page_title: Horror film
section_title: William Castle and Promotional Gimmicks in Theaters
hierarchical_section_title: Horror film / 1950s / William Castle and Promotional Gimmicks in Theaters
caption_attribution_description: English: Description: Low-resolution reproduction of ad for the film en:The Tingler (1959), produced and directed by en:William Castle, featuring star en:Vincent Price.
context_page_description: A horror film is one that seeks to elicit fear in its audience, for entertainment purposes. Initially inspired by literature from authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, and Mary Shelley, horror has existed as a film genre for more than a century. The macabre and the supernatural are frequent themes. Horror may also overlap with the fantasy, supernatural fiction, and thriller genres.
  Horror films often aim to evoke viewers' nightmares, fears, revulsions and terror of the unknown. Plots within the horror genre often involve the intrusion of an evil force, event, or personage into the everyday world. Prevalent elements include ghosts, extraterrestrials, vampires, werewolves, demons, Satanism, evil clowns, gore, torture, vicious animals, evil witches, monsters, giant monsters, zombies, cannibalism, psychopaths, natural, ecological or man-made disasters, and serial killers.
  Some sub-genres of horror film include comedy horror, folk horror, body horror, found footage, holiday horror, psychological horror, science fiction horror, slasher, supernatural horror, gothic horror, natural horror, zombie film, and teen horror.
context_section_description: Aside from 3-D technology, different forms of promotional gimmicks were used to entice film-goers into seeing the films in theaters. One great example is during the screening of 1958's The Lost Missile, a science fiction film in which scientists try to stop a mysterious missile from destroying the Earth. Audiences who saw the film in theaters were given "shock tags" to monitor their vitals during the movie. They were promised that anyone who would get shocked into a comatose state by the film would get a free ride home in a limousine.
  Film director and producer William Castle is considered the King of the film gimmick. After directing a cavalcade of B movies (low-budget commercial films) for Columbia Pictures in the 1940s, Castle set out on the independent route. And to help sell his first self-financed film Macabre (1958), he not only hired girls to stand in as fake nurses outside theater doors just in case anyone needed medical attention, he also passed out a certificate for a $1,000 life insurance policy to each member of the audience in case anyone would happen to die of fright from watching his film. This kind of promotional gimmick would later make him famous. Other gimmicks Castle utilized in his films include EMERGO which was used during the screening of his 1959 classic House on Haunted Hill starring Vincent Price. Throughout the promotion of this film, Castle explained that through EMERGO, "ghosts and skeletons leave the screen and wander throughout the audience, roam around and go back to the screen". Of course, in actuality, a skeleton with glowing red eyes was attached to wires above the theater in order to swoop in and float above audience members' heads to parallel the action on the screen. Another Castle/Price production was The Tingler (1959) which tells the story of a scientist who discovers a parasite in human beings, called a "tingler", which feeds on fear. In the film, Price breaks the fourth wall and warns the audience that the tingler is in the theater which then prompts the built-in electric buzzers to scare audiences in their theater seats.
caption: The Tingler, 1959: "Can You Take Percepto?"
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