In praise of William Cas­tle – undis­put­ed king of cin­e­ma gimmickry

William Cas­tle wasn’t the first show­man to use gim­micks in an attempt to lure cin­e­ma audi­ences. Smell-O-Vision, Hans Laube’s patent­ed prac­tice of pump­ing odour into the­atres, arrived in 1960, mak­ing its soli­tary appear­ance in the Cin­era­ma clas­sic Scent of Mys­tery. Yet the idea had been kick­ing around as ear­ly as 1906, when Samuel Roxy Rothafel placed a wad of cot­ton wool soaked in rose oil in front of an elec­tric fan dur­ing a news­reel thought to be about California’s Rose Parade.

Yet Cas­tle remains the undis­put­ed king of cin­e­ma gim­mick­ry. This year sees the 60^th anniver­sary of two of his great­est works, House on Haunt­ed Hill and The Tin­gler, both star­ring the great Vin­cent Price. They were released in 1959, a year on from Castle’s Macabre, screen­ings of which saw ush­ers hand out Fright Insur­ance Poli­cies – backed by Lloyds of Lon­don – promis­ing to pay out $1,000 to audi­ence mem­bers if they ​“died of fright” dur­ing the film. Time only embold­ened the director’s love of gimmicks.

House on Haunt­ed Hill con­cerns eccen­tric mil­lion­aire Fred­er­ick Loren, played by Price at his most droll, and takes place over an evening spent with­in a haunt­ed house that Loren has rent­ed to cel­e­brate the birth­day of his fourth wife, Annabelle (Car­ol Ohmart). He invites five guests, promis­ing $10,000 to any­one brave enough to stay the night. It’s been said that the film part­ly inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 hor­ror, Psy­cho; Cas­tle lat­er said the same of Psy­cho and Homi­ci­dal, released one year lat­er. (Castle’s film screened with a 45-sec­ond ​‘Fright Break’, offer­ing view­ers who found it all too fright­en­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to leave ear­ly and get their mon­ey back… pro­vid­ed they signed a con­tract declar­ing them a ​‘cow­ard’ on the way out.)

It’s sur­pris­ing how much of House on Haunt­ed Hill holds up today, but it’s the 4D gim­mick­ry employed at the time of its orig­i­nal the­atri­cal run that has pre­served its lega­cy – Loew’s Jer­sey The­atre still occa­sion­al­ly hosts revival screen­ings using the old tech­niques. There’s a scene towards the end of the film where Loren tricks his wife into run­ning into a vat of acid by scar­ing her with a plas­tic skeleton.

Dur­ing screen­ings, Cas­tle would deploy a gim­mick he called ​‘Emer­gol!’, releas­ing a glow-in-the-dark skele­ton at the pre­cise moment Loren deploys his on screen, with the phys­i­cal skele­ton then dragged above the audience’s heads on wires.

While House on Haunt­ed Hill is the bet­ter film, The Tin­gler – in which Price plays a doc­tor who dis­cov­ers a par­a­site that lives in human spines and feeds on fear – had the bet­ter gim­mick. On entry to the the­atre, the film’s posters warned that The Tin­gler would, at some point, break free dur­ing the film’s screening.

Cas­tle even appeared on screen at the start warn­ing view­ers that they must scream to save their lives. Dur­ing the film itself, Price broke the fourth wall to address the audi­ence, declar­ing, ​“Ladies and gen­tle­men, please do not pan­ic. But scream! Scream for your lives! The Tin­gler is loose in this theatre!”

The direc­tor called the accom­pa­ny­ing gim­mick ​‘Per­cep­to!’, which trans­lat­ed as some of the cin­e­ma seats being attached to sur­plus World War Two air­plane wing de-icers, which vibrat­ed and gave those sit­ting in the seat a short, sharp shock.

