William Castle

Strait-Jacket

Poor Joan Crawford just can't get a break. She hacks her husband to pieces and is sent away to a mental hospital; then after she comes back and tries to adjust to a normal life, there's more ax-swinging and more noggins rolling. Her pretty sculptress daughter (Diane Baker) just wants Mom to return to society and a happy, well-adjusted life... or does she? The plot is a little trite and predictable, the direction a bit staid, but it's all Joan's show anyway. Obviously director William Castle told her to play up her character's insanity, and Crawford turns the knob on the acting meter up to 10, then breaks it off and throws it away. She spectacularly mugs her way through the whole film, abruptly changing from severe schoolmarm to trampy vamp and back again several times. The scene where Mom meets her daughter's fiancée for the first time is particularly memorable; Mom guzzles half an iced-tea glass full of bourbon, then crawls all over the boyfriend while the viewer squirms uncomfortably. Back in '64, lucky moviegoers were given little cardboard axes when this feature made its run in the theaters. Sadly, the cardboard axes are long gone, but this is still highly recommended for fans of Crawford, Castle, and high-powered thespianism in general. --Jerry Renshaw

The Tingler

Vincent Price stars as an obsessed doctor who discovers that fear manifests itself as a parasitic creature which grows on the spinal cords of terrified people. If they scream the Tingler can be destroyed. If they don't it will sever the spinal column and kill them. He successfully isolates and removes the Tingler from a deaf mute (Judith Evelyn) who has been scared to death by her devious husband. Once captured the Tingler escapes and runs amok in a crowded movie theater. Terror is loose but can it be stopped? THE TINGLER is legendary horror director William Castle's magnum opus. After the success of The House on Haunted Hill Castle devised a new gimmick called "Percepto" for the Tingler. Participating theaters would wire seats so that random moviegoers would get a tangible electric shock during climactic moments in the film. Another novelty used to maximum effect is the short color sequence depicting blood pouring from a faucet and filling a bathtub. Castle went on to direct more cult classics like Homicidal and 13 Ghosts and gained some mainstream credibility by producing Rosemary's Baby.System Requirements:Running Time: 81 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: NR UPC: 043396077799 Manufacturer No: 07779

Busy Body

A star-studded comedy classic! Screen legend Sid Caesar teams up with Robert Ryan and the beautiful Anne Baxter in this fast paced, laugh-a-minute farce. Caesar is a bumbling gopher to a mob boss who must recover a fortune in cash stowed in the suit of a corpse! Directed by master showman William Castle, and featuring the first big screen performance of the late, great Richard Pryor.

House on Haunted Hill

William Castle's gimmick-laden comic thriller is not so much a horror movie as a fairground funhouse come to life. Vincent Price stars as a deliciously silky millionaire married to a greedy gold digger (Carol Ohmart) who refuses to divorce him. When he turns his wife's idea for a haunted-house party into a contest--$10,000 to whoever will spend the night in "the only truly haunted house in the world"--it seems he may have found an alternative to divorce. Five strangers gather to test their stamina, Price hands each of them delightfully twisted party favors (loaded handguns, delivered in their own tiny coffins), and the spook show begins. Blood drips from the ceiling, zombielike apparitions float through rooms, severed heads and skeletons suddenly appear, and then a guest is found hanging in the stairwell. Full of screams and things that go bump in the night, House on Haunted Hill isn't particularly scary and often makes little sense, but, like a Halloween haunted house, the spectacle of spook-show clichés is quite entertaining, and Price makes a sardonic master of ceremonies. The original theatrical presentations featured a typically outrageous Castle-engineered gimmick: Emergo, which was nothing more than a skeleton that appeared to fly out of the screen and over the audience on a guide wire. --Sean Axmaker

House on Haunted Hill

Vincent Price stars as a suave eccentric millionaire married to a beautiful and greedy gold digger. Together they are hosting a party in a sinister haunted house. Five guests are invited to spend the night and each will get $10000 but only if they survive until morning. System Requirements:Run Time: 75 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR UPC: 796019805223 Manufacturer No: 80522

