It’s almost here: The William Castle Blogathon so go ahead and be a stool pigeon and tell everyone!

A week from today kicks off the celebration with The William Castle Blogathon hosted by little ole me and Goregirl’s Dungeon!

Hope to see you there for all the thrills and chills and creepy haunted houses up on a hill…There’s willing spirits, crank calling teenage girls, axe murderesses with crazed eyebrows, whistlers and crime doctors, old dark houses, frightened girls, a slew of restless ghosts, homicidal gender benders, spine tingling lobster-esque fiends, mysterious intruders, macabre and sardonic night walkers, stool pigeons and gunslingers, small guys with big hearts, devilish babies, fire breathing beetles, slaves of babylon… and so much more!

In Johnny Stool Pigeon- Dan Duryea plays a sneering tough guy with a gun and Howard Duff looking all dismayed… and Shelley Winters looking all pouty and cheap. Something you can always count on with these three to do- and what a hoot to watch thanks to William Castle!

Annex+-+Duryea%2C+Dan_NRFPT_01 — **Dan Duryea courtesy of http://danduryeacentral.blogspot.com/**

Studio publicity Shelley Winters — **Â Shelley Winters**

I’ll be covering Johnny Stool Pigeon on July 31st!!! And there are so many incredible bloggers lined up to fill your week with all the William Castle chills and thrills you could ever imagine!

Dan+Duryea+in+Johnny+Stool+Pigeon+with+Howard+Duff+and+Shelley+Winters — **Dan Duryea, Howard Duff and Shelley Winters in William Castle’s noir crime thriller Johnny Stool Pigeon**

See ya soon folks!!!- MonsterGirl

Goregirl’s 13 Sleeps until the William Castle Blogathon !!!

Goregirl’s 13 Sleeps until the William Castle Blogathon!!!

She’s bringing us her glorious Goregirl gifs and grand enthusiasm gushing with nostalgia- I am so grateful to be hosting the William Castle Blogathon with such a groovy ghoul, I mean gal-

See ya soon folks

Joey

Consult your doctor! Bring your seat belts! The William Castle Blogathon is almost here!

Hello out there!… Just wanted to get everyone excited about our upcoming William Castle Blogathon that runs from July 29-August 2nd!

THE WILLIAM CASTLE BLOGATHON

Gee-I’ve been excited about Bill Castle ever since I saw his skeleton who is billed as ‘himself’ in House on Haunted Hill ’59 down in the wine cellar with Vincent Price and Carol Ohmart.

First of all, I can’t even begin tell you how incredibly grateful I am to all the amazing contributors who are joining me and GoregirlÂ (who’s got a lot of high spirited fun in store for us) in celebrating one of THE most iconically entertaining auteurs. William CastleÂ reached across many genres not just the B-movie spine tinglers that some people remember him for.

Thanks again to all of you who are joining in the fun. You will not only ensure that it’ll be a week of fabulous thoughts, themes and thrills. I just know in my heart that Mr. Castle would glow with pride to see how many people’s lives were touched by his inimitable style and purely delicious ballyhoo!

Don’t forget to grab yourself a banner or two, thanks to my versatile and lovely partner Wendy Christensen and David Arrate for designing such great graphics for the event…!

See ya soon gang- Joey

Step Right Up! a bit about William Castle’s memoirs-In fond memory (April 24, 1914 "“ May 31, 1977)

Because I’m in such a celebratory mood due to our upcoming William Castle Blogathon, I thought I should take his memoirs off the shelf and start devouring it along with watching the fabulous documentary Spine Tingler: The William Castle Story. I just wanted to say a few words about the first few chapters of Bill Castle’s compelling life story Step Right Up! I’m Gonna Scare the Pants Off America: Memoirs of a B-Movie Mogul, and I’m hoping that his wonderful daughter decides to produce a serious biopic about her father’s incredibly captivating life. It would make one hell of a fascinating and titillating journey of what led up to his iconic legacy amidst some memorable figures that inhabited the glamorous and often tumultuous Hollywood of yesteryear. If our blogathon turns even one more person into a new William Castle fan, I’ll feel satisfied that I’ve done right by him.

It’s a hell of a read. From the first few chapters, you feel like Bill is an old friend on a marvelous adventure that you’re rooting for all the way. I have always been such an avid fan of his movies, and the charming way he made us all feel like we were helping participate in the process of making each thrill & chill, gimmick and diversion such a sensational part of the movie experience. That’s what mattered most to him, to entertain all of us. Even if most of his films were considered B-movies they had a lot of heart, and he always dreamed one day to do an A-List film like Hitchcock or Welles, that would garner critical acclaim.

