"Castle’s films were like going to the amusement park when you were a kid. You paid your money, you listened to the Barker and his hype...and enjoyed the show knowing full well it was a bunch of crap..."

Whatever happened to fun at the movies?  Whatever happened to entertainment?  Does anyone in Hollywood these days even know what those words mean?  Well, there was once a man who knew those words and made them leap to life on the silver screen.  And he was as entertaining as many of his gimmicky films.  So sit back, relax, and grab some popcorn whilst we unfold...

By RON WAITE

"As sure as my name’s Willie Pratt, this is a Thriller!"

"I’m Archie Leach and I’ll be at Mt. Rushmore."

"Hello. I’m Bill Schloss. Welcome to the House On Haunted Hill."

If you heard any of these people reciting these lines it’s fairly obvious you would not be very impressed. After all, Willie Pratt could not convince anyone that he or she would be Thrilled. But change the names and see what happens.

"As sure as my name is Boris Karloff, this is a Thriller!"

"I’m Cary Grant and I’m going North By Northwest to Mt. Rushmore."

Hello. My name is William Castle. Welcome to my party."

William Schloss knew early on that his name would not propel him to fame and fortune so like so many show business people in those days he changed it to Castle. It had a more demanding sound, a proper tone. An aristocratic vibe.

William Schloss, AKA Castle, was born in New York City on April 24, 1914. Show business was in his blood. Intrigued by the circus of Barnum and Bailey, New York stage plays, radio and of course movies, he knew what he wanted to do. While still in his teens he virtually lived in the theaters of Broadway, lying his way into many productions, working as everything from set builder to actor.

During his formative years he learned all aspects of stage production and absorbed all the glitz and glamour, the ins and outs of his chosen profession. He learned lighting and makeup, direction, dialog, scripts, scenery. All the many building blocks that would create a finished product, a live stage performance.

By the time he was 23 he was heading for Hollywood where he felt he could really make an impression on the studio bosses. Six years later he would direct his first film appropriately titled The Chance Of A Lifetime that was one of Columbia Pictures’ popular Boston Blackie thrillers. For a man who was born at the start of World War One, lived through the Great Depression and was teased and ridiculed for his ethnic background, at age 29 he was finally making headway in Tinseltown.

The following year in 1944 he directed what many consider "his finest B picture". In those days theaters often ran a main picture, a first rate, star-studded film with a second, lesser quality movie, usually a melodrama of some sort. Ergo, the "B" picture. Back then you could go to the movies and see two pictures, a cartoon or two, a "short" such as Laurel and Hardy or The Three Stooges, several news clips and coming attractions. But when Castle’s little epic When Strangers Meet starring Kim Hunter, Dean Jagger, and a young Robert Mitchum did fairly well at the box office, this film noir classic did much to boost Castle’s career. People also took notice of Mitchum who gave a fine performance.

Castle honed his craft over the next decade turning out every manner of film. He had a reputation for getting the work done, and because of his extensive background he knew how to handle a production and thus got along with cast and crew. He was also a pitchman, as they used to call them. A guy who could sell you the Brooklyn Bridge and you’d be writing out a check before you even realized what you were doing.

This was the Barnum "there’s a sucker born every minute" method of operation. And, being a "nice guy" and an amusing sort, people naturally took to his good nature and did just about anything he asked of them. For really detailed, first-hand accounts of his life’s work I suggest you read his autobiography, Step Right Up! I’m Gonna Scare The Pants Off America.

Today, William Castle is remembered mainly for his gimmicky films of the late 1950s and early 60s although the title Sclockmeister is not totally apropos. Gimmicks have been around since the invention of the motion picture. Giving Castle the title of King was only a part of the overall picture, though it must be said he milked it for all it was worth, going far beyond the boundaries of mundane advertising to the outer limits of pure hype. And audiences ate it up.

Films and the makers thereof, soon realized that the novelty was wearing thin so they constantly devised new methods to bring in the audience. From silly shorts they now turned to historical epics such as Birth Of A Nation and Napoleon. While not historically accurate, they did bring in a more mature audience. The films now told a story and the public loved it. Imagine if you can the shock when in 1927 veteran star Al Jolson sang to his mother in Warner Brothers first talking movie The Jazz Singer. This was the gimmick of all gimmicks, a movie that had sound. Within three years the silent era was dead and a new era had begun. Truly the greatest gimmick of all time, it changed the face of motion pictures the world over.

From 1930 to the present many new processes – gimmicks if you will – were introduced. Animation King Max Flesicher was producing incredible cartoon work with Popeye and Betty Boop using a painstaking process of stop motion, miniature sets and glass painting. The movie King Kong thrilled audiences in 1933 with his (then) realistic giant ape terrorizing New York City. Walt Disney released Fantasia in Stereo. For quite a while movies were king and viewers flocked to see their favorite star.

