simondoro: THE MAN WHO TRIED TO ?SCARE THE PANTS OFF AMERICA ...

Ahh, October is here. The leaves are turning, there is a crisp bite in the air and?the theaters are filled with scary movies. Unfortunately, most subscribe to the credo ?The more (blood and gore) the merrier.? During an earlier era of fright flicks it was a little bit different.

Those of us who grew up on the horror films of the 1950s and 1960s, whether we realize it or not, owe our goose bumps and nightmares to primarily one man, William Castle.

William Castle was the PT Barnum of cheap horror flicks. His films were the drive-in specials and the Saturday Afternoon kiddy matinee staples. The long list of his movies includes THE TINGLER, HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, 13 GHOSTS, MACABRE and STRAIT JACKET.

William Castle didn?t just produce scary movies, he PRODUCED scary movies. To him, filming the movie was one thing, but marketing it was quite another. His promotional innovations (or ?gimmicks? for you less romantic souls) earned him the title ?The Schlockmeister? and he reveled in his reputation. Like a carnie barker, Castle would appear in a filmed segment before the start of each of his movies to hype the special ?icing? associated with that particular film.

If it wasn?t for the enterprising mind of William Castle, the following promotions would never have come into being (and the world itself would have been poorer for it):

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?EMERGO? ? This was used during the run of HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. In selected theaters a guy wire was hooked up that ran the length of the theater from the projection booth to the screen. During a frightening scene when a skeleton makes his appearance on the screen, an inflated skeleton was sent flying over the audience on the wire.

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?PERCEPTO? ? The premise of THE TINGLER was that each of us has a tiny little creature living at the base of our spine that looks, surprisingly, a little bit like a lobster and a little bit like the Baby Back Ribs served at Chili?s. When we become frightened, the creature grows and causes the tingling sensation on our spine. The only way to make the Tingler shrink again is to scream. If you don?t scream it will snap your spine. Anyway, through a complicated turn of events in the movie a Tingler breaks free and enters a movie theater. At that point in the film, the screen goes dark and a voice announces ominously, ?The Tingler has escaped in this theater. We need everyone to scream and scream loudly RIGHT NOW!?

Of course the theater would erupt in screaming as the audience went along with the gag, but little did they know, small electrical shock devices had been attached to several seats in the audience and they provided a mild, but surprising jolt to the seats? occupants. This was the magic of ?PERCEPTO.?

Remember, these were simpler times.
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William Castle?s Introduction to ?The Tingler?

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?ILLUSION-O? ? How, you ask, can such a ?shocking? effect like ?PERCEPTO? be topped? Why, with ?ILLUSION-O,? of course. ?ILLUSION-O? was used in the movie 13 GHOSTS. It consisted of some tricky camera work and pieces of colored plastic. A ?ghost viewer? was given to each audience member before the start of the movie. The viewer was basically a piece of cardboard with two oblong holes cut in it. One hole was covered with a sheet of transparent blue plastic and the other had a piece of red plastic. During the course of the movie, a warning was given just before the appearance of a ghost. The viewer had an option at that time. If they wanted to see the ghosts on screen they would look through the red plastic. If they were ?chicken? they could look though the blue plastic and see nothing.

William Castle?s Introduction to ?13 Ghosts?

Castle used several other gimmicks?excuse me?promotional innovations? during the height of his popularity. For the movie, MACABRE (starring that terror of the silver screen, Jim Backus), he offered viewers $1000 ?Fright Insurance? from Lloyds of London, payable to the family of anyone who died of fright while watching the movie. In HOMICIDAL audience members who found the film too scary were offered a ?Fright Break? (basically a money-back guarantee) and in STRAIT JACKET (starring that faded cinema queen, Joan Crawford) audiences were give plastic axes.

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All of Castle?s antics were part of a larger effort by Hollywood to lure people away from that new-fangled invention, television. This effort brought us Vista Vision, Cinemascope and, laughingly, on the other end of the technical spectrum, 3-D movies (hmmm? d?j? vu, anyone?).

But William Castle put them all to shame with the sheer brazenness of his stunts.

In attempting to ?scare the pants off America,? as he was fond of saying, he carved out a small part for himself in the history of Hollywood cinema.
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Happy Halloween, Mr. Castle, wherever you are!

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