THE WILLIAM CASTLE FILM COLLECTION (Columbia). 13 Frightened Girls! (1963), 13 Ghosts (1960), Homicidal (1961), Strait-Jacket (1964), The Old Dark House (1963), Mr. Sardonicus (1961), The Tingler (1959), Zotz! (1962) D: William Castle. Rating: NNNN DVD package: NNNNN Rating: NNNN
Schlock that rocks. The Tingler’s got it all: weird science, a mad scientist, a cheeseball monster, twisto plot, murder, good girl, bad girl, terrific performances by Vincent Price (the scientist), Philip Coolidge and Judith Evelyn (movie house owners drawn into Price’s experiments in fear), the movies’ first-ever acid trip and a gimmick.
[rssbreak]
Producer-director William Castle was an old-style showman who loved gimmicks. For The Tingler, certain seats were wired with electric joy buzzers for an effect he called Percepto. There’s good footage of Castle in Jeffrey Schwarz’s outstanding feature-length biography that gets to the heart of a man who loved movies and his family, yet was driven by fear and considered himself a B-movie failure. Schwarz and the director’s daughter Terry Castle provide an insightful and funny commentary.
The other movies in the set are fun. Homicidal is a decent Psycho rip-off, and Strait-Jacket yields some good Joan Crawford stories.
EXTRAS Five film-specific retrospective making-of docs, Strait-Jacket contemporary featurette, two TV episodes, more. Widescreen, colour and b&w. Bonus disc: Castle doc with commentary. Widescreen.
