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$1,000 Fright Insurance Policy
- Gimmick: $1,000 Fright Insurance Policy, from Lloyd’s of London. Each audience member would sign the policy in case they died of FRIGHT from seeing the movie! This marked Castle’s first promotional gimmick. This movie started the Castle gimmicks.
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May 24, 2011 · Gimmick: The brilliant William Castle gave the audience the opportunity to decide the fate of Mr. Sardonicus, with glow in the dark punishment poll cards. Thumbs up meant the ending would be a happy one for the evil Mr. Sardonicus.
- The History of William Castle
- The Gimmicks of William Castle
- 'Homicidal': William Castle's Greatest Gimmick?
- The Legacy of William Castle
William Castle, born William Schloss Jr, had spent the majority of his life surrounded by theater. After seeing Bela Lugosi play Dracula on stage at 13, he knew that fear and shock would be his calling. After getting a recommendation from Lugosi himself to work behind the scenes of the touring production of Dracula, Castle dropped out of school at ...
The real art of Castle's movies were not in the film itself, but in its gimmicks, the brilliant, wacky ideas of audience and cinema participation that would come with every movie. The gimmicks are what he is truly remembered for, even though he made many films and comparatively few had these gimmicks when you look at his extensive body of work. The...
Then there was the coward's corner and fright breaks of 1961's Homicidal, hearkening back to Macabre by taking preventative measures for us chickens out there. You had 45 seconds to leave the theater in case you didn't want to watch the scary parts, and you would be led to what is essentially a naughty corner for cowards, where you'd experience a s...
Castle-like gimmicks have faded over the years for many reasons, largely due to costs. John Waters offered scratch and sniff "Oderama" cards with his film Polyester, as a direct tribute to Castle. Festival screenings of Lucky McGee's The Womanhanded out vomit bags, "just in case." The only theatrical gimmick to sustain into the 21st century was 3-D...
- Features Writer
Feb 13, 2023 · Castle was notorious for the kind of gimmicks he used to promote films, creating memorable, silly, and interactive experiences for horror audiences.
- Contributor
Castle's big gimmick, dubbed “Emergo” (love the name!), was simply a skeleton on a wire which projectionists dropped over unsuspecting viewers during the film’s big shock scene. Again, the gimmick was only used in selected theaters, although it was recreated for a New York City film festival in 2010.
Mar 31, 2019 · W illiam Castle wasn’t the first showman to use gimmicks in an attempt to lure cinema audiences. Smell-O-Vision, Hans Laube’s patented practice of pumping odour into theatres, arrived in 1960, making its solitary appearance in the Cinerama classic Scent of Mystery .
Sep 5, 2014 · Sept. 4, 2014 3:15 PM PT. Producer-director William Castle was something of a P.T. Barnum. The master showman took out an insurance policy from Lloyd’s of London for his 1958 thriller “Macabre,”...
Nov 24, 2014 · On the 100th anniversary of his birth, we look back on William Castle’s go-for-broke approach to entertaining movie-goers, by shining the spotlight on some of his most impressive theatrical gimmicks. If you thought being handed a pair of 3D glasses at the theater was something exciting, think again…. MACABRE – 1958.
