The William Castle Memorabilia (Part 3)

And now, a message from the director of The Tingler, Mr. William Castle.

Today's post, which is presented in TEXT-O, is the exhibitor's instruction manual for the PERCEPTO gimmick for William Castle's classic film The Tingler!

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO IT!

Well, luckily I have this PERCEPTO manual, and now I will forever know how to "do it".

So, in The Tingler, Vincent Price is this semi-evil doctor whose main goal in life is to prove that a creepy lobster-like creature grows in your spine when you are scared. And of course, he calls this spine tingling crustaceany thing The Tingler!

INTERESTING FACT -- The Tingler is the first film to show the movie-fied effects of the psychedelic drug LSD in a scene where Vincent Price freaks out on acid. 

WANNA SEE?!? OF COURSE YOU DO!!

When they originally showed the film in theaters, the great William Castle came up with an almost completely insane (and hilarious) gimmick -- during a scene where The Tingler gets loose in the theater, the theater owners would SHOCK certain seats with a joy buzzer type contraption which he entitled PERCEPTO! Genius. I can only hope that one day I can be PERCEPTO'd.

As you can see, this manual was sent to all the theater owners by Columbia Pictures to show them how to hook up these crazy things to the seats. They were apparently powered by car batteries, and controlled from the projection booth. They were cued by a moment where the screen goes black and Vincent Price yells...

"THE TINGLER IS LOOSE IN THE THEATER! 

EVERYBODY, SCREAM! SCREAM FOR YOUR LIVES!"

There was another part to the gimmick as well. The theater would hire a couple of girls to scream and freak out, running around the theater and fainting during the "SCREAM FOR YOUR LIVES!!" scene. They would then be dragged out on a stretcher by a couple of ushers, while the audience freaks out, or laughs at them for being stupidly scared.

GAH! I WANT TO SEE THIS IN A THEATER IN 1959! GIVE ME A DANG TIME MACHINE, YOU LAZY SCIENTIST JERKS!

You can download the PERCEPTO manual for The Tingler HERE!!

Oh, and if you're looking for an early Christmas gift for me, well you can just go buy me a Tingler.

Enjoy! And don't forget to SCREAM!! SCREAM FOR YOUR LIVES!!

The William Castle Memorabilia (Part 1)

William Castle is by far my favorite film director. He made some of the most fun and entertaining films of all time and was a master horror filmmaker and showman. Most of his movies are some of my favorite films. He created gimmicks and a filmgoing experience that was copied by some of the more popular great filmmakers, including his idol Alfred Hitchcock.

By the way, Psycho would not exist as the classic it is if William Castle's House on Haunted Hill didn't.

Some of William Castle's most infamous gimmicks include an ILLUSION-O ghost viewer for 13 Ghosts, a $1,000 life insurance policy for Macabre, seat-belts for I Saw What You Did, and PERCEPT-O shocking seats for The Tingler!

Because he is my favorite filmmaker, I have collected tons of his cool movie memorabilia, and this is the first descent into that abyss of Castletoscity!

Today, we've got the giveaway coin from one of his few comedies, ZOTZ!.

So in the film, Tom Poston is this eccentric ancient languages professor who comes into possession of a coin with the word ZOTZ on it. Inscribed on the letters it tells him that the coin will give him magic powers to slow down time, cause instant pain, or death. Hilarious mishaps ensue at a magical rate, and it basically becomes William Castle's version of the Disney film The Absent-Minded Professor.

THE MAGIC WORD FOR FUN!

(and yes, I do own this poster)

It's not Castle's greatest movie, and it's far from his worst. It has some cool supporting roles played by Jim Backus (aka Mr. Magoo and Mr. Howell from Gilligan's Island) and the Marx Brothers' old lady comic foil, Margaret Dumont. There's also some cameos by super awesome 1950s/60s character actors Fred Clark, James Milholin, and Tom Poston's old comedy partner Louis Nye.

Instead of something as insane as shocking your butt every time Tom Poston yelled ZOTZ! (which would have been super amazing), the gimmick this time was the coin. They handed these things out to everybody who bought a ticket, and now I've got two of them, and obviously, they are ZOTZTASTIC!!

Well that's it for today, but check out the AWESOME trailer for ZOTZ! below!

ZOTZ!... Uh, I mean ENJOY!

Record #72 ½ - Sleuth/The Heartbreak Kid (Radio Spots)

Last week, I shared with you the soundtrack for Elaine May's excellent film, The Heartbreak Kid. The day after that, my awesome co-worker and super cool filmmaker Dean saw today's item on eBay, and I immediately bought it. 

And, well, here you go.

Today's item is a one-sided 7" record of two (although it says there are three cuts) Radio Spots for a double feature of the 1972 films Sleuth and The Heartbreak Kid.

