Castle!

 

 (imdb)

MACABRE-1958-Most people in town don't like Dr. Rodney Barrett (George Prince) because they believe he's indirectly responsible for the death of a blind woman Nancy. Sleazy police chief Tyloe (Jim Backus) tells him to leave town. Only his nurse Polly (Jacqueline Scott), his girlfriend Sylvia (Susan Morrow) and his housekeeper Miss Kushins (Ellen Corby) seem to like him. Then someone kidnaps his daughter and says she's been buried alive. Mr. Wetherby (Phillip Tonge), Nancy's ailing father joins them in the hunt. Flashbacks reveal that Nancy (Christine White) was kind of a slut who got pregnant from an affair with the sheriff or her chauffeur (unbilled Robert Colbert). But Dr. Barrett is hiding a secret too. 

Not half bad, if strange, murder mystery directed by the one and only William Castle.

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The Tingler

 

THE TINGLER-1959-After a pre-credit warning from director William Castle, Dr. Warren Chapin (Vincent Price), a doctor who does autopsies for the state, meets Ollie Higgins (Phillip Coolidge), a theater owner who's brother in law has just been executed. Ollie invites Chapin home for some coffee where the doc meets Ollie's mute wife Martha (Judith Evelyn)) who faints at the sight of blood. When Chapin goes home we learn that he's married to a rich floozy named Isabel (Patrica Cutts) who's sister Lucy (Pamela Lincoln) gets a long very well with her brother in law and is also in love the the doc's young assistant David (Darryl Hickman). After frightening Isabel and taking X-rays of her spine he discovers a creature he dubs “the tingler” that lives on fear and resides in every human! 

To try and understand the power of the tingler, Chapin takes a powerful drug (seems like LSD) and becomes terrified but is saved when he screams which is the only way to immobilize the creature. When Martha dies after seeing some horrifying hallucinations (it seems like Chapin might have given her the drug) Ollie brings her corpse to Chapin who removes her tingler (since she couldn't scream it's still active) and puts it in a cage. It looks kind of like a giant centipede. Isabel tries to use it to kill her husband but Lucy spoils her plans. Chapin decides he's broken the laws of nature and the only way to destroy the tingler is to put it back in Martha's body. It turns out Ollie's not the kindhearted timid henpecked husband he pretends to be....

This classic '50's "gimmick" film directed by the one and only William Castle features one scene in bright color and is still as entertaining as it was when first release (despite a few lapses in reason). Price is great as the very analytical scientist who comes to regret his discovery. On it's initial release certain seats in theaters were wired to give unsuspecting moviegoers a slight "tingle" when the monster appears! 

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Bug!

 

BUG-1975-In a small town an earthquake unleashes cockroach like bugs that can start fires. A bug doc James Parmiter (Bradford Dillman) and student Gerald Methbaum (Richard Gilliland) investigate.They get help from a chemist Mark Ross (Alan Fudge). Most of the invaders die from air pressure but Parmiter keeps one specimen alive. When she wife (Joanna Miles) is killed she goes a little crazy and breeds the remaining bug with everyday roaches and creates a fast breeding bunch of intelligent flying roaches (worse than before). They kill Ross' wife (Patty McCormack) and terrorize Parmiter and set him on fire. He falls into a fissure and the flying bugs seem to follow him. Also with Jesse Vint and Frederic Brown. 

BUG's screenplay was co-written by the legendary William Castle (who also produced) and Thomas Page who wrote the novel the movie is based on. French born director Jeannot Szwarc mostly worked on TV series (NIGHT GALLERY; KOJAK) and made for TV movies. BUG was a rare theatrical release but in the early '80's he made several high profile feature films (JAWS 2; SOMEWHERE IN TIME; SUPERGIRL; SANTA CLAUS: THE MOVIE). BUG is genuinely creepy and the story is a little more unusual than most.

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William Castle

 

STRAIT-JACKET-1964-Lucy Harbin (Joan Crawford) comes home early from a trip to find her younger husband (un-billed Lee Majors in his screen debut) has been doing the nasty with an old flame. Outraged she chops them up with an ax. Unfortunately her young daughter Carol sees the whole thing. Lucy is confined to an insane asylum. 20 years later Carol (Diane Baker) tells her boyfriend Michael Fields (John Anthony Hayes) all about it because mom has just been released and is coming for a visit! 

Carol has been living in anonymity with aunt Emily (Rochelle Hudson) and uncle Bill (Leif Erickson). "My mother....a murderess". Lucy arrives and they get along at first but she's reluctant to meet Michael and seems to like knives. While shopping with Carol she freaks out when some kids sing "London Bridge". She wakes up with decapitated corpses in her bed and a bloody ax. But of course when everyone comes to look there's nothing there. She really gets upset when she sees the weird handyman Krause (George Kennedy) kill a chicken. When her doctor (non-actor Mitchell Cox) pays her a visit he winds up axed in the slaughterhouse. When Krause finds the dead doc's body he gets axed too. When Michael's parents refuse the marriage Mike's father (Howard St. John) is the next victim. A whacked out ending reveals whether Lucy is crazy or not. 

