WILLIAM CASTLE: GODFATHER OF SCHLOCK : KATE VOSS REVISITS

William Castle is not regarded as a technically superb filmmaker by any measure. The gentlest thing you might hear from his most ardent critics is that he was a “poor man’s Alfred Hitchcock.” The pinnacle of his creativity, and the thing that has always made his work endearing to fans, is the special emphasis Castle placed on gimmicks to promote his films.

Well before he moved from his native New York City to Hollywood, Castle already had deep roots in the entertainment industry. Castle wrote in his memoir, Step Right Up!, that he was entranced by a production of the touring Dracula stage show that he saw in New York as a child. After the show, he went backstage to meet the star of the production: Bela Lugosi. The young Castle apparently made an impression on the actor, and he subsequently dropped out of high school at the age of 15 when, at the invitation of Lugosi himself, he was asked to join the touring production of the show as a stage hand.

Castle (born William Schloss, Jr.) became familiar with various aspects of production —set-building, writing, and eventually acting and directing— all skills which would enrich his practice as a filmmaker later on. Where Castle excelled the most, however, was in marketing. He had a knack for finding highly sensational gimmicks to promote productions, and this is what ultimately attracted the attention of Hollywood producers.

Castle cut his teeth in the big studios working under the tyranny of the infamous former president of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn. Castle got to work with some of the industry’s biggest stars, including Cary Grant, Rita Hayworth, and Orson Welles.

He was used primarily to produce and direct B-list films. He built a reputation as someone who was able to finish projects on time and on budget, which was of the utmost importance in the B-lots of Hollywood. Eventually, he ventured out on his own, and started to self-finance projects.

He had a major breakthrough with his film Macabre (1958), which was inspired largely by the French film Diabolique (1955). To promote the film, Castle conceived a gimmick wherein theater goers would be issued a life insurance contract, which stipulated that if anyone were to die of fright, their beneficiaries would be remunerated. What’s more remarkable than the fact that he would employ such a gimmick was the fact that he actually got the Lloyds of London to back the project! Castle wrote in his memoir that after puzzling executives with his peculiar idea, the Lloyds of London executives set a contract wherein William Castle was insured for $5,000, enough to cover five individuals. If anyone in the audience were to indeed die of fright, Castle would receive the money from the Lloyds of London, and Castle himself would then be liable for paying the beneficiary of the deceased party.

Not surprisingly, no one ever died of fright at a screening, and thus, no one ever attempted to collect insurance money.

Castle would gain even greater notoriety with his films that starred Vincent Price. The first was The Tingler (1959), about an insect which burrows in the human spine and thrives on fear. The only way to keep the creature at bay is to scream. The gimmick was called “Percepto” and it was one of Castle’s most elaborate and expensive marketing maneuvers ever. Seats in the theaters would be equipped with low voltage shocking devices that would zap audience members during a scene from the film where the entire theater would go dark, and a voice-over would caution audiences that the Tingler was loose in the theater.

Price also starred in Castle’s The House on Haunted Hill (1959), which employed the “Emergo,” a gimmick which used a pulley system to suspend a plastic skeleton over the viewing audience —in other words, it appeared to emerge from the screen.

Castle’s greatest film was potentially 13 Ghosts (1960), which made use of his “Illusion-O” trick, which used red and blue cellophane lensed “ghost viewers.” In segments of the film where ghosts appear, the screen takes on a blue tint. The film was shot using two separate color filters, one blue and one red. If the viewer were to look through the blue lens, the ghosts would disappear. If the viewer were to look through the red lens, the ghosts would become more vivid. Would anyone in their right mind go to a movie called 13 Ghosts to not look at ghosts? Presumably not, but the marketing genius is in the fact that the viewer had an option.

Even though he achieved success in his own right, Castle always dreamed of crossing over and directing an A-list feature film with A-list stars. A major turning point in Castle’s career came when he was given the manuscript of a yet-to-be published book by Ira Levin entitled Rosemary’s Baby. Castle claimed in his autobiography Step Right Up! that he was the second director to be shown the book, the first having reportedly been Alfred Hitchcock.

Ultimately, Paramount studios insisted that a director with a stronger reputation was merited by the job, and thus, Castle signed on to produce, and Roman Polanski was recruited to direct. The meticulous Polanski crafted one of the finest horror films of the sixties, and it’s one which all horror enthusiasts must see —and thankfully, sites like sites netflix and direct-ticket.net allow you to stream it in its entirety.

Upon its release in 1968, the film was met with tremendous resistance from religious communities, but also with tremendous excitement and intrigue by the general public. Castle became gravely ill after the film’s release due to kidney failure, and his career never entirely bounced back. He found himself producing B-pictures once again, such as Bug (1975). Castle exploited the film by insuring Bug’s star, a gigantic cockroach named Hercules, for $1,000.

Although he lamented not establishing himself as a first-rate director of major commercial films which were taken seriously by critics, he continues to serve as a source of inspiration for many filmmakers who came later, perhaps most notably John Waters, who had scratch and sniff cards issued at screenings of his film Polyester (1981) as part of his “Odorama” marketing gimmick.

Castle may not be remembered as the most deft filmmaker of his generation, but he will most certainly be remembered.