Cas­tle was born William Schloss Jr in New York City in 1914, in time adopt­ing the pseu­do­nym (‘schloss’ being the Ger­man word for ​‘cas­tle’) for which he became so renowned. An orphan by 11, he was raised by his old­er sis­ter Mil­dred. Then came the event, at 13, that changed his life, a per­for­mance of the play Drac­u­la star­ing Bela Lugosi. ​“I knew then what I want­ed to do with my life,” Cas­tle wrote in his 1976 auto­bi­og­ra­phy, ​“I want­ed to scare the pants off audiences.”

The young Cas­tle saw Drac­u­la so many times he lost count, and even­tu­al­ly he met Lugosi him­self. The Hun­gar­i­an actor rec­om­mend­ed him for an assis­tant stage man­ag­er posi­tion in the crew of the plays’ tour­ing pro­duc­tion. At 15, Cas­tle got the gig, drop­ping out of school in order to take the role. He worked a vari­ety of jobs on Broad­way, most­ly build­ing stag­ing, all of which proved use­ful in the years to come. Then came the first of Castle’s great stunts. Claim­ing he was a Broad­way pro­duc­er, he man­aged to obtain Orson Welles’ phone num­ber, per­suad­ing him to lease him the Stony Creek The­atre – and that’s not even the most auda­cious part.

Before Cas­tle had obtained the lease for the the­atre, he hired the Ger­man actress Ellen Schwan­neke – who had pre­vi­ous­ly fled the Nazis – to star in a pro­duc­tion of the play ​‘Sev­enth Heav­en’ on the Stony Creek The­atre stage. It should go with­out say­ing that he hadn’t obtained the rights to per­form the play. The Actor’s Equi­ty Asso­ci­a­tion – the union rep­re­sent­ing Amer­i­can actors at the time – con­tact­ed Cas­tle to inform him that he couldn’t hire Schwan­neke because, ​“dur­ing peak sea­son, Amer­i­can actors must be giv­en pref­er­ence unless the role is specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored to suit a for­eign star.”

Cas­tle claimed he had writ­ten a play called ​‘Das ist nicht für Kinder’ (he hadn’t), and hur­ried­ly spent the sub­se­quent week­end writ­ing a play of that title and trans­lat­ing it into Ger­man. He cred­it­ed it to Lud­wig von Her­schfeld (a fic­tion­al Aus­tri­an play­wright). Then came the inter­ven­tion of Hitler, via cor­re­spon­dence sent by Dr Joseph Goebbels, the Reichsmin­is­ter of Pro­pa­gan­da and Pub­lic Enlight­en­ment, request­ing Schwanneke’s atten­dance at a spe­cial recep­tion in Munich. Cas­tle quick­ly penned two telegrams: one to Hitler, one to Goebbels, and sent copies to every major newspaper.

They read…

“Cable to Adolf Hitler, Munich, Ger­many. Dear Mr Hitler: Ellen Schwan­neke turns down your invi­ta­tion. She has pos­i­tive­ly said no. She wants noth­ing to do with you or your pol­i­tics. She will not return to Ger­many as long as you remain in pow­er. Signed, William Cas­tle, Producer/​Director, Stony Creek The­atre, Con­necti­cut. P.S. She’s work­ing for me now.”

By the late 1960s, Cas­tle had all but aban­doned the gim­mick­ry, focus­ing instead on films more seri­ous in tone. By rights he should have been behind the cam­era for Rosemary’s Baby in 1968, remort­gag­ing his home to secure the rights to the Ira Levin nov­el before it had even been pub­lished. But Para­mount held firm on their desire for Roman Polan­s­ki to direct the film ​‚and Cas­tle had to make do with pro­duc­ing, as well as a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo (we catch a glimpse of him out­side the phone box Rose­mary uses to con­tact the obstetrician).

Cas­tle suf­fered kid­ney fail­ure not long after the film’s release and with­in a decade he was dead, suc­cumb­ing to a heart attack in Los Ange­les on 31 May, 1977. He was 63. Through­out his remark­ably var­ied career, Cas­tle made moviego­ing infi­nite­ly more inter­est­ing, more engag­ing, more excit­ing. In the words of John Waters, ​“William Cas­tle is God”.