William Castle Hitchcock — **William Castle has been referred to as The Poor Man’s Hitchcock..**

He certainly had a great eye for artistic property, considering he spotted the story for what would become The Lady From Shanghai (1947)

He found the novel and obtained the rights to, ‘If I Should Die Before I Wake’, bringing it to his new friend Orson Welles at Columbia. Yet ultimately Cohn insisted on having Welles direct the story which turned into the classic Film Noir paragon with Rita Hayworth. Castle was sad about this, but ultimately knew Welles would do an incredible job and thus settled into being co-director on that film. I wonder how many people realize that he was associated with that iconic piece of noir?

Then, seeing Hitchcock’s success with Robert Bloch’s Psycho (who borrowed a little from Castle’s ballyhoo to concocted his own gimmickry to get the audience to line up around the block) Castle took writer Robb White’s gender bending psycho thriller story and turned it into Homicidal (1961) in response to Hitchcock’s ‘deviant’ genre hit. He drew from the same master of the macabre, Robert Bloch (Psycho 1960) which fueled the graphic shocker Strait-Jacket (1964) with Joan Crawford once again in response to the success of Aldrich’s What Ever Happened To Baby Jane (1962) Eventually Castle spotting the greatness in Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby!

Farrow and Castle's cameo — *Mia Farrow* standing in the phone booth and *Castle’s* cameo outside the phone booth, appearing a little like the nefarious Dr Saperstein.

Purchasing the rights to Ira Levin’s script ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ a film which came the closest to elevating him from The Carnival Barker/Maestro of Schlock to Cinema Auter. He wanted so badly to direct himself but Robert Evans head of Paramount at the time insisted on having the young and wildly imaginative director Roman Polanski take the reigns.

But Bill was gracious once he saw Polanski’s vision. And so he did what he was great at and facilitated the film’s process from behind the scenes, trying to keep things moving within the studio’s budget and time constraints. Let’s just say their collaboration created one of THE most gripping pieces of film-making in cinematic history, and my favorite film of all time. Rosemary’s Baby is an irrepressible and timeless masterpiece that transcends any genre.

And I’ll talk about that in depth during the upcoming William Castle Blogathon, with my entry Back Story: What Ever Happened to William Castle’s Baby?

And I wish we hadn’t lost him at age 63. Although he started having doubts about his contribution to the art of film-making, the relevance of all his showmanship, and the fan’s lives he imprinted his trademark on, he would have seen how much of a precious legacy he left behind and how we all still gravitate to his pictures with the same enthusiasm. There’s so many of us who appreciate him and understand that there would be a gaping hole in history if he hadn’t headed out to Hollywood to follow his dream with his incomparable brand of hutzpah!

Even if you’re not familiar with William Castle’s work, you’d be surprised at how much his bigger-than-life presence had influenced Hollywood, and the actors, film-makers and writers he crossed paths with. He was beloved and still is. His stories are fascinating, real or inflated with just a little spice and embellishment about his experiences in the business. He touched so many lives with his exuberant lust for ideas and blithe spirit, always looking for that applause, just an overgrown happy kid.

I could watch his films over and over. They just never gets stale for me and the high spirited imaginings that radiate from all his pictures taps into that nostalgic adrenaline that flows through my veins.

From his first encounter with Bela Lugosi as a young man who went to see Dracula on stage repeatedly, to meeting the wonderful Everette Sloane who was working with Orson Welles in the theatre, to being suddenly thrown into the midst of great stars like Barbara Stanwyck and Cary Grant when he first got to Hollywood, his life is as interesting as any good melodrama.

Everette Sloane The Fever Twilight Zone — **the great character actor *Everett Sloan* in The Fever episode of The Twilight Zone**

Castle, Stanwyck and Bochner — *William Castle*, *Barbara Stanwyck* and *Lloyd Bochner* on the set of The Night Walker

He ingratiated himself into working under director George Stevens on the classic Penny Serenade and actually got along with Columbia Studio head Harry Cohn who was considered to be up in the there in the ranks of ornery with Hitler and Mussolini! And he was even controlled and bullied by Joan Crawford on the set of Strait-Jacket as he struggled to appease her every whim. But he always remained gracious and kind to everybody.