William Castle's gimmick-laden comic thriller is not so much a horror movie as a fairground funhouse come to life. Vincent Price stars as a deliciously silky millionaire married to a greedy gold digger (Carol Ohmart) who refuses to divorce him. When he turns his wife's idea for a haunted-house party into a contest--$10,000 to whoever will spend the night in "the only truly haunted house in the world"--it seems he may have found an alternative to divorce. Five strangers gather to test their stamina, Price hands each of them delightfully twisted party favors (loaded handguns, delivered in their own tiny coffins), and the spook show begins. Blood drips from the ceiling, zombielike apparitions float through rooms, severed heads and skeletons suddenly appear, and then a guest is found hanging in the stairwell. Full of screams and things that go bump in the night, House on Haunted Hill isn't particularly scary and often makes little sense, but, like a Halloween haunted house, the spectacle of spook-show clichés is quite entertaining, and Price makes a sardonic master of ceremonies. The original theatrical presentations featured a typically outrageous Castle-engineered gimmick: Emergo, which was nothing more than a skeleton that appeared to fly out of the screen and over the audience on a guide wire. --Sean Axmaker

House on Haunted Hill

Welcome to the House on Haunted Hill where the host pays you to stay! There'll be no valets no mints on pillows. But each guest receives a needed bonus: a tiny coffin with a gun inside. In William Castle's 1959 mix of fright and fun Vincent Price plays the macabre host offering $10000 to guests who survive the night. The going rate is $1000000 in the effects-filled Dark Castle Entertainment 1999 remake. Geoffrey Rush portrays the twisted big shot who throws a birthday bash for his wife (Famke Janssen) at an abandoned insane asylum. Taye Diggs Ali Larter Bridgette Wilson Peter Gallagher and Chris Kattan play strangers invited to the get-rich-quick event. Party on dudes!Running Time: 168 min.System Requirements:Run Time: 168 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR Rating: R UPC: 012569731196 Manufacturer No: 73119

Texas, Brooklyn and Heaven

In a case of mistaken identity, a handsome young writer is mistaken for a bank-robber.

How the West Was Fun (9 Movie Pack)

House on Haunted Hill

William Castle's gimmick-laden comic thriller is not so much a horror movie as a fairground funhouse come to life. Vincent Price stars as a deliciously silky millionaire married to a greedy gold digger (Carol Ohmart) who refuses to divorce him. When he turns his wife's idea for a haunted-house party into a contest--$10,000 to whoever will spend the night in "the only truly haunted house in the world"--it seems he may have found an alternative to divorce. Five strangers gather to test their stamina, Price hands each of them delightfully twisted party favors (loaded handguns, delivered in their own tiny coffins), and the spook show begins. Blood drips from the ceiling, zombielike apparitions float through rooms, severed heads and skeletons suddenly appear, and then a guest is found hanging in the stairwell. Full of screams and things that go bump in the night, House on Haunted Hill isn't particularly scary and often makes little sense, but, like a Halloween haunted house, the spectacle of spook-show clichés is quite entertaining, and Price makes a sardonic master of ceremonies. The original theatrical presentations featured a typically outrageous Castle-engineered gimmick: Emergo, which was nothing more than a skeleton that appeared to fly out of the screen and over the audience on a guide wire. --Sean Axmaker

I Saw What You Did

"The telephone was the star of my next film," writes William Castle in his autobiography Step Right Up! I'm Gonna Scare the Pants Off America as he describes I Saw What You Did, a lightweight thriller about two schoolgirls and a prank phone call that backfires with a vengeance. When the girls whisper "I saw what you did, and I know who you are" to a perfect stranger, little do they know he has just murdered his wife and is now out to silence any witnesses. An aging John Ireland plays the homicidal husband and Joan Crawford has little more than a cameo as an amorous neighbor turned blackmailer. Castle leaves the spook-show gimmicks and high-concept twists out of this thriller, which prefigures the teen scream genre by decades, but he proves to be little better than competent as a suspense director. When one of the girls continues to call the killerback, playing at grown-up with a breathy coo and a come-on air, the film shuffles through uncomfortable territory and emerges with an unaccountably cheery denouement. Castle is more at home as a showman, as his giddy, goofy House on Haunted Hill shows, than as a dime store Hitchcock, but the film does exhibit a little Castle flair, such as an inventive prologue framed in a pair of opening and closing eyes. --Sean Axmaker