William Castle made this fairly suspenseful if predicable little tale that was originally suppose to star Joan Blondel in the lead but an accident forced her out and “Mommie Dearest” herself Joan Crawford signed on but not before Robert Bloch had to completely rewritten the script to suit Crawford including the final scene. At the time Joan was on the board of directors of the Pepsi company (her late husband had been the CEO) and made sure there was some product placement as well as getting Mitchell Cox, the Pepsi vice president to portray her doctor! 

Castle also made THE NIGHT CALLER with Barbara Stanwyck the same year. He and Crawford teamed up again the next year for I SAW WHAT YOU DID.

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Happy New Year!

13 GHOSTS-1960-College teacher Cyrus Zorba (Donald Woods; THE BLACK DOLL) inherits a spooky house from his dead uncle Pluto. After Zorba, his wife Hilda (Rosemary DeCamp) and 2 kids Medea (Jo Morrow) and Buck (Charles Herbert; THE BOY AND THE PIRATES) move in the real estate agent (Martin Milner; on TV's ROUTE 66 at the time) tells them the place is haunted and a Ouija board tells them there are 13 ghosts. When dad puts on some special glasses invented by Pluto he sees a few of them. A colleague Van Allen (John Van Dreelan) translates a book in Greek which tells how Pluto “captured” ghosts from all around the world and brought them to his house. Housekeeper Elaine (Margaret Hamilton), called “the witch” behind her back, gives them the scoop on how Pluto died and warns them to leave. Later Medea has a strange encounter and when Buck puts on the glasses he sees a headless lion tamer! There's also a ghost chef who killed his wife and her lover and a flaming skeleton. Thanks to a special bed Uncle Pluto gets his revenge on the person who killed him. 

William Castle directed this unusual horror story which had the gimmick “Illusion-O” wherein moviegoers were given special ghost viewers to see the ghosts more clearly. Castle provides on screen instructions at the film's onset.

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“And Then They'll Come For You!”

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL-1959-William Castle's "classic gimmick" ghost story stars Vincent Price as millionaire Frederick Loren who at the request of his cold hateful wife Annabelle (Carol Omart) challenges 6 strangers to stay all night in a supposedly haunted house where several murders have occurred. If they can do it they'll each receive 10 thousand dollars. The "guests" include a pilot (Richard Long), a secretary (Carolyn Craig), a psychiatrist (Alan Marshall), a newspaper columnist (Julie Mitchum) and  Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook) the last person to have stayed in the house and survived. He talks a lot about ghosts and murders committed in the place but if you watched this as a little kid in the '60's like I did you'll never forget the scene where the Mrs. Slydes, the caretaker's wife (Leona Anderson) meets the secretary in a dark room. Her grimace popping out of the darkness probably sent some kids screaming from the room! A chandelier falls, there's a vat of acid in the basement, guns in mini-coffins and a twist ending with a skeleton that when shown in theaters in the '50's came out of the screen and passed over the audience. 

Director William Castle and star Vincent Price (screenwriter Robb White) also made the THE TINGLER the same year. 

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Last One For 2016

THE NIGHT WALKER-1964-This starts off with a narrator talking about dreams. “Fly! Fly! There's death in your dreams”. Trent (Hayden Rourke), a blind millionaire suspects his wife Irene (Barbara Stanwyck) is having an affair because of what she says when she's asleep. He talks about this with his attorney Barry Morland (Robert Taylor) while his wife listens in. Later Irene admits to Barry that she has a reoccurring dream about an unknown lover. When Irene displays her disgust for her marriage she runs away and hubby is killed in an explosion. Irene's dreams start mixing with reality and she meets her dream lover (Lloyd Bochner). But is he real or only in her mind? After she moves into the back of her beauty salon she gets crazy when she sees a shish kabob and Barry accuses her of killing Trent. Her dream lover whisks her away for drinks then marriage in a strange church with a lot of weird looking guests (they are all dummies). Was it real? She and Barry investigate. The dream lover hangs around unseen so you know it's not in Irene's mind. There are other clues that let you know this too. A suspicious assistant Joyce (Judith Meredith) obviously doesn't want to help and she's killed by Irene's husband! A lot of smokey mumbo-jumbo leads to the fact that Barry is trying to drive her insane but a double cross spells his end.

