.
In a fabulous piece of news, on 20th October Sony Pictures Home Entertainment will be releasing The William Castle Film Collection. The set will contain The Tingler, 13 Ghosts, Homicidal, Mr Sardonicus, Strait-Jacket, Zotz!, The Old Dark House and 13 Frightened Girls – as well as the documentary Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story. There will be mountains of bonus material, including two episodes of the Castle-produced TV series Ghost Story.
In more great news, the latest additions to the Warner Archive Collection (an infuriating way of doing it, but least they are doing it) include The Terminal Man (hello-oo-oo, Michael Crichton!), Razorback, the Hammer version of She, From Hell It Came (oh, yeah!), and – YES, YES, YES!!!! – Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark!!!! Quick, everyone! – run out and buy it now, before they release the remake and rape all our childhoods!!
.
#1 by Read MacGuirtose on August 18, 2009 - 9:23 pm
Quote
Whoa, that’s weird… I registered and uploaded a profile photo on another site, and suddenly that profile photo is showing up here too… huh.
Anyway, back on topic, one of my own secret shames is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen a William Castle movie… this is something I really ought to rectify. (One of my secret shames; there are actually a number of other comparable or worse gaps in my movie-watching history as well…)
#2 by lyzard on August 18, 2009 - 9:32 pm
Quote
NOTHING surpasses the shame of not having seen a William Castle film!!
Read wins! 🙂
(The picture is a WordPress thing, I gather, but I’m absolutely not the right person to explain it to you.)
#3 by ProfessorKettlewell on August 18, 2009 - 10:30 pm
Quote
Yes…this is my Mea Maxima Culpa as well….
#4 by MatthewF on August 19, 2009 - 3:44 am
Quote
surely it’s impossible not to own a copy of the house on haunted hill? there was a time when I was wading through those at the bargain bin.
#5 by Ken Shinn on August 19, 2009 - 7:01 am
Quote
Is there any particualr reason why Macabre isn’t on the Castle box set? Rights issues, or something?
I mean, c’mon. It’s possibly his single best film (and Haunted Hill isn’t far behind)…
#6 by El Santo on August 19, 2009 - 10:43 am
Quote
“Is there any particualr reason why Macabre isn’t on the Castle box set? Rights issues, or something?”
That would be my guess. From The Tingler on, Castle worked mostly for Columbia, whereas Macabre and The House on Haunted Hill were released through Allied Artists. Most of the Allied catalog (or at least that part of it that didn’t fall through the copyright renewal cracks over the years) seems to have ended up with Warner Brothers after the smaller company went under, so Sony might well have been limited to the Columbia titles. (Columbia was The Old Dark House‘s original US distributor, even though Hammer normally went through Warner-Seven Arts in those days.) Say… If Warner does hold the current rights to Macabre, maybe we’ll see a Warner Archive Collection edition of it one of these days.
#7 by The Beerman on August 19, 2009 - 11:43 am
Quote
My enthusiasm for the Castle Box-Set is tempered only a little by the lack of “The Spirit is Willing” … Which means my search will continue for the formative meat-cleaver massacre that went so far in developing my taste in movies.
And has anyone here purchased anything from the Warner Archive yet? I understand they’re no-frills, but am still curious about quality of the transfer.