Should cinema gimmicks become obsolete?
Imagine going to the cinema and being forced to wear a sign that says ‘I am a bona fide coward’ because you’re too scared. That was one of the gimmicks employed by filmmaker William Castle, a lover of marketing ploys so ridiculous that they became much more memorable than his actual films.
Whether he was employing an actor to faint in the audience to up the fear factor, getting nurses to wait outside screenings, making chairs vibrate, or handing out life insurance policy certificates to demonstrate just how scared the film might make you, Castle was a pioneer of crazy cinema gimmicks. It was a time before Hollywood was concerned with massive franchise films and generating billions with each blockbuster, and Castle was just a B-movie horror maker with a taste for attracting audiences in the most unique way possible.
He was a genius, because while he was no Alfred Hitchcock when it came to his filmmaking skills, he was essentially the master of getting people to watch them. You might argue this is just another shameless money-making scheme, and sure, at their core, gimmicks are designed to attract viewers and therefore sell more tickets, but if you’re going to do it, you can’t fault Castle for taking the fun route.
The current state of cinema, with its endless sequels and remakes churned out purely for the sake of making money, can feel like such a betrayal-laden environment; nothing feels genuine anymore. At least when Castle was teasing the idea that his movie would be so scary it might leave you in a hearse, there was an obvious level of fun before anything else. Movie-going became a whole experience that was terrifically enjoyable, even if the movie was just painfully average.
John Waters was inspired by his love for Castle when he made Odorama, presenting audience members with scratch-and-sniff cards to smell along to his movie Polyester, featuring everything from roses and pizza to the much more Waters-esque farts and skunk stink. It definitely added to the experience, although this is hardly something that you’d want featured with many films; imagine a scratch-and-sniff card for something like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that would just reek of sweat and death.
So, these are some undoubtedly fun gimmicks, but with their still existing decades on in the form of 4D experiences and even global phenomena like Barbenheimer (complete with the expectation to suit up and pose in giant doll boxes), is it time they stopped? While the gimmicks that Castle was pioneering back in the 1950s and 1960s were entertaining because they were new and exciting, they were also masking otherwise, at least cinematically, mediocre films, which raises the query: If a movie needs gimmicks, is it really all that good?
With a marketing budget of $150million, Barbie was so tied up in the gimmick of dressing in pink, encouraging fans to buy official merchandise (literally anything you could imagine could be bought Barbie-fied), and watching it as a double bill with Oppenheimer, that all the buzz simply detracted from the film. At its core, without all the fluff, Barbie just isn’t all that good, but that’s a topic for another conversation.
I’m not saying that a movie can’t be good and also rely on gimmicks, but you really have to wonder if these unusual marketing techniques are helping or hindering the film industry. No one needs to see Jaws in 4DX; it exists perfectly on its own. And what about this AI-assisted The Wizard of Oz experience at The Sphere in Las Vegas? No one definitely needs that.
Films exist in the cinematic medium, and if they’re good enough, marketing and gimmicks should be rendered totally irrelevant. After Castle (and Water’s one-off Odorama invention), perhaps filmmakers should have recognised that these are techniques of a past era of cinema, when gimmicks were more so for the absolute fun and ridiculous factor rather than to generate absurd levels of profit. Really, cinema needs to be stripped back to its purest form, without all the bullshit trimmings turning movies into theme park-esque attractions.
It might’ve been enjoyable back in the pre-New Hollywood days of cheesy gimmicks, but now, it all feels a little ridiculous. Seriously, through, shaving your head to go to a bald-only screening of Bugonia? Pack it in.
