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William Castle is one of the most memorable horror movie directors of all time. Not necessarily for the quality of the movies he made, although he did produce Rosemary's Baby, one of the all time great satanic shockers. What made William Castle special in the world of horror cinema was his use of unique and memorable gimmicks that got people talking about his movies, which in turn translated into ticket sales and profits.
These memorable surprises ranged from movie-themed items given to moviegoers, to theaters rigged with actors and hidden gadgets designed to shock and scare audiences, to special surprises within the films themselves. While not all of his films contained gimmicks, Castle employed them prodigiously, to the point that his name became synonymous with going to almost any lengths to get people to go to the theater to see one of his scary movies.
What follows is a list of William Castle films and some of the most well-known gimmicks he used to promote them.
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| Poster for the film Macabre (Fair Use courtesy of Wikipedia) |
Macabre (1958) - Hearses, Coffins, Life Insurance and Twelve Authors
“The producers of the film MACABRE undertake to pay the sum of ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS in the event of the death by fright of any member of the audience during the performance.”
A trailer for the film Macabre
Shot in just fifteen days at a cost of approximately $150,000, Macabre was William Castle's first foray as an independent filmmaker. Up to that point, he had been what was known as a "contract director" for Columbia, Universal and Monogram Pictures. This meant he directed whatever films these studios told him to. After fifteen years of directing movies in this manner, Castle decided it was time to leave the big studios behind in order to strike out on his own.
The Marble Forrest, a 1951 novel written by Theo Durrant, centers around a man who is forced to spend a terrifying night alone in a cemetery, digging up graves in an attempt to find his daughter, who has been kidnapped and buried alive. When William Castle read The Marble Forrest, he decided this was the property which he could turn into his first horror film.
Castle had a lot riding on the success of Macabre. He was certain that the film would be a success, believing horror movies were as close to a sure thing as you could get in the movie business. In fact, his belief in Macabre was so great that he convinced his family to mortgage their Beverly Hills home in order to help come up with the financing for the film. Of course, Castle was no fool and he didn't leave the success of the film - or any of his films, for that matter - to belief alone. In an effort to ensure the success of Macabre, Castle turned to gimmicks that would generate curiosity, which would (hopefully) translate into ticket sales.
Barnstorming
In order to help promote Macabre, Castle travelled across the United States, doing in-person appearances at theaters where the movie was being screened. "Barnstorming" was what he called it, and it gave Castle a chance to meet his audiences and to use in-person gimmicks to promote the film. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, for example, Castle hired a hearse to deliver a coffin, which he was inside of, to the front of the RKO-Orpheum theater where Macabre was being shown. The idea, it seems, was that he would exit the coffin in front of the moviegoers, as they stood in line waiting to see the film. Unfortunately, these gimmicks did not always come off as planned. In his autobiography, Step right up!...I'm gonna scare the pants off America, Castle admits that, in this particular instance, he got stuck in the coffin while it lay in front of the theater and he needed assistance to get out. By the time he was able to get free, it was too late to rise from the grave, as it were, to scare (or at least, entertain) waiting moviegoers.
The Lloyds Of London Life Insurance Policy
This seems to be one of the most talked-about of the William Castle gimmicks which he employed to promote one of his films. The idea here was that each patron who paid to see Macabre would be insured for up to $1,000 against "death by fright" (it's your guess as to what "death by fright" actually means). From all reports, this was an actual life insurance policy issued by Lloyds of London which moviegoers were required to sign for - along with assigning a beneficiary - before being allowed to enter the theater to watch the film.
Castle allegedly spent an entire month in London persuading executives at Lloyds to write the policy. Part of the reason for this was that actuaries at the insurance company needed time to figure out just how many potential deaths there could be by people who went to see Macabre.
Not only was there an insurance policy to sign for, there were nurses who stood by in select theaters, just in case moviegoers did in fact die by fright (or was it bad popcorn). Terry Castle, William's daughter, in the documentary Spine-Tingler - The William Castle Story, confirmed that these were not actors, but that they were in fact real nurses.
12 World Famous Mystery Authors
"Based on the chilling novel by 12 world famous mystery authors"
(from the advertisement for Macabre in the SF Examiner, April 25th 1958)
While it may not have qualified as an actual gimmick, Castle even managed to use the author of The Marble Forest in the marketing of Macabre. As it turned out, there was no actual author named Theo Durrant. This was a nom de plume used as a substitute for the real authors of the book, twelve horror and mystery writers who agreed to each write a chapter of the The Marble Forest.
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| Poster for House On Haunted Hill (Fair Use courtesy of Wikipedia) |
House On Haunted Hill (1959) - Emergo
House On Haunted Hill stars Vincent Price as a man who invites five people to his sprawling mansion, with a promise to give $10,000 to each of them if they can manage to stay in the house through the entire night.The catch is that at the stroke of midnight, all the doors to the home will be locked shut and there will be no way to leave. In addition, there are no phones and no radios that can be used by anyone.
