The William Castle Film Collection (13 Frightened Girls / 13 Ghosts / Homicidal / Strait-Jacket / The Old Dark House / Mr. Sardonicus / The Tingler / Zotz!) by William Castle

Format: DVD

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Region 1 encoding. (This DVD will not play on most DVD players sold in the UK [Region 2]. This item requires a region specific or multi-region DVD player and compatible TV. More about DVD formats )

Note: you may purchase only one copy of this product. New Region 1 DVDs are dispatched from the USA or Canada and you may be required to pay import duties and taxes on them (click here for details) Please expect a delivery time of 5-7 days.

Product details

Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Yes
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01GWDXDZM
Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 5

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38 ratings

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J. Cook

Incorrect info re Subtitles (for those interested)

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 April 2018

Subtitle info on site is yet again WRONG!! This 2009 Sony set (UPC 043396272552) contains no subtitles what-so-ever. (Despite what Amazon state).

I have the USA R1 Sony individual releases of Strait-Jacket (UPC 043396069299), 13 Ghosts (UPC 043396065505), Mr Sardonicus (UPC 0043396069312), Homicidal (UPC 0043396069305) & The Tingler (UPC 043396077799). All of which came with subtitles but for some moronic release Sony failed to include them in this set. (Despite what Amazon says).

In the individual releases UPC nos mentioned above. Subtitles info was:
Strait-Jacket came with English, French, Spanish & Portuguese subs.
13 Ghosts came with English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean & Thai subs.
Homicidal came with English & French subtitles.
Mr Sardonicus came with English & French subtitles.
The Tingler came with English, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean & Thai subs.

13 Frightened Girls, The Old Dark House & Zotz were new to this 2009 William Castle Film Colln set & hadn't been previously released. So there is no way to purchase them with subtitles.

All 3 films (13 Frightened Girls (UPC 043396428966), The Old Dark House (UPC 043396410121) & Zotz! (UPC 43396410114) have been rereleased by Sony Choice Collection manufactured on demand DVD-R's. As has Strait-Jacket (UPC 043396437418) & Homicidal (UPC 43396428973) but none of the MOD DVD-R's come with subtitles either. But on the plus side, they are all region 0 unlike all the other previous Sony releases!

All five flicks from the original Sony William Castle Colln set were also rereleased on region 1 by Mill Creek entertainment (UPC 683904540430) at a very cheap price. This set comes with no subtitles either.

I should mention that the individual release of Homicidal did come with English & French subtitles (as mentioned above) BUT it was lacking the original aspect ratio presentation (1.85:1) provided in the WC colln. It instead comes with an inferior pan & scan Full Frame presentation!!

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Jeremy W. Newbould

Schloss Horror

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 July 2010

William Castle was the Phineas Taylor Barnum of the cinema - a director, producer and master showman who was just as famous for his promotional gimmicks as he was for his actual films. In some ways it was a shame that some of his gimmicks often overshadowed the films themselves because, more often than not, his films were rather good.

Although William Castle made movies in different genres he is probably best remembered for his horror films and most of the films in this great collection fall into this category. This set features 8 films that were made in Castle's heyday between 1959 and 1963.

Here is a brief summary of the films:

DISC ONE
13 FRIGHTENED GIRLS (1963)
Running Time: 87 Minutes
Colour
Starring Murray Hamilton, Joyce Taylor, Hugh Marlowe, Khigh Dhiegh, Kathy Dunn, Lynne Sue Moon, The Teenage Diplomats

This is just your everyday story of Candy, a sixteen year-old daughter of an American diplomat, who becomes involved in the world of espionage! 13 Frightened Girls is probably not the best film to kick off with as it see-saws between comedy and suspense (and not always successfully) with several deaths thrown in for good measure. This film is a kind of St. Trinians meets James Bond and is a bit silly at times but it is still quite enjoyable with a cast that includes Murray Hamilton (who went on to play Mr. Robinson in The Graduate and The Mayor in Jaws and Jaws 2), Khigh Dhiegh (from The Manchurian Candidate) and a young Alexandra Bastedo (who went on to star in the classic tv series The Champions and the cult horror film The Blood Spattered Bride). For this movie, cinema-goers were issued with 'Danger Cards' and they could claim a prize if the word Danger appeared on their card when it was dampened.

