13 Ghosts *** (1960, Charles Herbert, Jo Morrow, Martin Milner) – Classic Movie Review 1145

Producer-director William Castle’s 1960 chiller is just your usual routine old vintage horror hokum, but it’s very lively and it showcases plenty of crazy characters such as a headless lion tamer and the devious Doctor Zorba in a haunted house setting.

Alas poor, reclusive old Zorba is killed, leaving his bizarre occultist’s collection of antiquities and weird house to his penniless nephew Cyrus Zorba (Donald Woods) and family, including little Buck (the 11-year-old child actor Charles Herbert).  Very bad things promptly happen to them when it is discovered that Dr Zorba’s fortune lies hidden somewhere in the house and they are chased by the 13 ghosts but can find no way out of the ghostly mansion.

This time famous showman Castle’s audience-attracting gimmick is called Illusion-O. With the aid of pieces of blue and red plastic, the audience could choose whether they wanted to see the various supernatural forms or not. Though the blue filter did screen out the ghostly images, the ghosts were visible with the naked eye, without the red filter, and the movie played for years on TV with no viewer needed to see the ghosts.

Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz, appears here, very usefully if somewhat less sensationally, as the spooky housekeeper Elaine Zacharides the family inherit. As a nod to this, Buck refers to Elaine as a witch throughout the film, and the script implies she may indeed be a witch. 

Martin Milner plays the lawyer handling the estate who takes a shine to Medea Zorba (Jo Morrow), but he’s up to some trickery too. Rosemary DeCamp and John Van Dreelen are also in the cast.

This fondly remembered movie is amusing in its daft, antique kind of way, but it is not quite as inspired fun as Castle’s chef d’oeuvre The Tingler, with Vincent Price.

It was remade in 2001 as Thir13een Ghosts, with F Murray Abraham, Tony Shalhoub and Matthew Lillard.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1145

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