The Dark Séance – And All the Rest

“Having to create a new fresh gimmick for each picture was becoming tiresome,” Castle writes in his memoir. “Critics were now starting to attack, claiming the only reason my films were successful was the gimmicks, and I was unable to make an important thriller without one.”

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Following Mr. Sardonicus, Castle had pivoted at least partly away from horror pictures. He collaborated once again with Ray Russell on the comedy Zotz! Patrons who attended the initial theatrical run received plastic replicas of the amulet that gives Tom Poston’s character magical powers in the film. For the intrigue-laden 13 Frightened Girls, Castle promoted a casting call for girls from all over the world to play the eponymous thirteen, who were all the daughters of various diplomats.

Castle’s memoir makes it sound like Strait-Jacket in 1964 was his first film without a gimmick, but then the book also makes absolutely no mention of his (probably better forgotten) 1963 remake of James Whale’s The Old Dark House. Besides opening title art drawn by the legendary Charles Addams, an article at TCM assures us that, “Unlike his other macabre cinema concoctions, Castle didn’t use any gimmicks to promote The Old Dark House.” Yet, there’s reason to believe it may have almost had one…

“What could you possible do with a haunted house?” Castle’s wife asked him, when he spotted a “house, isolated and boarded up, looking foreboding in the night” while they were traveling in France. Of course, Castle had a ready-made answer.

“Have twenty million keys made – all but one with the same number. That one key fits the lock on this door. Keys will be passed out in theatres all over the world during the picture, and the lucky person with the right key owns this haunted house.”

At the time, this was planned as the gimmick for 13 Ghosts – before Castle had conjured the idea of the Ghost Viewer. Could Castle have intended to re-use this gimmick for The Old Dark House? If so, he doesn’t appear to have carried it off, but there are clues that it might have been in consideration, including prominently featured keys on the film’s posters.

For Strait-Jacket, Castle sidestepped the need for having a gimmick by including one in the form of the film’s star – the legendary Joan Crawford. It probably didn’t hurt that Psycho’s own Robert Bloch wrote the screenplay, either, the first of two films he would do with Castle that year.

According to John McCarty, writing in The Fearmakers, the film had something else going for it, too. “For Strait-Jacket (1964), [Castle] created the memorable ad line, ‘Just keep telling yourself, it’s only a movie!’ – which Hallmark Releasing lifted to promote Last House on the Left (1972) and that many other distributors of horror films have since reused, as well.”

Castle’s memoirs suggest that he really did intend to eschew any gimmick for Strait-Jacket, but at the last minute… “At the theatres, I gave out cardboard axes streaked with simulated blood – I just couldn’t resist a gimmick.” In another very William Castle touch, the traditional Columbia logo with its torch-bearing female figure is shown in the closing credits, only now she has been decapitated, with her head lying at her feet.

“Are you afraid of the things that can come out of your dreams… lust, murder, secret desires?” That was the question posed by the posters for The Night Walker. The film had no official gimmick, relying instead on Bloch’s name and the star power of its leads, which re-teamed Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck (in her final theatrical film role), who had previously (and famously) been married from 1939 until 1951.

Despite its lack of a gimmick, Castle was apparently still eager to promote the film, and spent $25,000 make a six-minute promotional reel called Experiment in Nightmares, in which hypnotist Pat Collins questioned six supposedly mesmerized subjects about their bad dreams. There was also a novelization of the picture, and, according to AFI, a version of its title song was recorded by the Sammy Kay Orchestra and a “related album, titled The Night Walker’s Dead-Time Stories! was released on Vee-Jay.”

Joan Crawford returned (albeit briefly) for Castle’s 1965 film I Saw What You Did, but this time a gimmick came with her. “Tying up with telephone companies around the country and having huge plastic phones in front of each theatre advertising the picture seemed good showmanship at the time,” Castle writes in Step Right Up! Things didn’t quite go as planned, however…

“The whole gimmick would have worked beautifully, except the teen-agers of America took the ‘phone game’ seriously,” Castle writes, after describing how they put a phone number in newspapers that people could call for a special message. “I wasn’t prepared for what happened, and neither was the phone company. It seemed that almost every teen-ager in the country was on the phone, making crank calls by the thousands, jamming the phone lines.”

According to Castle, this led the phone company to break off their collaboration and forbid him from printing any more phone numbers. “They even threatened to disconnect my home telephone,” Castle writes, “and when I tried to apologize, they hung up on me.”

Instead, Castle resorted to “a special shock section in the theatres, where audiences could avail themselves of seat belts, much like those in airplanes, so they would stay in their seats during shocks.”

Not exactly his most inspired idea.

By this time, Castle’s films were starting to see diminishing returns. While he would continue to make movies until 1974, when he directed his last picture, Shanks, a vehicle for the famous mime Marcel Marceau, most of the remainder of his filmography wouldn’t have much in the way of gimmicks.

“It was hard to believe that the low-budget exploitation picture was at an end,” Castle writes. “Perhaps someday they would make a comeback, but I couldn’t wait.”

Instead of waiting, Castle made what would ultimately become his most successful film – but not as director. Though he initially bought the rights to Ira Levin’s novel Rosemary’s Baby with the intent to direct it himself, the film ultimately (and famously) ended up in the hands of Roman Polanski. Whose idea that was – and how pleased or not Castle was with it – depends on who you ask but, in his memoir, Castle at least seems to concede that it was the right choice.

Rosemary’s Baby gave Castle the critical and commercial success he had always craved, including a spate of nominations for major awards. And it did it mostly without gimmicks, though Castle still couldn’t resist having buttons printed up with the slogan, “Pray for Rosemary’s Baby.”