The William Castle Film Collection (13 Frightened Girls / 13 Ghosts / Homicidal / Strait-Jacket / The Old Dark House / Mr. Sardonicus / The Tingler / Zotz!)
by William Castle
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DVD details
Director: William CastleBrand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Box set, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 692 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-10-20
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Sony Pictures
DVD Reviews of The William Castle Film Collection (13 Frightened Girls / 13 Ghosts / Homicidal / Strait-Jacket / The Old Dark House / Mr. Sardonicus / The Tingler / Zotz!)
DVD Review: WILLIAM, THE KING OF HIS OWN HORROR CASTLE, COMES HOME
Summary: 5 Stars
House of horrors? Welcome to the Carnival of Castle.
William Castle, the master of ballyhoo who made movies for about $4 and then promoted them with outrageous audience participation gimmicks, is finally getting his just reward. On October 20, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will unleash William Castle Film Collection, a DVD collection featuring eight of the legendary producer/director's most notable films.
Get ready for chills and spills and thrills and lots o' laughs with The Tingler (1959), 13 Ghosts (1960), Homicidal (1961), Mr. Sardonicus (1961), Zotz! (1962), 13 Frightened Girls! (1963) , The Old Dark House (1963) and our all-time WC fave, Strait-Jacket, the 1964 slasher flick starring Pepsi and gin-sodden Scream Queen Joan Crawford as an ax-wielding maniac.
Unlike sister companies Warner Brothers and Fox, Sony always packs their collections with welcome extras and bonus tracks. Here, the treats include original theatrical openings, alternate sequences, vintage footage and original theatrical trailers, as well as two episodes of the television series, Ghost Story produced by William Castle.
Then there's Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story (2007), the award-winning documentary on William Castle made by director Jeffrey Schwarz. The film features archival interviews with John Landis, John Waters, Budd Boetticher, Roger Corman and legendary mime Marcel Marceau, all of whom readily admit how Castle influences their lives and careers.
So just who was William Castle?
Born in 1917, Castle grew up fascinated with the fast and furious, movement and mayhem . . . the Barnum and Bailey circus, the New York stage, radio and the movies. He knew what he wanted to do with his life and spent most of his teen years working on the stage in various jobs, everything from set building to acting. He left Broadway for Hollywood at the age of 23, directing his first film (The Chance of a Lifetime) six years later.
Castle honed his craft over the next decade. He worked as an assistant to director Orson Welles, doing much of the second unit location work for Welles' noir classic The Lady from Shanghai. Castle had a reputation for getting the work done, and eventually decided to produce and direct his own pictures. The first, Macabre, boasted ad lines like "See it with someone who can carry you home!" and "If it frightens you to death, you'll be buried free of charge!"
The hype worked, and Castle became famous for directing low budget B-movies with gimmicks that were ambitiously promoted. And you wonder why his autobiography was entitled "Step Right Up! I'm Gonna Scare the Pants Off America."
Some dismiised Caslte as a poor-man's Hitchcock, but that is an insult to both Willy and Alfred. After all, gimmicks were important to both men . . . Hitch had cameos, William had Percepto.
By the mid '60s, Castle abandoned the gimmicks and went on to produce the 1968 Roman Polanski classic Rosemary's Baby.
Less than 10 years later, Castle was dead.
But his works lives on.
Let's take a quick look . . .
The Tingler
Legendary horror icon Vincent Price stars in this terrifying story of a docile creature that lives in the human spinal cord. It becomes activated by fright, and can only be destroyed by screaming. Castle promoted the film with the gimmick of "Percepto," where audiences would actually feel the sensations of the actors on the screen.
To achieve this, theaters wired select seats with tiny motors underneath that would vibrate during key scenes in the movie. The audience would get a "tingling" sensation and were encouraged to "Scream! Scream for your lives!"