13 GHOSTS (1960)
Running Time: 84 Minutes
Black & White
Starring Charles Herbert, Jo Morrow, Martin Milner, Rosemary DeCamp, Donald Woods

Cyrus Zorba, a man who is on his uppers, inherits a big old house from his strange, rich uncle, Dr. Plato Zorba, who has recently died. As most of their furniture has just been repossessed, Cyrus and his family are keen to move into their new abode which is fully furnished and even comes complete with a creepy house keeper (played by Margaret Hamilton who was The Wicked Witch in The Wizard Of Oz). Unfortunately the house is haunted by various vengeful ghosts and it is not long before they start appearing to Cyrus and his family but are the ghosts actually real?

This is more like it - a good old haunted house movie featuring a gimmick called Illusion-O which involved members of the cinema audience using a special 'Ghost Viewer' which they were urged to look through at certain times during the film. Anyone who believed in ghosts was supposed to look through the red filter of the viewer and anyone who did not believe in ghosts was supposed to look through the blue filter. Of course this was another clever piece of trickery which no doubt helped to sell cinema tickets. By the way, in one scene there is a four-poster bed with a descending canopy that could crush anyone lying on the bed. This idea was also used in the 1974 Vincent Price film, Madhouse.

DISC TWO
HOMICIDAL (1961)
Running Time: 87 Minutes
Black & White
Starring Glenn Corbett, Patricia Breslin, Eugenie Leontovich, Alan Bunce, James Westerfield, Jean Arless

A blonde woman checks into a hotel on the 5th of September and offers Jim, one of the hotel porters, $2000 if he will marry her on the 6th of September. She tells Jim that after the ceremony the marriage will immediately be annulled. Jim agrees to the deal and after midnight they travel to the home of a Justice of the Peace called Alfred S. Adrims. As soon as Adrims has performed the ceremony, the woman pulls out a knife and repeatedly stabs the JP. The woman then flees the house and speeds off in Jim's car.

Thus the scene is set for this intriguing, if a bit too talky, psycho-drama that owes more than a little to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. This film contains quite a few surprising twists and turns and features the famous "Fright Break" that gave cinema-goers the opportunity to leave if they thought that they couldn't cope with the shocks and suspense of the final reel. I guess Dario Argento must have been impressed with Homicidal because there are certain plot elements from this film that crop up in his films Four Flies On Grey Velvet and Phenomena.

STRAIT-JACKET (1963)
Running Time: 89 Minutes
Black & White
Starring Joan Crawford, Diane Baker, Leif Erickson, Howard St. John, John Anthony Hayes, Rochelle Hudson

A jealous woman carries out her revenge on her unfaithful husband and his bit of crumpet by chopping them up with a handy axe (I guess she misinterpreted the term 'burying the hatchet'). The woman is then sent off to an asylum (well she axed for it, I suppose). Twenty years later she is released but, shortly after this, more brutal axe murders occur. Are these events purely coincidental, is the woman still crazy or is someone else trying to frame her?

This occasionally-violent thriller features a great performance by Joan Crawford who proves that she could scream just as good as anybody and look out for a young(ish) George Kennedy as a farmhand. Strait-Jacket also holds the unique distinction of being probably the only half-decent film that Lee Majors has appeared in! This film's influence can be felt in other horror movies such as Pete Walker's Schizo and Romano Scavolini's Nightmares In A Damaged Brain and some scenes from Strait-Jacket turn up in the comedy/horror film Serial Mom.

DISC THREE
THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1962)
Running Time: 86 Minutes
Colour
Starring Tom Poston, Robert Morley, Janette Scott, Joyce Grenfell

An American man called Tom Penderel visits Femm Hall, the ancestral home of his friend Caspar Femm. When Tom arrives he discovers that Caspar has met with an unfortunate death and is lying in a coffin. Tom then meets Caspar's very strange relatives and a series of bizarre events are set in motion.

This movie was a collaboration between William Castle and Britain's Hammer Studios and is a sort of cross between a Hammer Horror film and an Ealing Comedy but it is not particularly scary or very funny. It does have its moments though and it features a fine cast of character actors and an animated title sequence by Charles Addams but it is definitely not as good as James Whale's 1932 version.

MR. SARDONICUS (1961)
Running Time: 90 Minutes
Black & White
Starring Oscar Homolka, Ronald Lewis, Audrey Dalton, Guy Rolfe

This fiendishly twisted tale involves an eminent London doctor called Sir Robert Cargrave who receives a letter from his old flame, Maude, and travels to Central Europe to visit her. Maude is now married to the mysterious Baron Sardonicus, who must be the unluckiest lottery winner ever, and there is an ulterior motive behind why she has asked Sir Robert to visit them.