Grant (Penny Serenade) — **A scene with *Irene Dunne* and *Cary Grant* in *George Steven’s* Penny Serenade with *William Castle* as director of dialogue?**

Van Johnson Mia Farrow Joan Crawford Roman Polanski William Castle+premiere of Strait-Jacket 1964) — ***Van Johnson, Mia Farrow, Joan Crawford, Roman Polanski* and *William Castle***

grant-crawford-castle-ireland_opt — *Cary Grant, Joan Crawford, John Ireland* and *Bill Castle* on the set of ‘I Saw What You Did’

infamous Columbia studio head *Harry Cohn*

So get hold of a copy of this great book, and here’s to the man who started out as an orphan in New York. A man who just didn’t fit in and was teased at camp until he showed that he had the unusual talent of being double jointed. Then he was touted as ‘The Spider’ saving him from constant beatings and turning him onto the lure of applause and circus side show ballyhoo. That endearing and infectious charm made the great Bela Lugosi, while acting in the stage production of Dracula, give him his first break in theater.

Eventually he met actor Everett Sloane and had the moxie to arrange a meeting with new sensation, Orson Welles. He impressed the artistically distilled cigar smoker so much that he convinced Welles to let him take over his Stoney Creek Theater in Connecticut while he left to film Citizen Kane.

Castle adopted the ritual of smoking a big fatty from watching Welles pace the floor with one. Castle had a ‘twinkle in his eye’ and that taste for risk-taking, pulling a play out of thin air over a long weekend. He made up aÂ pseudonym of a famous German Playwright, gave it a German title translated into ‘Not For Children’ and got one of Germany’s top actresses Ellen Schwanneke (Madchen in Uniform) to star in it.

Ultimately he carried off a publicity stunt that went as far as sending a telegram to Germany telling Adolf Hitler himself that ‘his’ actress would not be coming back to Nazi Germany. Thanks to Bill Castle, Schwanneke became known in the press as the ‘girl who said NO to Hitler…’

That solidified the beginnings of his career and gave him the momentum that would launch him into the world of that grand ‘show business’ and into our collective hearts.

And that’s just the first few chapters…!

With love to dear Bill Castle- From Joey (MonsterGirl)

Step Right Up! We’re Gonna Scare the Pants Off America: The William Castle Blogathon is on it’s way to a theater near you! July 29th- August 2nd, 2013

THE WILLIAM CASTLE BLOGATHON

“I think he was a wonderful director. He followed his dreams, and after all he was right.”–Marcel Marceau

On July 29th 1959 American Producer/Director & Screenwriter William Castle premiered (click on link to read my past post) The Tingler in the US to theater goers. The audience had the underside of their seats rigged with electric buzzers which were activated at the moment Vincent Price cautions them “Ladies and gentlemen, please do not panic. But scream! Scream for your lives! The stunt was named ‘Percepto’ and once the projectionist got his cue to let the current rip, people in the audience got a mild jolt to their tuchus and their money’s worth of chills and thrills!

The urbane Vincent Price plays Dr. Warren Chapin a man driven by a curiosity to find out the source of the mysteriously evil force that creates the SENSATION of fear. He discovers an organism called"¦ The Tingler which manifests itself at the base of the spine when one is experiencing abject fear. The Tingler can only be subdued by the act of screaming.

In his memoirs Step Right Up! I’m Gonna Scare the Pants Off America he talks about the people who got their gluteus maximus’ buzzed with a small electric shock. Castle went as far as to hire fake “screamers and fainters” that he planted in the audience who would then be carted away on a gurney by “nurses” who were situated out in the lobby ready to put them in an ambulance parked outside the theater. This gimmick definitely outshines the last publicity scheme for his first chiller film touted with fanfare in which he offered a certificate for a $1,000 life insurance policy from Lloyd’s of London in case they should die of fright during his picture Macabre (1958) a film he felt inspired to make after seeing the success ofÂ Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique (1955)Â

Growing up in the 60s and 70s my childhood was filled with the sort of wonderful attractiveness William Castle’s shenanigans fostered in my yearning imagination. His films wouldn’t really be considered frightening by anyone’s standards today, but if you were a kid watching television on a rainy Saturday afternoon way back when, and suddenly you were thrust into a world where wearing whacky goggles would allow you to see wild ghosts wreaking havoc in an old eerie mansion in 13 Ghosts, or a disembodied hand rising up from a bath of brilliant red blood in an otherwise black and white landscape in The Tingler, or that moment when Nora Manning sees Mrs.Slydes the blind housekeeper who glides past her, a crone like harbinger of death, or those jaunty little party favors in the shape of coffins containing guns for the guests in House on Haunted Hill, with the added sensational musical scores and atmospherics you’d know the thrill and nostalgic glow that washes over you because William Castle made himself a presence quite like Hitchcock who was invested in bringing us into their world of fear and getting us excited about it!

