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SPINE TINGLER! THE WILLIAM CASTLE STORY

USA, 2007 (MIFF 2010, Flawed Geniuses)

Director: Jeffrey Schwarz

A loving tribute to the poor man's Alfred Hitchcock.

Remember when a movie producer could ride on a smile and a shoeshine and ballyhoo was as American as apple pie? This was when William Castle - the last of the great American showmen - transformed watching schlock-horror B-movies into an event. Buzzing seats, flying skeletons and luminescent ghosts were just some of the bizarre gimmicks cinema-goers experienced during William Castle's outlandish career as a producer, director and marketeer.

Filmmaker Jeffrey Schwartz chronicles Castle's entrepreneurial drive for success and notoriety, charting the quintessential rags-to-riches tale of the man Variety called “the PT Barnum of the nuclear age”.

“I just wanted to be taken into William Castle's world and live there.” - filmmaker John Waters

D/P Jeffrey Schwarz WS Automat Pictures TD betacamsp/2007

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