13 Ghosts
Castle aggressively promoted this film with "Illusion-O," a special hand-held piece of cardboard with two transparent colored strips. If you wanted to see the ghosts in the film, you looked through one, but if you were too frightened, you could look through the other and they weren't visible. The film promised (and delivered) "13 Times the Thrills! 13 Times the Chills! 13 Times the Fun!" in the story of a family who inherits a haunted house, but discover a special pair of goggles that allows them to see their ghostly tormentors.
Homicidal
The brutal stabbing murder of a justice-of-the-peace sparks an investigation of the dark family secrets in a sleepy small town. Castle promoted the film with a "Fright Break," a 45-second timer during the film's climax as the heroine approached a house harboring the sadistic killer. The voiceover advised the audience of the time remaining so they could leave the theatre and receive a full refund if they were too frightened to see the rest of the film.
To ensure filmgoers did not opt for the refund, Castle instituted the "Coward's Corner:" Patrons were expected to follow yellow footsteps up the theater aisle, bathed in a yellow light and sit in a yellow cardboard booth in the theater lobby. Theaters had a nurse offering blood-pressure tests, a recording blaring "Watch the chicken! Watch him shiver in Coward's Corner!" and required those walking out to sign a yellow "Coward's Certificate" card stating, "I am a bona fide coward."
Mr. Sardonicus
In this gothic tale set in 1880 London, a baron's face is frozen into a permanently grotesque smile after digging up his father's grave to retrieve a winning lottery ticket accidentally left in his pocket. The gimmick allowed audiences to vote in a "Punishment Poll" during the climax of the film where Castle himself appears on screen to explain to the audience their options. Each member of the audience was given a card with a glow-in-the-dark thumb they could hold either up or down to decide if Mr. Sardonicus would be cured or die at the end of the film. Supposedly, no audience ever offered mercy and the villain was always punished.
Zotz!
A man finds a Zotz coin and discovers its awesome powers. After attempting to share its secret with the US government (who brushes him off as a lunatic), his discovery captures the interest of foreign agents, who attempt to steal it. To promote the film, Castle provided each filmgoer with a "magic" coin which, unfortunately, did absolutely nothing.
13 Frightened Girls!
Castle launched a worldwide hunt for the prettiest girls from different countries to cast in 13 Frightened Girls. The stunt helped generate publicity for the film about the 13 daughters of international diplomats in a Swiss boarding school, who stir up trouble when they mess in the diplomatic affairs of their parents and a Russian spy is discovered murdered..
The Old Dark House
An American car salesman visiting England receives a mysterious invitation from an old, eccentric millionaire to visit the house in which he lives with his twin brother. No gimmick, no good.
Strait-Jacket
Castle hired Hollywood's legendary Joan Crawford to star as an ax-murderess in this story of a mother, who, after a 20 year stay in an insane asylum for killing her husband and his mistress, returns home. While trying to reconcile with her daughter, mommie dearest's behavior raises suspicions . . . is she still a dangerously deranged killer? At the film's last minutes, Castle had cardboard axes handed out to patrons and sent Crawford on a nation-wide promotional tour of theaters showing the film.
Some of the great bonus tracks include
* Featurette: The Magic of Illusion-O
* Alternate opening (British) for 13 Frightened Girls!
* Alternate opening (Swedish) for 13 Frightened Girls!
* Alternate opening (French) for 13 Frightened Girls!
* Alternate opening (German) for 13 Frightened Girls!
* Featurette: Psychette: William Castle and Homicidal
* Featurette: Homicidal Youngstown, Ohio Premiere
* Featurette: Battleaxe: The Making of Strait-Jacket
* Vintage Featurette: How to Plan a Movie Murder
* Joan Crawford Wardrobe Tests
* Joan Crawford Axe Test
* Featurette: Scream For Your Lives: William Castle and The Tingler"
* Featurette: Ghost Story: Graveyard Shift
* Alternate Drive-In Sequence for The Tingler
* Original "Scream" Sequence for The Tingler
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