I Heart Horror: The Gimmick.
From Wearemoviegeeks.com: This past weekend, Netflix delivered me a documentary that I have been wanting to see ever since I missed it at SLIFF back in 2007. The film was ‘Spine Tingler: The William Castle Story’. For those of you that don’t know who William Castle is, I implore you to check out ‘The William Castle Collection’ that was recently released on DVD (click here to see it at amazon.com) which also includes said documentary. While the meat of the story is how a man who turned some B-Movies into Grade-A events at movie theaters by offering a thousand dollar life insurance policies to attendees of one of his films if they die of fright. While I have always been a fan of Castle and his gimmicks/promotions, this really made me reflect advertising of film past.
homicidalWhen films really started becoming mainstream, the majority of the films were carried by the actors and actresses who headlined or had top-billing for a film. While Castle never had this courtesy, he knew of a way to get people in the seats. He created gimmicks. Believe it or not, PSYCHO by Hitchcock had a gimmick of – which the documentary points out as well – not allowing anyone after the first 15 minutes of the film has been shown. William Castle’s audience participation gimmicks ended in 1965 with ‘I Saw What You Did’ where seat belts were installed in seats to keep you from jumping out of your seats from fright. His ideas made movie watching a bigger thing. He wanted you to experience the film, to make the film fun. He also showed Hollywood and other film makers on how they could promote a film regardless of the content and quality.
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via I Heart Horror: The Gimmick | We Are Movie Geeks.
