Money back guarantee: William Castle’s love of cinema gimmicks
Before the horror genre had developed to include a wealth of subgenres, explicit gore, or even popular franchises, filmmakers had to get creative. Until then, the genre had primarily relied on spooky supernatural tales or centred on pre-existing characters like Dracula and Frankenstein.
In the 1950s, horror thrived more in the B-movie industry, and here, William Castle became one of the genre’s most innovative figures. He popularised horror and thriller films with his reliance on gimmicks, making attending the movie theatre a fun and engaging experience.
From the beginning of his career in the theatre, Castle knew how to garner attention. He cast the German actor Ellen Schwanneke in a play he made up before pretending that the Nazis were unimpressed by his work, secretly vandalising a theatre in the hopes that he would receive attention from the press. Keeping these kinds of publicity stunts in mind, he carried them with him to his career as a B-movie filmmaker, revelling in cheesy and fun gimmicks that garnered eager cinema-goers who wanted to know if his movies were as scary as they were advertised as being.
His legacy can be felt in the work of filmmakers like John Waters, who was inspired by Castle when he made Polyester. People who went to see the movie were given scratch-and-sniff cards that the film instructed them to use at certain times, with scents ranging from skunk to pizza. Castle’s pioneering use of gimmicks ranged from the tame to the hilarious, and while his impact is evidently traceable, it’s hard to imagine the kinds of outrageous gimmicks he championed being used today.
One of his greatest gimmicks was giving out $1,000 life insurance policy certificates to cinema-goers of his film Macabre, just in case they were scared to literal death. Of course, no one actually died of fear, and these days, the movie is better remembered for its gimmick rather than its actual narrative. Another fantastic idea of Castle’s was using a technique he called ‘Percepto’ for The Tingler. He had vibrating motors placed under certain seats in movie theatres so that audiences could experience the film – which featured parasites that clung to humans via their spinal cords – more realistically.
While this gimmick required an extra $250,000 to execute, the movie became known for its wild theatre experience. In some instances, Castle would arrange a performance where an actor would faint in the auditorium before Vincent Price, on-screen, would address the audience and state that ‘The Tingler’ was in the movie theatre, and events on screen would mimic the movie being interrupted.
Throughout his career, Castle tried other gimmicks too, like placing seatbelts in the back row of screenings of I Saw What You Did, handing out cardboard axes for Strait-Jacket, and even appearing on screen mid-way through Mr Sardonicus so that viewers could vote for the villain’s fate.
Who could forget his Homicidal gimmicks, too? He offered a money-back guarantee before the dramatic reveal if cinema-goers were simply too scared to finish the movie. This ‘fright break’ then led to the idea of a ‘Coward’s Corner’, which ensured that everyone in the movie theatre knew you couldn’t handle the movie via a bright yellow light and audio playing as you exited.
Castle’s ideas were certainly revolutionary, and he transformed the cinema-going experience, even if his gimmicks weren’t particularly sustainable for widespread theatre releases. Still, he proved that there is a way to gain attention and interest in your films – simply ask the audience if they can handle the fear, and they’ll show up to prove it.
