized as Mr. Robinson in The Graduate -- stars as a CIA agent. In a supporting role is Khigh Dheigh, best known for The Manchurian Candidate and as arch villain Wo Fat on TV's Hawaii Five-O. The gimmick here was in pre-production, when Castle conducted a "worldwide search" (cough-cough) for the best-looking teen-babes to star in the film.
13 Ghosts (1960)
This fairly traditional ghost story is remembered chiefly for the "Illusion-O" mock-3-D glasses that allowed each moviegoer to "see" ghosts and other threatening apparitions by peering through a red plastic lens. Non-believers could use the adjoining blue lens, which filtered out the evil ectoplasmic entities. It was remade in 2001 as Thir13en Ghosts.
Homicidal (1961)
This eminently-watchable, yet shameless ripoff of Hitchcock's Psycho arrived a year after Sir Alfred's triumph. (No surprise, since Hitchcock was Castle's directorial hero.) Like Psycho, it features a strange, seemingly haunted character, played with brittle effectiveness by Jean Arless. And, like Psycho's Norman Bates, she harbors some dark, dual-identity issues. Homicidal includes a 45-second "fright break" near the climax, along with the superimposed image of a ticking clock. Voiceover narration advised patrons of a refund if they were too frightened to watch the denouement.
Strait-Jacket (1964)
By the mid-60s, Joan Crawford's career had sunk to Castlean depths. In this one, Joan emerges from an asylum 20 years after taking an axe to her cheatin' husband and his mistress. She moves in with her about-to-be-married daughter, as everyone wonders: Will Joan become a cut-up once again? Castle was thoughtful enough to provide cardboard axes to his paying public.
The Old Dark House (1963)
Don't confuse this with James Whale's tongue-in-cheek horror film from 1932. This atmospheric black comedy was produced in partnership with England's respected horror house, Hammer Films. American comic actor Tom Poston (George Utley on TV's Newhart) plays a Yankee car salesman delivering an automobile to a remote mansion in Wales. There's a raging storm, forcing Poston to stay on at the weird manor and get to know the strange, decidedly murderous family that calls it home.
Mr. Sardonicus (1961)
In 1880 London, an aristocrat's face is frozen into a grotesque smile after he digs up the grave of his father while searching for a winning lottery ticket. (By the way, the horrifying smile schtick is a steal from the 1928 silent classic The Man Who Laughs, based on Victor Hugo's novel.) Near the climax, Castle appears onscreen to offer a choice between two endings. 1961 theatergoers were asked to apply a glow-in-the-dark thumb, then indicate with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to decide the fate of the title character.
The Tingler (1959)
The title character was actually a crab-like creature dwelling in the human spinal cord. It was activated by good, old-fashioned fright and neutralized only by screaming. The Tingler's gimmick was Percepto, which involved attaching buzzers under theater seats. "As the action of the movie moves along," observed bad movie mavens Harry and Michael Medved, "the monster crab wiggles into a neighborhood movie theater. We see it entering the lobby (presumably without a ticket) and then the screen (in our theater, not theirs) suddenly goes blank." (Harry and Michael Medved, The Golden Turkey Awards: Nominees and Winners -- the Worst Achievements in Hollywood History, Perigee Books, published by G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1980) Star Vincent Price then breaks the fourth wall. In stentorian voiceover, he advises audience members to scream their heads off. Right on cue, the Percepto buzzers go off.
Zotz! (1962)
Tom Poston is back, this time as a professor who finds a mystical coin granting him supernatural powers. The cast includes Jim Backus, Fred Clark, Cecil Kellaway and even Groucho's favorite foil, the inestimable Margaret Dumont, in her penultimate screen role. Each moviegoer received a gold coin. Sadly, the giveaways were devoid of magic power.
Excellent Documentary on William Castle
Rounding out the set is the excellent Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story. The affectionate 80-minute film traces Castle's modest beginnings and rise from obscurity. Eventually, his chutzpah gets him to Broadway and later Hollywood, where Castle finagles his way into associations with Orson Welles and Columbia Pictures' tyrant Harry Cohn. The stories of his promotional antics alone make the documentary worth seeing. It won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the AFI Film Festival in 2007.
The DVD set from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment includes nearly 30 extras -- trailers, behind-the-scenes featurettes, promotional films, alternate sequences, movie premiere footage and other goodies. The trailers and promotional films are especially revealing, as you can see just how much Castle tried to emulate his hero, Hitchcock.
The box set carries a suggested retail price of $80.95, hefty until you consider the sheer volume of material inside. It is available Oct. 20, 2009.
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