Product: 13 Ghosts (1960)
Rating: 4.0
A terrific example of what it is: a campy thriller.
In this day and age, watching an oldie horror movie can be quite amusing, especially if you happen to be watching one of the great B-movies of director William Castle, whose innovative gimmicks were the highlight for theater audiences throughout the late 50's and early 60's. Such movies as "13 Ghosts" truly are classic films, ones that are remembered with fondness and provide laughs for future generations accustomed to more sophisticated shock tactics.The story is quite simple, really: Cyrus Zorba (Donald Woods) works in a museum, mostly down on his luck, forgetting to pay bills and paying the consequences later. He gets to pull his family out of their impoverished situation when he learns that his rich uncle, a mad scientist who experimented with the supernatural, passed away, leaving him in possession of his large and luxurious estate.His wife, Hilda (Rosemary DeCamp), is not so enticed by the house, and becomes quite uneasy when it is learned that dear old uncle collected ghosts from foreign lands and brought them back to his home, a point the movie explains meticulously, without a care as to how completely and utterly ridiculous this explanation sounds. But that's all part of the movie's nonsensical fun, which escalates once the ghosts start appearing, and the mystery behind the doomed thirteenth ghost begins to unravel.In the days when film was beginning to take off, horror movies began to circulate more and more, and Castle was one of the first great masters in the scary genre. Audiences of today look at films like this and think of them as little more than comedic, campy fun, but those old enough to remember when such films were first released may not have had such a pleasant time. "13 Ghosts,"in all its silliness, stands as a symbol of times gone by, when horror movies were more interested at poking fun rather than poking peoples' insides.Castle was also famous for his theater tricks, and in "13 Ghosts," he chose a most interesting gimmick, certainly a wonder of filmmaking in its time. Audience members were provided with a viewer, known as the "Illusion-O" viewer, which would allow each spectator the choice of seeing the ghosts on the screen or not with the use of ectoplasmic photography. Certainly a bit of fun, and I'm sure such tricks lessened the scare quotient, making the movie more pleasurable.There's something extremely campy about a movie that includes such tongue-in-cheek dialogue as "Tonight, death walks again in this evil house." You'll have a good time watching "13 Ghosts," a movie that isn't anywhere near being scary by today's standards, but stands as a reminder of how much film has changed in the last half-century. It's an agreeably fun movie that gets its kicks from the tricky filmmaking and the laugh-out-loud lines and events.