Product: 13 Ghosts (1960)
Rating: 4.0
40 Years Later It's Still Campy Fun
If you consider this movie's age, it holds up right well! William Castle, the reigning king of spook movies in the late fifties and early sixties, was in fine form with co-conspirator Robb White in this spooky tale of a family inheriting a house and it's twelve ghosts. Someone in the house has been marked to be ghost #13. The ghosts are hard to see without the special 3-D lenses issued in the theaters, but the atmosphere is appropriately frightening.The dialogue is witty, yet wooden, and the acting is only as a film at this time could be---deadpan yet tongue in cheek. Margaret Hamilton plays the witch housekeeper, and she still looks like the Wicked Witch of the West. Martin Milner is cast in the role of the family attorney; Jo Morrow (I remember her from the delightful "Three Worlds of Gulliver") is a very pretty and effective ingenue, and Charles Herbert is a typical little kid, enamored with his ghostly surroundings. However, Donald Woods and Rosemary DeCamp as the parents are superbly cast. You can tell they were having fun with this, almost like they were in a community theater production.All in all, this is one of those great low budget classics from the sixties and scares without nauseating. Enjoy!