Homicidal - Dir. by William Castle (1961)

William Castle, sometimes thought of as a low-budget Alfred Hitchcock, went to great lengths to give audiences in the fifties and sixties a reason to get excited about going to the movies. Whether this involved outfitting theater seats to vibrate (as he did for The Tingler) or issuing life insurance guarantees in case one were to “die of fright” during screenings of his film Macabre.

Indeed, the fifties, with the advent of 3-D (albeit bad 3-D), and CinemaScope, provided a number of things people hadn’t seen before. It’s hard to imagine a more energetic, crafty showman than Mr. Castle, who employed all sorts of gimmicks to get people in the theater.

His 1961 Psycho-inspired, rarely discussed film, Homicidal, entertains a subject matter somewhat more serious and less fantastical than those of his previous successes (The House on Haunted Hill, Thirteen Ghosts, etc.), and is virtually gimmick-free, until the end.

The gimmick Castle used this time around for this otherwise “serious” film is a warning delivered via voice over approximately forty-five seconds from the climax, in which the theater audience is told that anyone “too scared to see the end of the picture” may get up and leave. The voice then, with the aid of a clock superimposed over the paused scene, lets the audience know they have twenty-five . . . fifteen . . . seconds to leave.

It is said that when one percent of theater attendees actually did request a refund, Castle became angered and set up a “Coward’s Corner,” along with yellow footprints leading out of the theater, in order to shame those who dared not stay for the ending. It is also said that Castle may have had “plants” in some audiences, in order to add to the spectacle, give the gimmick some feeling of legitimacy. I can’t help wondering how effective, how feared, and how jokingly, audiences took some of these Castle tricks.

There are at least two scenes, and many elements, of Homicidal which will remind the viewer of the far superior Psycho; the film’s influence is obvious from beginning to end. That’s not to say it’s a bad movie, though. Castle manages to create some genuine tension and excitement, and even a few scary moments (that kid at the very beginning—tell me somewhere on this planet there’s another kid that creepy-looking).

I found this one on Netflix’s Instant View. A good choice if you’ve seen Psycho a million times and wouldn’t mind something relatively derivative but fun.



Check out this review of the 2007 documentary film Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story.