“Gimmick” director William Castle directed this twisting turning psychological drama from a screenplay by Robert Bloch. It has it's moments, although the end I suppose is fairly guessable. Castle made this between STRAITJACKET (also written by Bloch) and I SAW WHAT YOU DID. By this time Castle had all but given up on straight horror films instead making crime dramas and murder mysteries disguised as horror films. Music is by Vic Mizzy. Unusually stars Standwyck (in her last feature film) and Taylor had been married in real life at one time. They were already divorced 12 years when they made this. 

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Not A Disney Film!

 

 

 

IT'S A SMALL WORLD-1950-Harry (Paul Dale) is a little person (called the now politically incorrect “midget” in this) who doesn't have a very nice childhood. His father (Will Geer) likes him but takes him out of school and keeps him out of sight in their house. His selfish sister (Shirley Mills, the star of CHILD BRIDE) wants him sent away. He does leave home to join a circus but the owner (Thomas Henry) is a jerk and Harry runs away from him. In the city he meets Sam (Todd Karns; George Bailey's brother in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE)), a shoeshine guy who gives Harry a job. Everything is ok until he meets a floozy named Buttons (Lorraine Miller) who gets a black eye from her boyfriend Charlie (Steve Brodie). She seems to like Harry and they hang out but she two times him and lies to him and gets him involved with the giant sized Rose (Nina Koshetz)) who turns him into a pickpocket.

 

Unfortunately Harry gets sweet on Buttons but she only has eyes for Charlie and laughs at him. When he wants to quit fatso Rose threatens him. He turns them all in and (reluctantly) joins the Cole Brothers circus winter headquarters in Florida where he meets the cheery Dolly (Ann Sholter in her only film role), a woman his size who he sings a song to! They get married and live happily ever after....

Henry Corden has an un-credited role as a truck driver. By my count Thomas Henry was in 10 features in 1950.

While not a great movie IT'S A SMALL WORLD was an unusual feature for the time. It tries hard to show Harry's plight in a sympathetic way but sometimes seems a little too obvious. Lead actor Paul Dale was one of the Lollipop Guild in THE WIZARD OF OZ and at the time of this writing he was still alive (another member of the Guild Jerry Maren is also alive). He's good in the role and does a fairly amazing job of playing his Harry character from child to adult despite being 23 at the time!

William Castle (who appears as a cop) directed it but without the flair he'd use in his later “gimmick horror films” (The first of them MACABRE would come 8 year later).

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Old Dark Remake

THE OLD DARK HOUSE-1963-Tom, an American car salesman in England (Tom Poston also in the director's ZOTZ) gets involved ]with the Femm family. He goes to their ancestral  hall on the urging of his roommate Casper Femm (Peter Bull)). He arrives (by trapdoor) and finds his friend Casper dead from a fall. He meets Cicely Femm, Casper's cousin (Janette Scott; DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS) who says he was murdered. Cicely warns Tom to leave before uncle Roderick (Robert Morley) comes back but too late! Roderick arrives and insists Tom stay the night. At dinner Tom meets the rest of the family:  father Jasper (also Bull), mother Agatha (Joyce Grenfell), sister Morgana (Fenella Fielding) and cousin Potafer (Mervyn Johns)) who's building an ark. The eccentric family seems to think that Tom could be related to them. Jasper also has a twin (same actor) who says Roderick want to kill them all. Agatha is stabbed with her knitting needles. Jasper is strangled with tongs. Roderick is shot. Who done it? Despite all the murders there's slapstick comedy and one liners but it's really not funny.

It's a remake of the 1932 James Whale production starring Boris Karloff. Director William Castle collaborated with Hammer Pictures on this macabre horror comedy misfire made between 13 FRIGHTENED GIRLS! and STRAITJACKET.

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Zotz!

ZOTZ!-1962-This is fun black & white comedy from “gimmick director” William Castle (he made MR. SARDONICUS the year before).

A mild mannered professor (Tom Poston) comes in possession of an ancient coin that gives him special powers. When he says the word “zotz” things go in slow motion. When he points his finger at a person they feel intense pain. When he combines them they cause death! He makes most of his friends think he’s crazy and fails to make a US general (Fred Clark) believe him. He’s eventually captured by communists (a henchman is played by Mike Mazurki) but battles his way out and becomes a hero.

Jim Backus plays another professor and rival for the affections a female prof. (Julia Meade). The dean of the college where they teach is played by Cecil Kellaway and his wife is Margaret Dumont! (in her second to last film) 50’s-60’s TV comedian Louis Nye has a cameo. Poston was later in another Castle film, a remake of THE OLD DARK HOUSE.

When I was little kids used to go around pointing their index finger and saying “zotz” a lot. You were of course suppose to slow down when they did that but since I didn’t see this film till years later I was never really in on the joke! It’s based on a novel by a guy who wrote scripts for TV’s VICTORY AT SEA!

