Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story

This documentary on schlockmeister William Castle takes a few cheap shots at the naive '50s-'60s environment in which he did his most characteristic work--look at the funny, silly people with the ghost-glasses--but it's also affectionate and lively, with particularly bright commentary from John Waters, who was absolutely the target audience for such things at the time, and from Castle's daughter, who adored her dad and also is pretty perceptive about how he plied his craft. (We never find out what became of the other Castle offspring.) The movies were not very good, it makes clear, but his marketing of them was brilliant, and he appears to have been a sweet, hardworking family man. Fun people keep popping up, like "Straight Jacket"'s Diane Baker, who looks great, and Anne Helm, whom she replaced at the instigation of star Joan Crawford. Darryl Hickman all but explodes into giggles at the happy memory of working with Castle on "The Tingler," and there's enough footage to give us an idea of the level of Castle's talent--not very high, but very energetic. A pleasant look at a time when audiences were more easily pleased, and it does make you nostalgic for simpler movie-going days.

This movies chronicles the life and times of William Castle. He made a series of low budget horror films in the 1950s-1960s that he sold with gimmicks. In "13 Ghosts" you need viewers to see the ghosts (they were in color, the film was in b&w). "The Tingler" had theatre seats equipped with a buzzer that jolted the audience when a monster escapes into a movie theatre. "Marabre" issued a life insurance policy to all members in case they were frightened to death! The movies themselves were pretty bad but the gimmicks had people rushing to see them. In this doc there are interviews with directors inspired by Castle, actors in his movies and his daughter. It also gets into his home life and the kind of man he was (by all accounts he was a great guy). The documentary is affectionate, very funny and absolutely riveting. It's very short (under 90 minutes) and there's never a dull moment. A must see for Castle fans and horror movie fans. My one complaint--there were very few sequences shown from his pictures. That aside this is just great.

Affectionate tribute to the popular director of such low budget but financially successful films such as "House On Haunted Hill", "The Tingler" & "13 Ghosts" presents his life from unknown director on forgotten westerns and the like, to his big break on "Macabre", where he came up with the "Fright Break" gimmick to involve the audience in the picture itself, and made a fortune doing so. Eventually getting a contract with Columbia pictures, he churned out various pictures from the late 50's through the 60's, until times changed, and his brand of horror film was considered outdated. Can be seen on the William Castle 8-film DVD set from Sony, as an extra feature.

Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story (2007)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely well made documentary takes a look at producer/director William Castle and features interviews with not only his daughter but also the likes of John Landis, Joe Dante, Roger Corman, Leonard Maltin, Budd Boetticher, Bob Burns, David Del Valle, John Waters and Fred Olen Ray. The documentary covers Castle's early life growing up, meeting Bela Lugosi and eventually being invited to Hollywood where he'd soon start directing countless "B" movies for Columbia. The film then follows his gimmick movies like HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL and THE TINGLER as well as his dream project, ROSEMARY'S BABY, which would eventually be given to another filmmaker. Fans of Castle are really going to eat this thing up because there's so many great interviews and comments that one can't help but get the feeling of what it must have been like watching some of these movies in the theater when they were first released. Hearing about all the gimmicks from people who were actually there was a lot of fun and you can just tell that these people still love and have fond memories of these few moments in the theater. The documentary is pretty much fun throughout and never tries to be overly serious but instead just deals with the type of fun person Castle was. We do get to hear about his two dream projects, which ended up getting stolen by Orson Welles and given away to Polanski. It was also fun hearing how Castle pretty much gave full control to Joan Crawford who certainly used it to her advantage. The later years of Castle's life are talked about as well as the one last film he wanted to make but never got the chance. The film runs a short 82-minutes and overlooks countless films but that shouldn't keep anyone away as in the end it's just as much fun as watching one of Castle's own productions.

Few in Hollywood understood more what the "show" in Show Business meant than William Castle. Despite the fact that his films were rarely very good, he promoted his pictures and himself so well that he even elicited comparisons to Hitchcock. Jeffrey Schwarz' Documentary mainly focuses on the period between MACABRE (1958) and I SAW WHAT YOU DID (1965). Castle went heavy on promotional stunts like Death Insurance, nurses in theaters, Emergo's flying skeletons, Percepto's seat buzzers, Illusion-O's 3D-like ghosts, Punishment Polls and Fright Breaks to sell his films. It worked, and Castle was able to distinguish his low-budget movies from that of his competitors such as Roger Corman (who is interviewed). The movie clips, vintage newsreels and photographs are well-chosen to document Castle's career (too bad Schwarz chose to have everything presented in the same aspect ratio which cuts off the heads, text and other visual information in a number of them). Castle's daughter Terry gives family insight into his personal and professional life along with some of the filmmaker's friends and colleagues like Bob Thomas, actor Darryl Hickman and actress Jacqueline Scott (who just recently passed ). John Waters has some gleeful stories to tell among the the other interviewees like Joe Dante, Leonard Maltin, Michael Schlesinger and Bob Burns. Castle's reign may have been fairly brief, but, his career stretched all the way back to Columbia Pictures' B unit in the early 40s. It's too bad more time isn't spent on the films for there are a few like the original THE WHISTLER (1944) and JOHNNY STOOL PIGEON (1949) that are on a par with his best known work like HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959) and HOMICIDAL.

While Castle enjoyed his exploitation success, he wanted to get more respect as a filmmaker, and two stories bookend his career that must have rankled him to his grave. In 1947 Castle found the book that would become LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1947). Castle's version is that he asked Orson Welles to pitch the story to Columbia honcho Sam Cohn with the proviso that Castle Direct. Of course, Welles ended up with the assignment himself. Castle's version probably would have made more sense, but, it would never have had Welles' baroque stylings. In the 60s Castle managed to read and purchase the rights to the galleys of Ira Levin's novel Rosemary's Baby and then flipped those rights for a healthy profit to Paramount Pictures. Again, Castle intended to Direct, but, Paramount's Robert Evans instead hired the the up & coming Roman Polanski. Here again, there is no way to imagine that Castle's Direction could have matched Polanski's bravura style that also captured the zeitgeist of the swinging 60s (to the tune of over $200M in today's dollars). Castle had to settle, again, for a Producing credit. Castle managed to Produce and/or Direct a few more films (including 1975's BUG) before passing away at only 63 (his lifelong smoking of cigarettes and enormous cigars no doubt contributed).

SPINE-TINGLER! is a pleasurable look back at one of the great cult figures of cinema.