Huckster Extraordinaire (originally published 2/94)

The pioneers of the American motion picture industry were, by and large, not highly educated people. In fact, most were immigrants who stumbled into the fledgling film business from other pursuits like the garment trade. They were an uncouth and unsophisticated bunch, and yet they managed in little more than a decade to build a film industry that was the envy of the world.

How did they do it? Not by hiring marketing research firms to run focus groups, I assure you. Even if such things had existed back then, these guys wouldn't have had a clue how to interpret the data. Instead, the movie pioneers relied on two important qualities that they did possess.

First, they had an instinct for what the common, everyday moviegoer wanted to see, in part because they were common, everyday folks themselves. Second, and probably most important, the ones who succeeded had a natural talent for showmanship.

Sometime during the last 20 or 30 years the movies gave up the last traces of true showmanship. Even the little touch of theaters opening a curtain to reveal the picture after the projector is started has almost entirely vanished. (Anyone remember when all theaters closed the curtain after the coming attractions trailers, then opened it again for the main feature? If so, you're no spring chicken.)

I was delighted, therefore, to read of the release of a film called "Matinee," starring John Goodman as a 1950s producer who specializes in selling his low budget movies by means of outlandish promotional gimmicks. If you've seen "Matinee," you should know that Goodman's character was not created from whole cloth, but rather was based on an actual movie producer/director. His name was William Castle and he was the last of the big time showmen in Hollywood.

For instance, when his murder mystery "Macabre" was released in 1958 Castle issued life insurance policies for the audience members, payable if the faint of heart should die of fright during the movie.

But perhaps the apex of his career was 1959's "The Tingler," for which selected theater seats were wired to deliver a mild electric shock to the occupant. Following an announcement that the tingler was loose in the theater, the patrons who had chosen the prepared seats would be jolted to their feet. Of course, only a couple of actually wired seats were needed. Thereafter, anyone who felt anything at all, down to and including a pants cuff brushing against their leg, would jump up just to be safe.

Castle's gimmick films are not widely available on video. [2009 NOTE: Happily, this is no longer the case. A recently released Castle box set largely redresses this omission. See http://tinyurl.com/wmcastle] I suppose this is understandable; after all, if you watch them in your living room you don't get the benefit of the gimmicks. Still, a couple of them are available. While they are by no means great films, they are entertaining. Castle's sense of showmanship informs the content of his films just as surely as it informed his promotions.

"House on Haunted Hill" (1958). Vincent Price stars as a wealthy eccentric who offers a group of people $50,000 each if they will spend a night in a haunted house. The gimmick here was what Castle called "Emergo." At a certain point in the film, theaters would send a skeleton clattering over the audience's heads from the front of the auditorium to the back, giving the impression (they hoped) that it had emerged from the screen.

"13 Ghosts" (1960). A kind of lighthearted forerunner to "The Amityville Horror," this film tells the story of a family that buys and moves into a house only to discover that it is haunted. In fact, it is haunted by no less than 12 ghosts, who are anxious to add another to their ranks so that they will number a good, proper, ghostly 13.

Castle's gimmick for "13 Ghosts" was called "Illusion-O." Audience members received "ghost viewers" upon entering the theater. These were color filters mounted in a small cardboard frame. Thus equipped, the audience members could either look through the viewers or not, depending on whether they wanted to see the ghosts or not. Reproduced below, courtesy of Turner Classic Movies, is the film's promotional trailer touting the "Illusion-O" gimmick.



As shameless as his promotions were, and despite the fact that many of them were more than a little on the dumb side, I can't help missing William Castle just a bit. When the crackerbox multiplex folks act like they are doing me a big favor just to focus the picture, I sometimes wish that Castle's ghost would come screaming out of their screen, rattling his skeleton over the audience, just to show them what real showmanship was like once upon a time.