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Final Castle

SHANKS-1974-In this bizarre film professional mime Marcel Marceau portrays a deaf mute puppeteer named Malcolm Shanks who lives with his shrewish sister in law and her no good boozing husband. He gets a job with a elderly scientist who with the help of a special machine brings a dead frog back to life. When the scientist croaks (sorry, couldn’t resist writing that..) Malcolm uses the machine to bring him back to life. Later he causes the death of the sis in law and hubby but brings them back to life and they go on a picnic with a young local girl Celia (Cindy Eilbacher). He throws a private birthday party for the girl, served by his dead in laws (who also dance) but some bikers crash the scene and eventually kill her. Malcolm gets revenge by having “the living fight the dead”. However he has to fight the biker leader (Don Calfa) hand to hand in the climax. He then brings Celia back to life. But the final scene makes it seem like it might have all been a dream-fantasy.....

This very strange film was directed by horror “gimmick” director William Castle in Canada. It’s probably Marceau’s only starring movie (he did have a role 1967’s BARBARELLA and later had the only speaking role in Mel Brooks’ SILENT MOVIE) and not made without some difficulty. Castle outlines the making of it in his autobiography. Parts of it are shot in a kind of sepia tone and there’s really not much dialogue for a feature length film. I found it interesting though some parts don’t make sense and sometimes the acting doesn’t seem effective. It was the last film made by Castle (who appears in one scene as a grocer) and having never been released on tape or DVD is his least known film. Fortunately TCM came to the rescue recently and aired it!

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Why Are They Scared?

13 FRIGHTENED GIRLS!-1965-This talky, innocuous drama shows the decline of once popular "gimmick" director William Castle. 

13 girls from a Swiss boarding school (all daughters of diplomats) get into trouble while on vacation. The story focuses on one girl Candy (Kathy Dunn) who's diplomatic father is played by Hugh Marlowe (EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS). Khigh Dhiegh (in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE the year before) is the Red Chinese diplomat who's niece Candy befriends. Murray Hamilton and Joyce Taylor are the special agents Candy helps. Despite the violence and espionage this almost seems aimed at teenage girls!

Emil Sitka has an un-billed role as the school's care taker. Castle made the comical remake of THE OLD DARK HOUSE the same year. Screenwriter Robert Dillon also penned Corman's X-THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES the same year.

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Late Castle

LET'S KILL UNCLE-1966-Shock/gimmick director William Castle was nearing the end of his long career when he made this weird talky mystery that takes place mostly on a secluded island.

A bratty kid named Barnaby (Pat Cardi) is the heir to his deceased father's fortune. He goes to the island to meet his only other relative, his uncle Kevin (Nigel Green who was in KHARTOUM the same year). Accompanying Barnaby is a police sergeant (Robert Pickering) and the same aged Chrisse (Mary Badham) who's going to visit her aunt (Linda Lawson) who lives on the island. Before the uncle arrives the kids get into some trouble at an abandoned hotel who's only occupant is Ketchman (Ref Sanchez) a legless, scar faced fisherman who has a shark in the hotel's swimming pool. Once the uncle arrives it's obvious he wants to do away with his nephew but since the kid is a braggart and liar no one believes him. He and Chrissie decide to kill "Unk" first.

There's a lot of false scares and talk and the ending is kind of idiotic. Also with Nestor Paiva as a ship captain. Cardi was a busy child actor on TV in the '60's and starred in the low budget horror film TWISTED BRAIN in 1974. He later created Moviefone.

Badham was nominated for a Academy Award in 1962 for her role as Scout in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD but never did much else. After a almost 40 year absence she returned to the screen in OUR VERY OWN in 2005. Lawson was later in MRS. STONE'S THING with Ed Wood! Castle made 4 more movies after this and died in 1977. Sometimes called LET'S KILL UNCLE BEFORE HE KILLS US.

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When Castle Was King.....

PROJECT X-Paramount-1968 -Rarely seen sci-fi from “gimmick” director William Castle (who produced ROSEMARY’S BABY the same year). It’s based on a novel by Leslie P. Davies.

In the far flung future scientists led by Henry Jones and Philip Pine try to unravel the mysterious last words of scientist/spy Hagen Arnold (Christopher George) just before he got amnesia. They re-create a bank robbery from the ‘60’s to try and confuse him. A special hologram machine reveals his past but his unconscious mind takes over.

Monte Markham is Gregory Galaya, who may want to help Arnold or he could be working for “Sino-Asia”. Greta Baldwin falls for George after he introduces her to cigerettes! Harold Gould is the military colonel in charge. Keye Luke has a small role as the Asian bad guy. A weird little film with lots of shots in negative.

Screenwriter Edmund Morris also worked on the TV show “The Wild, Wild West”. The jazzy musical score is by Van Cleave. Not to be confused with the movie of the same name from 1987 starring Helen Hunt and Matthew Broderick and some chimpanzees.

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