Oh, and the house is haunted.
Emergo
As the name implies, Emergo, the gimmick for House On Haunted Hill was something which "emerged" from somewhere. What it turned out to be was a plastic inflatable skeleton, rigged to suddenly appear and then "fly" over the theater audience. This gimmick was timed to occur during the climactic scene of the film, when a skeleton begans to rise out of a vat of acid and chase one of the films main characters.
A trailer for House on Haunted Hill with Emergo!
The Tingler (1959) - Percepto
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"I am William Castle, the director of the motion picture you are about to see. I feel obligated to warn you that some of the sensations—some of the physical reactions which the actors on the screen will feel—will also be experienced, for the first time in motion picture history, by certain members of this audience. I say 'certain members' because some people are more sensitive to these mysterious electronic impulses than others. These unfortunate, sensitive people will at times feel a strange, tingling sensation; other people will feel it less strongly. But don't be alarmed—you can protect yourself. At any time you are conscious of a tingling sensation, you may obtain immediate relief by screaming. Don't be embarrassed about opening your mouth and letting rip with all you've got, because the person in the seat right next to you will probably be screaming too. And remember this—a scream at the right time may save your life."
Released on July 29, 1959, TheTingler once again stars Vincent Price, this time as a scientist who discovers a parasite which infects humans and feeds on their fear. Once infected, the host, whenever they are afraid, will feel the tingle of the parasite within their spine, where the parasite lives.
At one point in the movie, the Tingler escapes from the scientists laboratory, and proceeds to enter the movie theater. The scientist warns moviegoers that the Tingler is loose in the theater and that they should all begin screaming if they want to live.
Percepto
Question....what do you do with thousands of surplus World War II airplane wing de-icing machines? Answer...sell them to William Castle so he can use them as part of a gimmick in a horror movie. Always on the hunt for a new way to surprise his moviegoing public, William Castle decided that, for The Tingler, he needed to create something that would actually tingle his audience. Percepto, small mechanical buzzers attached to the underside of theater chairs was the answer. At the appropriate time in the movie, the buzzers would be turned on, startling the people sitting in chairs which had been wired with the buzzers. The effect of the buzzers going off was so startling that it caused other people within the theater to react with surprise, setting off a chain reaction of screams, cheers and laughter. It was a stroke of movie marketing genius - moviegoers couldn't stop talking about the experience of Percepto, which caused people to want to experience The Tingler for themselves, which of course meant they needed to buy a ticket to see it (and feel it).
Because of the added expense of the buzzers, it wasn't possible to place them on each seat in every theater showing The Tingler. Nor was it possible to offer the experience of Percepto in every theater showing the movie. In order to overcome these limitations, Castle had the buzzers installed typically in the larger theaters and only on a certain number of seats. He even worked this fact into the storyline of the promotion for The Tingler, saying that only certain people were sensitive to the effects of the Tingler, thus explaining why some moviegoers didn't get buzzed.
13 Ghosts (1960) - Illusion-O
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| Movie poster for 13 Ghosts (Fair Use courtesy of Wikipedia) |
Released on August 5th, 1960, 13 Ghosts is the story of a family who have been given a home which they intend to move into. Unfortunately for them, they learn that the house is haunted by 12 ghosts and that the woman who gave them the home is the person who put them there in the first place. When they learn the house has a treasure stashed away somewhere inside, they decide to stay, even though they fear they may die and join the home's other disembodied spirits.
Illusion-O
For this William Castle horror flick, moviegoers were given the choice of whether or not they wanted to see the ghostly spirits within the film. This was achieved by giving each audience member a viewer which they would use at specific points within the movie. The viewer consisted of a cardboard frame which housed separate red and blue strips of cellophane. If moviegoers wanted to see the ghosts, they would view the scene through the red cellophane. If they did not want to see the ghosts, they would use the blue portion of the viewer.
Castle seemed to realize that audience members might not understand how to use the viewers properly, and he went to great lengths in order to make sure they were ready when the time came to use them.
Homicidal (1961) - The Fright Break and Coward's Corner
"This is the 'Fright Break!' You hear that sound? The sound of a heartbeat! It is beating faster than your heart? Or slower? This heart is going to beat for another 65 seconds to allow anyone to leave this theater who is too frightened to see the end of this picture and get your FULL ADMISSION REFUNDED. 10 seconds more and we go into the house. It's now or never! Five! Four! You're a brave audience! Two! One!"
A Money Back Guarantee certificate...."FOR COWARDS ONLY!"
1961 saw the release of the horror movie Homicidal, which some would say was William Castle's version of the Hitchcock thriller Psycho, released the year before. Once again Castle reached into his bag of tricks to fill theater seats, creating the Fright Break and the Cowards Corner. The Fright Break gave audience members who wished to exit the movie before it ended a sixty second break in the film to leave the theater and receive a full refund. However, in order to do so, they would have to present a refund request certificate to theater staff who would next require them to stand inside a structure in the lobby called the "cowards corner". They would be required to stay there until the movie ended and all the people who had stayed to watch the end of Homicidal had exited the theater, walking past the "cowards".