Radio had still remained a stable--and free--medium in American homes as well. I love to hear stories about how Orson Welles scared the pants of America during his live broadcast of War of the Worlds in 1938, or President Roosevelt telling America of "a date that will live in infamy". And it almost slipped by all but a select few who saw the potential in a strange device shown at the New York’s World Fair in 1939, a little gimmick called television.

By 1952 Hollywood was scared. Not only by the McCarthy witch-hunts of the day but also by this "radio with a picture" called TV. Patrons were not going to the theaters and many had been forced to close up. So entered the greatest era of gimmicks ever seen by movie lovers, the fabulous 1950s. A time that gave us 3-D, Cinerama, VistaVision and Cinemascope. There were so many new processes during this time it would take several feature articles to cover them all. But Actionscope, Colorscope, Regalscope, Tohoscope and all the rest were short-lived.

The brief experiment did lure many people back to the box office, but many chose to stay at home and watch Father Knows Best. The Fifties were a fabulous time and I was fortunate enough to live through them! The gimmicks, of course, didn’t end there as new movie makers arrived on the scene like John Waters et al with Smell-o-Vision and the Universal Award Winning effect used in movies like Earthquake, Rollercoaster and Battlestar Galactica called Sensurround.

Castle’s films were like going to the amusement park when you were a kid. You paid your money, you listened to the Barker and his hype of armless legless toad people and naked ladies, and you enjoyed the show knowing full well it was a bunch of crap but you bought the spiel hook, line and sinker. Like going into the funhouse and riding in that little car on those tracks in the dark, waiting for the "cobwebs" to drop on your head and the plastic skeletons to light up, glow in the dark demons laughed at you, hideous faces glared from behind dusty walls and all the while eerie music played and strange sounds gushed forth as your ears were assaulted by maniacal laughter.

William Castle, director, producer, writer, actor, film crew person, finally reached a point in his life where he wanted to direct his own particular type of film and in 1958 he did just that. After years of doing Westerns and every conceivable TV show from Science Fiction Theater to melodramas he had seen the French film Diablolique.

He was taken by its mood and content he set about producing his very own picture. To do so he had to mortgage his house to raise money. Knowing full well that an independent production was very risky he launched one of the first gimmick campaigns to lure in distributors and an audience. Endless ads on radio and TV and in the newspapers proclaimed "See it with someone who can carry you home!" "If it frightens you to death, you’ll be buried free of charge!" "So terrifying we insure you for $1000 against death by fright! (Not valid for persons with heart or nervous condition)."

The movie, of course, was Macabre and when I was 10 years old I fell for all the ads and begged my parents to take me to see it. I actually saw it at a drive-in on a double feature with I Bury the Living. Both films, I can say, didn’t frighten me to death but damn near bored me to death! Regardless, the gimmick worked and Castle was on his way. It’s noteworthy that Jim Backus, who starred in Macabre, was cast as a very unlikable guy, something you didn’t associate with the actor. He had been diverse as James Dean’s dad in Rebel Without A Cause and the quirky Thurston Howell III on TV’s Gilligan’s Island.

Castle’s next film, House On Haunted Hill, was a true shocker. This one did scare the hell out of me at the time, and though my parents found great amusement in that flying skeleton, I had nightmares for weeks! The gimmick this time was "Emergo" and the process was a plastic skeleton that sailed over the audience’s heads on a guy wire. Very effective at the time, it established Castle as the King of Schlock and Grandmaster of Gimmicks and yes, people came to the theater by the millions.

In what has to be one of the most terrifying films of the time, his next production, The Tingler starred Vincent Price once again. The film was in black & white and the gimmick was "Percepto". You were told that the audience would actually feel the sensations of the actors on the screen, that you were part of the movie. To achieve this they actually wired select seats in the theater with tiny motors under the seats that would vibrate during key scene in the movie. You would get a "tingling" sensation. And of course it was MY seat that was wired! I remember I must’ve jumped 10 feet into the air during this scene and my mom, sitting next to me, thought I had thrown a fit and had no idea what was going on.

The premise of the film was a nasty creature that appears on people’s spines when they are truly frightened. I’m sure many of you felt this sensation when you were very scared or very angry. Vincent Price wanted to capture one of these ghastly beasts and found the perfect opportunity in Judith Evelyn, a mute slightly strange character who owned and operated a movie theater specializing in silent films.

In The Tingler her husband scares her to death (literally) via an elaborate system of tricks. She dies in the bathroom in a specially crafted color scene. The Tingler also boasted the first use of a "new drug" called LSD. While certainly tame by today’s standards I shall never forget the bathtub scene or that tingle as long as I live!

By now, in that short span of time, Castle had established himself as the horror director and each new movie promised a new and better thrill and bigger promotion. For his next film, 13 Ghosts, Castle had floats going up and down Hollywood Blvd with "ghosts" riding along, holding signs, promotion the movie. The new gimmick was called "Illusion-O" which was a special hand-held piece of cardboard with two colored strips, one red and one blue. If you wanted to see the ghosts you looked through one, and if you were chicken you looked through the other. Very effective and yes, this one scared me too, though not as much as his previous works.