Castle’s films have left an indelible mark on so many of us, not to mention the incredible movie stars and character actors who inhabited his memorable films, like Vincent Price, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Shelley Winters, Sid Caesar, Ann Baxter, Robert Ryan, Richard Conte, Julie Adams, Rock Hudson, Rhonda Fleming Robert Taylor, Guy Rolfe, Janette Scott, William Prince, Judith Evelyn, Audrey Dalton, Margaret Hamilton, Tom Poston and Elisha Cook Jr. and so many more…

Keep in mind, he produced my favorite film of all time, which I’ve been planning to do a major feature on down the road. The transcendent mind blowing tribute to paranoia and motherhood, Rosemary’s Baby 1968, thank god he decided to let Polanski direct, but still he was the man behind the masterpiece.

And Castle didn’t just do scary campy joyrides, if you look at his filmography you’ll see an array of film noir & mysteries like Hollywood Story (1951),The Fat Man (1951) Undertow (1949) series’ like The Crime Doctor & The Whistler, adventures like Serpent of the Nile (1953), with Rhonda Fleming. Westerns, television series and screwball comedies too like The Busy Body (1967) starring Sid Caesar, Robert Ryan and Ann Baxter , so if you’re a scaredy cat no worries there’s plenty to cover for everybody!

William Castle is one of THE most recognizable showman of film camp, purveyor of cheap chills, the maestro of gimmickry! In a time when the censors were becoming more lax and psycho-sexual themes were infiltrating the cinematic frontier, the trumpets were hailing Castle to step right up and create his own uniquely tacky ballyhoo! Sometimes kitschy, at times quite jolting and paralyzing, so many of us were marvelously effected by the collective tawdry Schadenfreude.

And so I got to thinking– geez it’ll be the 54th anniversary of that Spine-Tingling fun house ride of B-Movie schlockery and what better way to tribute the P.T. Barnum of Classic B-Movie fanfare than to co-host a blogathon with the witty and well versed Terri McSorley of Goregirl’s Dungeon.Â

Castle opens up The Tingler with this fabulous warning to the audience:

I was going to wait and announce the blogathon officially on May 31st which will be the anniversary of Castle’s death in 1977, but we all seem so excited about this, I thought I better get on it and post the details and start the Tingler climbing up our proverbial collective spines! And what a great bunch contributing too!

In honor of The Tingler’s 54th anniversary

The William Castle Blogathon runs from July 29th through August 2nd, 2013 and is Co-hosted by Joey (MonsterGirl) of The Last Drive In and Terri of Goregirl’s Dungeon.

The list of films and contributors are below: We’ll narrow down the dates each person will publish their post a little further down the road. I don’t want to be too restrictive about films being covered twice as everyone has their own unique perspective. There’s still a bunch of films not chosen yet so please consider widening the scope of our celebration by tackling a lesser known film of Bills! All are welcome, if you’re interesting in joining the ride, please contact me!

Please grab any banners for the blogathon and use them on your site if you’d like!

There’s also no constraints on how long your piece should be. As you know I tend to be really long winded myself. If you have any questions at all, like if you’d prefer your name displayed differently please always feel free to drop me a line at ephemera.jo@gmail.com or leave a comment here:

The Spine-Tinglers Are!

(Lindsey)-The Motion Pictures –Tribute &

(Gwen) Movies Silently– The Crime Doctor & The Whistler

(Dorian) Tales of the Easily Distracted– The Spirit is Willing (1967)

(Vinnie) Tales of the Easily Distracted –Zotz! (1962)

(Stacia) She Blogged By Night –Let’s Kill Uncle (1966)

(David Arrate)- My Kind of Story-Images – Shanks (1974) & Masterson of Kansas (1954) and It’s a Small World (1950)

(Brian Schuck) Films From Beyond The Time Barrier– Strait-Jacket (1964)

(Joey-MonsterGirl!) The Last Drive In –House on Haunted Hill (1959) & Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949) & Back Story: What Ever Happened to William Castle’s Baby? (Rosemary’s Baby)

Furious Cinema–

(Kristina)-Speakeasy– The Houston Story (1956)

(Paul)-Lasso the Movies– The Tingler (1959)

Goregirl’s Dungeon – ‘The Women of Castle”, tribute to musical scores &

(Steve Habrat) Anti Film School –Mr Sardonicus (1961)

(Ruth) –Silver Screenings– The Old Dark House (1963)

(Rob Silvera) The Midnight Monster Show– Homicidal (1961) & House on Haunted Hill (1959)

(Aurora) Once Upon a Screen… – The Night Walker (1964)

Classic Movie Hub– The Busy Body (1967)

(Karen) Shadows and Satin– Mysterious Intruder (1946)

The Nitrate Diva– When Strangers Marry (1944)

(Jenna Berry) Classic Movie Night Ghost Story/Circle of Fear