Feature: Kate Voss

Gallery: Marcus Brooks

THE BLACK SLEEP: WAXING LYRICALLY ON 'THE BLACK SLEEP' RATHBONE CARRADINE LUGOSI JOHNSON

CAST:

Basil Rathbone (Sir Joel Cadman), Herbert Rudley (Dr Gordon Ramsay), Akim Tamiroff (Odo), Patricia Blake (Laurie Monroe), Lon Chaney [Jr] (Mungo), Bela Lugosi (Casimir), Phyllis Stanley (Daphne), John Carradine (Borg), Claire Carleton (Carmona Daily), Tor Johnson (Curry), George Sawaya (K6)

PRODUCTION:

Director – Reginald LeBorg, Screenplay – John C. Higgins, Story – George Drayson Adams, Producer – Howard W. Koch, Photography (b&w) – Gordon Avil, Music – Les Baxter, Photographic Effects – Louis DeWitt & Jack Rabin, Makeup Created by George Bau, Set Design – Bob Kinoshita. Production Company – Bel-Air Productions/Prospect Productions Inc

SYNOPSIS:

London, 1872. At Newgate Prison, Dr Gordon Ramsay is about to be executed for the murder of a man but swears he is innocent. The night before he is due to go to the gallows, he is visited by his old mentor, the distinguished physician Sir Joel Cadman. Cadman leaves Ramsay with a dose of the Indian drug mindantera, which will place him into a death-like coma. Ramsay takes it, is certified as dead and is revived at Cadman’s home. Cadman explains that he has saved Ramsay because he needs an assistant for his research. Cadman shows Ramsay his experimental work using mindantera to place patients under while he cuts open and explores their brain, trying to work out which areas control which actions. As he assists, Ramsay becomes horrified to discover that Cadman’s ruthless quest for knowledge has turned all of his subjects into deformed and mindless vegetables that he keeps imprisoned in the basement.

COMMENTARY:

The Black Sleep could be considered the last gasp of the classic genre of the mad scientist film that began with Frankenstein (1931) and reached its peak during the 1940s amid a host of cheap efforts churned out at low-budget studios like Monogram and PRC, usually starring Bela Lugosi. After around 1947, the mad scientist film began to die off with the exception of a few stragglers and the genre instead became preoccupied with alien invaders and atomic monster films. The Black Sleep can be considered a swansong to the era. It brings together some of the most famous genre actors of the 1940s – Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr and John Carradine. There are also a couple of others who are associated with the genre but didn’t so much belong to that decade – Basil Rathbone who was most famous during the 1940s as Sherlock Holmes in the series of films made at Universal and appeared in a number of B horror films at AIP during the 1960s, and wrestler Tor Johnson who was part of the Edward D. Wood Jr stock company in the 1950s. 

The Black Sleep feels like a Monogram/PRC mad scientist film made with a slightly better budget. There are times it seems to almost be taking a more serious minded, less schlocky approach and setting everything amongst the frontier of medical research in 19th Century England – it initially has more in common with a film like Corridors of Blood (1962) than it does with a typical Bela Lugosi film of the last decade. The early sections create a (relative) sense of medically grounded realism, although it is not long before typical tropes of the genre kick in – the ethically challenged scientist; a madman (Lon Chaney Jr) in the house; a mute retainer (Bela Lugosi); deformities of failed experiments kept in the cellar; a scientist’s innocent daughter needing saving; laboratories improbably hidden beneath swivelling fireplaces in the library. Some of this has a modest effect. The main problem is that The Black Sleep is still a low-budgeted film and director Reginald LeBorg lets it take place amid limited sets, which leads to a film that is talky and static at best. Nevertheless, the film stands out mildly because of its better production values and passable direction that elevates what otherwise might have been hackneyed material. 

The name cast are employed with mixed effect. Basil Rathbone gives a wonderfully autocratic performance in the lead – he reminds very much of the role that Peter Cushing solidified as his own in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and sequels the following year. Akim Tamiroff proves a scene-stealer in a wonderfully oily and obsequious role as Rathbone’s Gypsy fixer. Lon Chaney Jr and Bela Lugosi were at best limited actors who only gained the status they had by appearing in hits at early points in their careers and becoming typecast in the horror genre thereafter. Here Chaney has a role that requires him to do one of the two things he did best – play either simple-minded or hulking. Lugosi never gets to do much in what would be his last ever completed role – the only other work he appeared in subsequent to this was the unfinished fragments that were posthumously incorporated into Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). Disappointingly, for what was his last real performance, it is one where he gets no lines and is rarely on screen. Both John Carradine and Tor Johnson get even less screen time in their roles as failed experimental subjects who are discovered in the cellar near the end

Director Reginald LeBorg (or frequently credited as Reginald Le Borg) was an Austrian immigrant who worked as a B-budget director in Hollywood between the 1920s to the 1970s, mostly being known for a number of the entries in the Joe Palooka series. His other genre films include:- the Inner Sanctum thrillers Calling Dr Death (1944) and Dead Man’s Eyes (1944); the clairvoyance film Destiny (1944); Jungle Woman (1944), the second in Universal’s series starring Acquanetta as a were-ape woman; The Mummy’s Ghost (1944), the fourth of Universal’s Mummy series; the voodoo film Weird Woman (1944); Voodoo Island (1957); The Flight That Disappeared (1961), an anti-nuclear film about a planeload of people being abducted in mid-flight; the possession film Diary of a Madman (1962); the psychic thriller The Eyes of Annie Jones (1964); and the psycho-thriller So Evil, My Sister (1974).