William Castle and Stephen King

William who? William Castle! Shock horror director of the 50's and 60's. He was known for his gimmicks. Castle was the king of promotion. He really thought he'd made it when he got Robert Bloch (Psycho writer) and Joan Crawford (Mommy Dearest). Castle's long time dream was to equal Alfred Hitchcock.

.

There's a great documentary on William Castle titled "Spine Tingler! the William Castle Story." He invented Emergo. . . one step beyond 3D. Some films allowed for a "punishment poll" which allowed the audience to vote on the movies ending. Of course, there's no evidence they movies actually had multiple endings, because an audience will always vote for the bad guy to get knocked off.

.

So what movies would make great William Castle movies? Well, I'd like to see what he would do with Christine. How about giving him a shot at Children of the Corn, everyone else has messed with it!

.

You know a lot of Castle's movies, they include: The House on Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts, I Saw what you did.

.

Castle didn't just direct B-movies. He also produced Rosemary's Baby. His desire was to direct the film, but that honor fell to Roman Polanski.

.

Carrie-Carrie- Castle Scary?

.

So I guess the real question is: What kind of gimmicks would Castle put with a Stephen King movie? He once offered life insurance for every person going to see his movie -- giving their beneficiary a real check if they died of fear during his movie. He put buzzers in the seats of the theaters to jolt certain audience members and scare them all the more. Now imagine getting shocked at the end of Carrie when that hand comes grasping out of the grave!

.

Some King movies frustrate me enough that I think: Might as well give them to someone who would at least know how to ham it up and create some hype. Langoliers comes to mind -- but that's not scary enough for Castle, so I withdraw the nomination. How about Needful things.

.

King On Castle

.

Stephen King wrote in Danse Macabre about Castle's film Macabre: "This William Castle feature Macabre -- his first, but unfortunately not his last -- was perhaps the biggest "gotta-see" pictrue of my grammer school days. Its title was pronounced by my friends in Stratford, Connecticut as McBare. "Gotta-Ssee" or not, very few of our parents would let us go because of the grisly ad campaign. I however, exercised the inventiveness of the true aficionado and got to see it by telling my mother Iwas gong to Davy crockett, a Disney film which I felt I could summarize safely because I had most of the bubble-gum cards."

.

King spends some time in Danse Macabre describing Castle's gimmicks. (Page 182 of the hardcover). King then says about The Tingler, "a film so exquisitely low budget that afera thousand people had seen it, now escape me, but there was this monster (the Tingler, natch) that lived on fear. When its victims were so scared they couldn't even scream, it attached itself to their spines and sorta . . well . . . tingled them to death. I know that must sound pretty stupid, but in the film, it worked (although it probably helped to be eleven years old when you saw it. )As I remember, one sexy miss got it in the bathtub. Bad news.

.

But never mind the plot; let's get on to the gimmick. at one point the Tingler got into a movie theater, killed the projectionists, and some how shorted out the electricity. At that moment in the theater where you were watching the movie, all the lights went out and the screen went dark. Now as it happened, the only thing that could get the Tingler to let go of your spine once it had attached itself was a good loud scream, which changed the quality of the adrenaline it fed on. And at this point, a narrator on the soundtrack cried out, "The Tingler is now in this theater! It may be under your seat! So scream! Scream! Scream for your lives!!" The audience was o course happy to oblige, and in the next scene we see the Tingler fleeing for its life, vanquished for the time being by all those screaming people.

.

The Difference

There is a massive difference between Stephen King and William Castle -- quality. We can laugh at some of King's movies, because he didn't do them. But King never feels the need to give us gimmick's. In fact, he sometimes seems a little annoyed at over priced gimmick's -- the work can stand on its own two feet.

.

So when my Pretty Pony came out, with a clock embedded in the book, King didn't express a lot of excitement. Unlike Castle, there's not a confidence issue with King. He doesn't try and get the reader to buy the book just because of a gimmick.

.

Now, that's not to say publishers don't offer gimmick's! Anyone remember the nightlight that came with Desperation and Regulators? How about a Blockade Billy baseball card? How about a Pennywise magnet? A toy Christine car? And so on.

.

King doesn't fill his work with gimmick's, either. That is, there is more than just blood and guts to a Stephen King story -- it's always about the characters.