Product: 13 Ghosts (1960)
Rating: 5.0
Old-Fashioned B-Flick Scary Stuff
I was fortunate to be just old enough to see this film in the theater during its original release. This was a golden age of cinema when admission was 25 cents and an all-day lollipop was five cents, and the theater industry was employing all sorts of gimmics to draw patrons away from TV. (A particularly famous gimmic was stationing registered nurses at showings of "Psycho," to be ready for any heart attacks the movie caused.) And, yes, "13 Ghosts" had a gimmic, the little paper-and-cellophone tinted glasses one wore during haunted portions of the film. If you wanted to see the ghost, you used the red side -- if not, the blue side. At the end of the movie was a trailer hinting that you should try using the viewer that night, after you got home, in a dark room... there was no telling what sort of ghost you might see. That caused all the children to want to keep their little viewers, and I amusingly remember the anxious theater manager standing at the door as we crowded out, flailing around as he tried to grab as many of the viewers back from the kids as he could (I hid mine in my shirt, but saw no ghost that night)."13 Ghosts" is a fun-scary film -- and it features one of the most stunning opening-credit sequences in all of cinema. Looking closely, it's easy to see how it was done... so simple, yet so effective. Enjoy!