Mr. Sardonicus (1961) - The Punishment Poll
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| Columbia Pictures movie poster for Mr. Sardonicus (Fair Use - courtesy Wikipedia) |
Mr. Sardonicus is the tale of a cruel man who is tortured by his own mind, to the point where he becomes permanently disfigured. His cruelty causes those who could help him to instead turn their backs on him, ultimately leaving Mr. Sardonicus to die a slow and horrible death.
When Castle showed the film to executives at Columbia Pictures, they were unhappy with the film's ending, believing it would not play well to audiences. Castle was not pleased with the idea of changing the ending to his film and tried to convince Columbia to keep the ending he had already shot.
This situation might have caused other directors to throw up their hands and just give up. Not William Castle. The stalemate with the studio gave him an idea for yet another classic Castle gimmick - The Punishment Poll. The idea behind this gimmick was that the ending of the movie would be decided not by the studio, but by the moviegoers themselves. Would Mr. Sandonicus live or would he die? At a specific point in the movie, this choice was put to the audience. They were each asked to vote - thumbs up for life or thumbs down for death. The votes would then be tallied, and the resulting score would determine which ending theater goers would see.
I Saw What You Did (1965)
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I Saw What You Did was released on July 21st 1965. Kit and Lilly are bored babysitters, who decide to make crank phone calls to unsuspecting people, telling them they saw what they did and that they know who they are. Little do they know that one of the people they call one night is a man who just committed a murder. The man, fearing that Kit and Lilly did in fact see him commit the killing (and the hiding of the corpse), decides to track them down so they can't rat him out.
In early trailers for the film, Castle informs people that a specific section of the theater would have restraints installed on the seats for patrons "who might be scared out of their seats." Unfortunately, the gimmick was never actually used as it was cancelled before the movie came out in theaters.
Rosemary's Baby (1968) - Cameo by William Castle
Paramount Pictures poster for Rosemary's Baby (Fair Use via Wikipedia)
Rosemary's Baby is considered a true horror classic. Produced by Castle and directed by the famed Roman Polanski, it was a dream come true for the king of the gimmick, who had yearned for a film that was not only a box office hit, but a film which was a critical success as well. In Rosemary's Baby, William Castle got both.
The movie contains none of the gimmickry of past Castle films. No Fright Break, no bloody axes, no insurance policies issued. However, it does contain a brief but fun cameo by Castle, as the grey haired man who is waiting at the phone booth Mia Farrow is in as she makes a phone call to her obstetrician. Moviegoers who knew William Castle and of his history in the film business must have truly enjoyed seeing his face appear in the film which made him a bona fide A-list Hollywood producer.
Bug (1975) - Real Life Bugs and A One Million Dollar Insurance Policy
"Many people have an uncontrollable fear of the unknown. If you are such a person, please believe me when I say - this movie is not for you.
William Castle - The King of Horror"
(1975 newspaper advertisement for "Bug")
The idea for the movie came from the book, The Hephaestus Plague, by Thomas Page. Castle loved the idea of uncontrollable mutant cockroaches emerging from deep within the bowels of the earth, killing, eating and scorching everything in their path. He felt that cockroaches were creatures that everyone held a common revulsion for and thought it would be another surefire winner.
The challenge Castle faced in Bug was how to create a film about killer cockroaches that would be believable. He was concerned that, unless the cockroaches were real, audiences would not buy into the film. "Today's audiences were too sophisticated for the mechanical creatures of the fifties, the era of the supersized studio-made tarantulas, spiders, crabs, scorpions, etc. I knew I had to find the real thing - huge, live ominous-looking bugs."
Ken Middleham provided the much-needed solution to Castle's challenge. In 1975, Middleham was Director of Photography at the University of California at Riverside. Castle's personal assistant, Marge Pinns, knew Middleham and suggested that Castle approach him about working with Castle on the movie. Middleham turned out to be just the person Castle - and Bug - needed, providing the bugs and the insect cinematography needed to make Bug a realistic horror movie featuring real-life creatures that grossed-out audiences across the nation.
Castle loved to be out with his fans, meeting and greeting, always promoting his latest cinematic achievement. It was no different with Bug. When it came time to hit the road to promote the movie, Castle was ready with one last inspired gimmick. He convinced a local insurance agent whom he knew to issue an actual life insurance policy for Hercules, the star cockroach of Bug, for one million dollars. The policy was good for exactly one month, the same amount of time Castle and Hercules would be out traveling the country to promote the film.
REFERENCES
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/hair-raising-gimmicks-abominable-showman-180967014/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/hair-raising-gimmicks-abominable-showman-180967014/
Spine-Tingler - The William Castle Story (2007) - Automat Pictures
Castle, William - Step right up!...I'm gonna scare the pants off America - 1976, William Castle Productions
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