It was really a rather silly film about hidden money and an odd family and a witch of a housekeeper aptly played by Margaret Hamilton. It promised and delivered "13 Times the Thrills! 13 Times the Chills! 13 Times the Fun!"

What William Castle did next made me stop going to movies and quit reading Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, for I was so shocked, so scared, I swore I would never deal with these horrors again! The movie was Mr. Sardonicus and starred Guy Rolfe (later seen in the Puppet Master movies). With Austrian character actor Oskar Homolka and based on a story by Ray Russell (The Incubus, Chamber of Horrors, X-- The Man With X-Ray Eyes, etc.) it was a simple story of a winning lottery ticket and the riches it would bring. Problem was, it was buried in the jacket of the man’s father.

One cloudy night he goes to the graveyard and digs up the coffin and retrieves the ticket. Just then the clouds part and the full moon shines brightly on the decomposed face of the dead man. That was shock enough but the hapless man in his terror finds his face frozen in a ghastly sardonic grin. Remember how your mother always warned you "Don’t make faces! Some day it’ll freeze like that!" This time it came true.

The now-wealthy man turned into a vile and disgusting character who hid his hideous face beneath a mask. He was finally "cured" of his malady but in typical Castle fashion you were given a little glow in the dark piece of paper. This was "The Punishment Poll" with a thumbs up or thumbs down printed on it. Castle told us to vote, and everyone held up their paper. It was always thumbs down. It didn’t really matter as there was only one ending for the film!

Castle made a few more good films after this, some of which were memorable on their own terms. He never achieved the greatest of his earlier gimmicks, pushing such things as "Seat Bolts" for chickens who tried to run out of the theater during I Saw What You Did. There were cardboard axes for Strait-Jacket and special coins for Zotz! Gone were the days of flying skeletons and 3D glasses. His films seemed to take on a new vision and direction.

Maybe he was tired of the old haunted house murder mystery genre or he just wanted to experiment with oddities like The Old Dark House, Let’s Kill Uncle, The Busy Body and Bug. The latter was interesting on its own level for giving us exploding cockroaches. The highly successful and controversial Rosemary’s Baby was a kind of satisfaction to Bill Castle. The author, Ira Levin, specifically stated that he didn’t want the likes of Castle directing the picture, so Castle became producer, gave the directing to Roman Polansky and even had a cameo role in the picture.

Of his later films a few do stand out as memorable. Homicidal featured a "Fright Break" where if you got really scared you could go and sit in the "Coward’s Corner". Yeah, right.

Filmed in Solvang, California, a tourist town near Santa Barbara, the film is remembered for its scenery more than its plot. Strait-Jacket, written by Robert Bloch, was a good little movie about a woman who had killed her cheating husband with an axe, in full view of their young daughter. Years later she gets released from the asylum and the murders start again. Typical Bloch but a very good story and many thrills and chills and yes, Joan Crawford did a splendid job.

Getting a big name like Crawford, even though her career was all but over, proved to the movie community that actors wanted to work with Castle. He was actor-friendly, unlike Hitchcock who treated them like cattle.

I make no bones about it, I was never a Crawford fan, but I have to admit she was one hell of an actress, and one of her earliest films opposite legendary Lon Chaney (The Unknown, 1927) she spoke very highly of Lon and said that he helped her throughout the film and had nothing but praise for the man and his work.

Night Walker in 1964, also written by Robert Bloch, was a truly terrifying film about a wealthy woman (Barbara Stanwyck) married to a sadistic blind man (Hayden Roarke, the infamous Capt. Bellows on TV’s I Dream of Jeannie). This movie was indeed scary and even today it holds up well as seen on late night TV. One of the little "in the know" things about this movie is Lloyd Bochner as The Dream. For true fans, Lloyd played "Chambers" in that Twilight Zone episode everyone loves, "To Serve Man." Years later in David Zucker’s Naked Gun 2-1/2: The Smell of Fear (1991) Lloyd is seen running through the restaurant carrying a large black book shouting, "It’s a cookbook!" I wonder how many people caught that?

His influence of movies is profound, and his influence on people like me is nothing short of wonderful. He’s inspired many a young writer, actor, director and his movies are cult favorites throughout the world. His life’s work will live on for a long time.

The recent movie Matinee with John Goodman is nothing short of a tribute to the man and his work. The cigar chomping Goodman and the films he promoted was pure Castle. The many in jokes used in the movie were also a marvelous dedication to the Great Sclockmeister. His kind will never be seen again, and, for the younger viewing audience of today, that is indeed a pity.

It is indeed, Ron!   William Castle was a pretty good director and producer and a great showman, which is why his films still win fans today while the current mega-dollar special effects yawnfests will be forgotten as soon as they drop off basic cable.  Both Mr. Castle and his style are sorely missed.

Article copyright © Ron Waite  

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