This movie contains many ingredients that will appeal to fans of gothic horror movies including a creepy castle complete with torture chamber, a sadistic, one-eyed servant, a bit of grave robbing and some leeches! The story features certain elements from The Phantom Of The Opera, Beauty And The Beast, Eyes Without A Face and The Man Who Could Cheat Death and the tone is quite nasty at times. There is an introduction by William Castle and he also appears towards the end of the movie to give viewers the chance to vote on the fate of the title character (known as The Punishment Poll) but, of course, they only ever showed one ending!

DISC FOUR
THE TINGLER (1959)
Running Time 81 Minutes
Black & White
Starring Vincent Price, Judith Evelyn, Darryl Hickman, Patricia Cutts

The King of Horror, Vincent Price, plays a coroner who discovers a weird creature that grows on people's spines when they experience extreme fear. The only way to stop the creature is by screaming very loudly but if this action is not taken then the creature can snap a person's spine and kill them. Out of all of William Castle's horror movies The Tingler is probably my favourite and it features some interesting and surprising plot twists. Let's be honest, any film that contains a scene where Vincent Price injects himself with acid (of the trippy kind) and another scene where he is trying to catch the lobster-like creature in a cinema has got to be worth watching. When this film was first released, Castle used a gimmick called Percepto which consisted of certain seats in the cinema being wired-up so that some members of the audience received a tingling sensation at certain points in the film when the tingler creature was on the loose!

ZOTZ! (1962)
Running Time: 86 Minutes
Black & White
Starring Tom Poston, Julia Meade, Jim Backus, Fred Clark, Cecil Kellaway

Professor Jonathan Jones is an expert on the subject of ancient eastern languages and when his niece receives a charm bracelet as a gift he notices that the charm is actually a coin which bears some ancient inscriptions. The Professor translates the inscriptions and discovers that whoever possesses the coin has the power to immobilise or destroy anyone or anything.

This is quite a strange film that definitely chooses to take the comedy route over the horror one. Try to imagine a cross between Bruce Almighty, Lucio Fulci's Possessed (a.k.a. Manhattan Baby) and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and you may get some idea of what Zotz! is like. William Castle is certainly having fun here and the movie contains a couple of in-jokes - when The Professor's niece goes out on a date to a drive-in movie the film that is showing is Homicidal and there is a sinister character called Mr. Bates which is probably a reference to Hitchcock's Psycho. Zotz! is quite amusing if you catch it in the right frame of mind and Tom Poston (who was also in Castle's The Old Dark House) puts in a fine comedy performance as Professor Jones. The films also features Fred Clark (who played a William Castle-type character in Hammer's The Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb) as a US Army General. I wonder if Dario Argento was influenced by the scene where a bullet is fired from a gun in extreme slow-motion because Argento used a similar effect in three of his films - Four Flies On Grey Velvet, Opera and The Stendhal Syndrome....

All the films in this collection have been remastered and are presented in a screen ratio of 1.85:1 and they all look fabulous. It virtually goes without saying that this collection is absolutely essential for any fan of classic horror films especially since it also features a host of extras including featurettes, trailers, two episodes of Ghost Story (a 1970s' tv series produced by William Castle) and a bonus disc containing Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story. Please note though that some of the special features reveal certain important plot elements (such as the endings) from some of the films so it is perhaps advisable to watch the films first.

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K. W. Wardle

A superb collection at American filmmaking at it's best!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 December 2009

William Castle was without doubt one of the best directors to come out of Hollywood, and this collection showcases his Columbia output of horror and fantasy movies from the early 60's. The set includes three films new to DVD and the old DVD releases of the classics, The Tingler, etc have ALL been re-mastered. There is an exclusive feature called Spinetingler - The William Castle Story, complete with audio commentary. I would have loved a Castle still gallery and maybe some gimmick repro's, but this is a superb set and a must for any Castle or Horror fan! Maybe Sony will release some of his western films in their Icon's series of DVD's, who wouldn't want a copy of Fort Ti in 3D? Maybe soon hopefully! Recommended!

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The William Castle Film Collection (13 Frightened Girls / 13 Ghosts / Homicidal / Strait-Jacket / The Old Dark House / Mr. Sardonicus / The Tingler / Zotz!) by William Castle

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