Back in the 1960s and 70s, most films were shown on a double bill. To promote showings of the films, they would send movie theaters these records, as well as pressbooks. Unlike the way films are promoted now, it would be completely up to the theater owners to purchase radio air time and newspaper ads to promote the showings.

I've already explained the greatness of The Heartbreak Kid to you, but unlike that film, I have never seen and have no idea what Sleuth is about.

Let's find out together!

Oh. So, it's a Michael Caine murder-mystery thingamajig. Huh. Watching this with The Heartbreak Kid seems like an odd double feature, but hey... what do I know? I guess I'll have to rent this one out from work and try it out as a double feature.

I'll get back to you on that...

In the meantime, check out the two Radio Spots for Sleuth and The Heartbreak Kid!

Download the Radio Spots HERE.

Enjoy!

Article #1968 - The SKIDOO Program

Today's magicalness is the movie program from the classic Otto Preminger film travesty Skidoo.

Skidoo has gone down in history as being one of the greatest bad movies of all time. It's hard to believe that such a weirdly terrible movie can exist, considering the cast and crew of the Otto Preminger film Skidoodaly-doodoodoooooo. 

Sorry. I went insane there for a second.

The film stars Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin, Peter Lawford, Mickey Rooney, George Raft, John Phillip Law, Richard "Eegah!" Kiel, and Groucho Marx as a mob boss named GOD. It also features a groovy soundtrack by Harry Nilsson. Now, considering all that talent, especially almost all of the 60s Batman villains, you would expect a pretty great film, right? 

Well, sorry, but no.

You see, this is what happens when you hire old people to make a film about LSD.

Apparently though, Groucho Marx did drop some acid with Timothy Leary in preparation for his role in the film, which is kind of weird. I would love to be there and see what kind of quips he came up with while tripping. Must've been one hilarious party.

The movie is essentially one gigantic train wreck. Scene after scene, and line after line, it just keeps going and going and getting weirder and weirder. Right when you think it can't get any stranger, it laughs in your face and says "LOOK AT THIS AND DEAL WITH IT" and, well, you just can't look away.

Especially when Jackie Gleason trips on acid.

It is quite possibly the greatest scene in the history of film as we know it.

So here we come to the end, and I present to you the movie program from the film Skidoo and its run at the Alhambra theater in San Francisco. And it is pretty awesome, if I do say so my self. (And I do)

Enjoy! And anybody who don't like that, daddy, don't like chicken on Sunday!

The Girl in Gold Boots Memorabilia (Part 2 of 3)

Today's grooviness is PART TWO of the three part collection of my Girl in Gold Boots memorabilia. The piece we're going to be looking at today is the original pressbook from the 1968 Ted V. Mikels cult classic!

As you can plainly see,  the film was promoted as a BOX-OFFICE BONANZA OF GOLD! Oh, how I love the word "bonanza". I don't know how much money it actually made, but I highly doubt it was a "bonanza". Perhaps it being featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 brought it more fans, DVD sales, and money! At least, I hope it did.

As with all pressbooks, the whole thing is basically just a tiny newspaper that's sole purpose is to explain to you how awesome the movie is, and show you that if you put this film in your theater,  you will be rolling around in buckets of gold and rainbows from the mystical land of Figgleforth.

The pressbook also contains what I love the most about B-Movie/Exploitation films -- promotional materials. Possibly my favorite thing about these kind of films are the catchphrases and the taglines they come up with for the posters and advertisements.

"Vibrant... 

Unpredictable... 

She hungered for fame... 

The men in her life offered her 

love, danger, excitement!"

Pure genius. If you can resist that, then you are a much stronger person than I.

The pressbook also includes a few biographical articles on each of the main actors in the film -- Leslie McRae, Tom Pace, Jody Daniels, and Mark Herron. As far as I know, the main three characters are all still alive... but, I could be wrong. All I know is that I'd love to meet Jody Daniels, Leslie McRae, or Tom Pace... HINT HINT...

Leslie McRae did a lot of work in the 60s and 70s, with bit parts on lots of TV shows, such as Here's Lucy, Love, American Style, and Green Acres. She also had small parts in The Long Goodbye, the classically campy film Valley of the Dolls, and as Don Rickles' girlfriend in The Money Jungle. She had starring and supporting roles in some other films, like Ted V. Mikels' Blood Orgy of the She-Devils, Bummer, Wonder Women, Coffy, and probably the most popular, Paul Bartel's cult classic Death Race 2000. Her most recent role took place after a 30 YEAR absence from film and TV, in the 2005 docu-drama Day of Miracles -- which she also produced. From what we can tell from her IMDb page, she has been mostly producing projects since 1997, including the 2007 Academy Awards! WOAH. Mind = Blown.

