Capture the Castle

Emerg-O! Percept-O! Joan-Crawford-waving-an-axe-in-your-face-O! These are some of the tricks cult filmmaker William Castle used to lure kids into theaters and scare the pants off them. A Hollywood journeyman who mortgaged his house to fund his breakthrough horror hit Macabre, Castle established himself as a low-rent Alfred Hitchcock in the 1960s through salesmanship and sheer nerve. A Castle production wasn't just a movie, it was an event; plants fainted or ran from the theater screaming, skeletons flew over the audience, and nurses were standing by in the lobby in case one of Castle's B-grade spookfests, like The Tingler and The House on Haunted Hill, caused heart attacks. Castle's showmanship inspired a generation of filmmakers, including out director/producer Jeffrey Schwarz. Schwarz's documentary Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story is a quirky and charming tribute to the late great filmmaker, and one of the highlights of this year's Boston Underground Film Festival. Bay Windows chatted with Schwarz, on his way to the Triburon Film Festival in northern California, about Castle's continuing appeal.

Q: Congrats on winning the AFI Fest award for best documentary.
A: Thanks! We actually got another one this weekend at San Louis Obispo, so that makes three.

Q: And you're on your way to pick up another one!
A: I don't know. There's tough competition. But I'm excited because Tiburon is where Terry Castle lives, the daughter of William Castle. She's like a local celebrity now. So that's fun, and tomorrow we're going to record an audio commentary for the DVD release.

Q: You said earlier that Spine Tingler is a non-gay film with a lot of gay appeal. Tell me more.
A: Well, William Castle was an outsider figure, and those stories always appeal to gay and lesbian audiences. He was a guy who worked in the system but was on the outside of respectable Hollywood. He did these low budget horror films and didn't get much respect in the industry. But he was very successful and carved out a niche for himself. His peers looked down on him for making schlocky movies, but he embraced it and did very well for himself. At the same time he had the soul of an artist and felt like he never really got his due.

Q: He didn't work like someone who was part of the studio system.
A: He operated like an independent filmmaker in a way. He traveled the country with the films, toured with them, and turned himself into a personality and an icon. He turned himself into a brand name, basically. And of course he made some films that resonated with gay audiences.

Q: Hello, Straitjacket.
A: Joan Crawford past her prime, chopping people's heads off with an axe! That was definitely a camp favorite for years. And now my film will shed some light on what happened behind the scenes, and how Castle tangled with Joan Crawford and survived. And he also made a film called Homicidal, which was his response to Psycho. That was one of the first movies with a cross-dressing killer. It's a great movie. Actually, Michael Bronski teaches that film.

Q: Really? I was going to say that Castle isn't as well remembered as people like Ed Wood or Russ Meyer, but maybe I've got that wrong.
A: During his day he was more famous than any of those guys. He was as famous as Hitchcock. Of course as time goes on, things recede. Roger Corman was very successful, but he wasn't a brand name like Castle. When I interviewed Roger I asked him about that, and he said he would never do the crazy stunts that Castle did. So Corman was more of an auteur, I guess. Ed Wood was never a success in his lifetime. His reputation comes from being considered a failure. And Russ Meyer, well, tits and ass are always good. But if this film restores Castle to the pantheon of great cult directors ... I do hope that his films become better known to new generations through the documentary. I notice our audiences are very mixed. We have baby boomers who remember the films from when they were first run, and then there's younger people and hipsters. In Cleveland, an eight-year-old kid told me his favorite film is The Tingler.

Q: Maybe I've just never been taken with Castle myself. Seeing the movies on video you don't get the full experience.
A: Right. Occasionally the films are revived, and it's really something to see a Castle movie with an audience. I've seen The Tingler and House on Haunted Hill with the gimmicks and it's an incredible experience.

Q: Are you taking anything from Castle's playbook in promoting your film?
A: Definitely! I made a movie about the world's greatest promoter, so I had to be as shameless as he was. At our AFI premiere I ran around with a cigar, and a tingler on my back. In Boston we'll have nurses in attendance handing out life insurance policies in case of death by fright. We've reproduced the William Castle Fan Club card and we give those out at screenings too.

Q: You're clearly a fan of Castle, but why pick him as the subject of your first feature length film?
A: I wanted to make this for a long time. I grew up with monster movies and reading Fangoria and all that stuff. In the 80s I hooked into Castle because of John Waters, who's my favorite director. He wrote a sort of love letter to William Castle for Film Comment that described his crazy antics. And then the Film Forum revived the films and showed them with the gimmicks and I just fell in love with this guy's bravado. Over the last two years I found myself in a similar position to Castle. Before doing the horror films he was a contract director and didn't have much choice in his work. And I'm also a director for hire; I produce behind the scenes documentaries for the studios. And I love what I do, but those films aren't labors of loves like Spine Tingler. I really admire how Castle put himself on the line for his films artistically, emotionally and financially.

Q: So if Spine Tingler becomes your Macabre, what would you like to do next?
A: Well I have another one that would be of interest to your readers. I'm finishing a feature documentary about the first major gay porn star of the 70s, Jack Wrangler. He's an incredible character, another guy who converted himself into an icon. He was doing straight and gay porn at the same time, and ended up marrying a woman. It's an amazing story, sort of a gay Boogie Nights but with a happy ending. That will premiere this summer, hopefully.

Q: Were you able to talk to Wrangler?
A: Yeah. It's a little easier making a movie about someone who's alive! It actually took me ten years to convince him to do it. Finally he relented, and we started shooting the interviews a year and a half ago.

Q: For Spine Tingler, you did assemble an amazing array of sources and witnesses. Was it hard getting that access?
A: Well I have relationships with the studios, so a lot of that was just a boring matter of licensing. The families provided a lot of material. Terry Castle is the keeper of the flame, and she opened up her dad's archives to me.

Q: It also helps to have John Waters and Joe Dante in your Rolodex.
A: Yeah, I know these people from doing DVD work. But they would have spoken with me anyway. These people grew up with William Castle and they became filmmakers partly because of him. Especially John Waters. That's why he made Polyester with Odorama.

Q: Making extra material for DVDs is such a specific niche. How did you get into that?
A: My first job was doing a little documentary on the remake of Psycho. That was a foot in the door. This was in the late 90s when DVDs first hit, and the studios were hiring producers to come up with added value to get people to buy DVDs. I had actually gone to Sony about making a William Castle documentary in '98 or '99. They weren't interested in that, but they hired me to do a featurette for the DVD release of The Tingler. And then they hired me for another one, and other people started calling, and so on. So it really all started with William Castle.

Spine Tingler! screens at 7 p.m. on Saturday March 22 at The Brattle Theatre, and at 2:30 p.m. at AMC Theatre, both in Harvard Square. Tickets $8, Festival passes $75. Visit www.bostonunderground.org for more info.