Tom Pace mostly performed in TV, such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Mission: Impossible, and  11 episodes of Combat!. Ted V. Mikels seemed to like him, since he cast him in two of his other films -- Blood Orgy of the She-Devils and Astro-Zombies. He also had a bit part in the classic disaster film Airport, where he plays one of the passengers on the plane who makes concerned faces in the background.

Jody Daniels, being a musician-turned-actor, started out recording for Dot Records, putting out only one 7" single, and unfortunately, no full length LP. The only other movie that he had a starring role is in an extremely rare biker film entitled Hells Chosen Few, which was also released in 1968. He also had bit parts in the films Policewomen, High Yellow, and the TV movie The Eye Creatures.

According to this pressbook, Jody performed a song on an episode of the classic anthology show, Route 66. As a normal crazy person should, I decided to look this up on IMDb to find out and pick up the DVD. Unfortunately for me, IMDb does not list any episodes featuring our pal Jody Daniels. But, that didn't stop me. Since I work part-time at the world's greatest video store, CineFile Video, I decided to rent out a season of Route 66, on the extremely unlikely chance that I would find it.

As soon as I brought it home, I searched online to find the episodes on the DVD that were filmed in Texas, since the show usually cast people from the towns they were filming in. Well, as luck would have it, the first episode I picked was the one! I got about 2/3 of the way through, when a party scene arose. I heard guitar, the camera cut around the party, and there he was -- tight gray suit, clean shaven, slicked back hair, and playing the same exact guitar he plays in Girl in Gold Boots! Kablam!

Check him out in the scene from the Route 66 second season episode "A Long Piece of Mischief" in the video below! He's rockin' out in the background throughout the whole scene, but at about 0:45, there's a good look at him and that awesome guitar.

Of the four main stars, the one with the most intriguing life story has to be Mark Herron, who played the greasy nightclub owner, Leo McCabe. One thing that the pressbook only briefly mentions is that he had a role in Frederico Fellini's 8 1/2, which is now considered one of the greatest films of all time.

But by far the most interesting thing about Mark Herron is the fact that at the of the making of Girl in Gold Boots, he was married to super duper movie/music star Judy Garland! He was her fourth husband, and their marriage lasted from November 1965 to January 1969. They broke off the marriage when she discovered that he was gay, and apparently having an affair with her daughter Liza Minnelli's boyfriend and later husband.

Oh boy.

Mark and Judy -- professional smilers.

Another page of this pressbook promotes something that was never officially released -- the Girl in Gold Boots Soundtrack. Chris Howard wrote the main theme and other songs for the film, but many of the songs (including the theme) were sung by Larry Cartell. Other tracks were performed by Joe Valino and Jerry Wallace. Jody Daniels even wrote a song for the film! 

Now, for gigantic nerdy fans of this film, being able to find all the surprisingly super songs from the movie is like finding the holy grail of B-Movie music. Since the album was never released, it seems almost impossible, unless you're magical like me...

But that's a different post altogether.

Well, I hope you and your gold and blue fur bikini enjoy the pluperfect pressbook from Girl in Gold Boots. Now, keep your gold boots movin', uh huh! Yeahhhh you're lookin' just fine, yeah girl!

Sorry, I got carried away there for a moment.

Download the pressbook PDF HERE!!

And stay tuned for the super duper and unimaginably intense PART THREE of the Girl in Gold Boots memorabilia!!

The Girl in Gold Boots Memorabilia (Part 1 of 3)

Ted V. Mikels' 1968 film, Girl in Gold Boots, is one of my favorite movies. I wish I could explain why I love it so much, but I can't exactly do that. It's got everything you could ask for - action, music, guitars, motorcycles, girls, gold boots, gold bikinis, lips like sweet wine, a dune buggy, a Lonely Cowboy Santa, a draft-dodger named Critter, drugs, prison, a nightclub called The Haunted House, and a pretty miiiiiind!

Now, since I gauge the greatness of a movie by the amount of go-go dancing in it, this one is by far, the greatest film ever made. Take that, Orson Welles!

If you don't believe me, check out the trailer below and see for yourself!

As you can see, this movie rules. I was initially introduced to it by the awesome TV show, Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I am forever indebted to them for introducing this magnificent cinema masterpiece to me.

Since seeing it that first time, I've grown almost completely obsessed with the movie, and have purchased a bunch of memorabilia that this movie produced, and this (obviously) is the first installment of my ever-growing collection.

The item we have today is an original promotional flyer for the movie. Now, this isn't just your standard-issue rectangular, Kinko's produced flyer - this one is shaped like a freakin' GOLD BOOT. Oh, man. I am in Heaven.

CLICK on the photo to enable the ENLARGE-O-MATIC PHOTO EMBIGGENER®!!

Stay tuned for the rest of the collection, yak boy!!