13 Ghosts (1960)

While I will mention the plot and the cast, while I will do my best to review 13 Ghosts in the same way I would review any other movie, a William Castle is a slightly different beast. The director was renowned for his gimmicks and showmanship, and it is important to bear that in mind when watching the films that best exemplify that (although it is good to remember that he also helmed a number of films that were a bit less sensational). 13 Ghosts was sold to people with the lure of Illusion-O and I will be getting back to that shortly.

Cyrus Zorba (Donald Woods) isn’t doing well. He is struggling to earn enough money to stop people from entering his family home, upsetting his wife (Hilda, played by Rosemary DeCamp), and taking away their furniture. Things look up when he inherits a house, one that may relieve the tension for his wife, daughter (Medea, played by Jo Morrow), and young son (Buck, played by Charles Herbert). The fact that the house is supposed to be haunted by numerous spirits is surely nonsense, right? Well, fortunately, there are also some special goggles that help people to see some of the spirits around them. 

While not on a par with his best movies (which both starred Vincent Price in two truly marvelous roles), 13 Ghosts is a fun time. I would have loved to have seen this in the cinema with the full Illusion-O experience. Patrons were apparently given a ghost viewer for the film, which allowed you to see or avoid the spooks, depending on whether you looked through the blue or red portion of the apparatus. It’s a simple way to filter the main image, and also allows Castle to present a number of phantoms that don’t have to stand up to very close scrutiny.

The script, written by Robb White (who collaborated with Castle many times), is disappointingly weak, but we know that it’s just a series of steps to move from one ghost to the next, perhaps even counting as we see each apparition. It lacks the wit and energy of other Castle movies, arguably hampered by the need to incorporate the USP throughout.

Thankfully, there’s a surprisingly enjoyable cast. Both Woods and DeCamp may be a bit weak, but they are often kept to one side as we spend time with Herbert (who manages to just avoid being too irritating as he happily seeks out the secrets of the house) and Morrow (who, to use a very well-worn phrase, positively lights up the screen). There’s also a good turn from Martin Milner, playing the lawyer who seems to be helping the family get things sorted, and a fun little role for Margaret Hamilton, with the most famous witch in cinema playing a housekeeper viewed as . . . a witch by young Buck.

There are good moments throughout this, even if you can see the strings moving things around onscreen, and the very last scenes are as devious and entertaining as they are predictable. I probably won’t revisit this one, apart from time I will spend checking out the wonderful wealth of bonus features on the blu-ray I own, but I enjoyed watching it while it was on. I have yet to see any William Castle film that I actively dislike. I hope things stay that way as I finally explore his other feature that I have had on my “to watch” pile for far too long.

6/10

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Noir-vember: Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)

Burt Lancaster is a cinematic icon that I fear some find far too easy to forget. You can easily recall his powerful physique, which served him well as a circus acrobat for many years (a role he recreated for film in Trapeze). That perfect grin is also hard to forget. He was like a more muscular Gregory Peck, a perfect figure often instilled with a sense of quiet strength and nobility (arguably used to best effect in The Swimmer). Sweet Smell Of Success has Lancaster in a very atypical role, compared to every other performance from him that I can think of, and it easily sits alongside his best work.

Lancaster plays newspaper columnist J. J. Hunsecker, a man who finds out everything about everyone, and has no problem in deciding whether or not others should find out that information. He can make or break careers, he can make or break lives, and he knows it. He also has a very willing assistant in the form of press agent Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis). Falco needs to get his clients mentioned by Hunsecker, which means he is willing to do numerous manipulative errands for him, and to hell with the consequences. But things get murkier and murkier as Hunsecker becomes obsessed with breaking up his sister (Susan Harrison) and the jazz guitarist she has fallen in love with (Martin Milner).

Based on a story written by Ernest Lehman, that drew from his own experiences as an assistant to an influential press agent and columnist, Sweet Smell Of Success is the kind of scabrous delight that has you appalled, has you grinning as you lap up the script and performances, and then has you wanting to jump in the shower after it, scrubbing the grime off your body that has been layered there while you have mingled in the company of Hunsecker and co. The script, co-written by Lehman and Clifford Odets, is a treat throughout, coating even the most spiteful exchanges in some honey that makes them go down all the easier. Or, to quote from the film itself, it's "a cookie full of arsenic".

Director Alexander Mackendrick was best known for his much lighter vehicles for the Ealing Studio, but does a great job here. I'm sure that Lancaster, who also had a producing role and a vested interest in the project, did what he could to shape and guide things, but Mackendrick was no malleable amateur, and he expertly weaves things together into a beautiful spiderweb made up of tiny nooses, all ready to tighten around the necks of different characters at any given point in the plot.

In case it wasn't obvious from the opening paragraph, Lancaster is superb in the role of Hunsecker. He may not have the greatest share of the screentime, but it is his presence and force of will that cast the longest shadow. Curtis gives a performance to rival it, although his manner is very different. Where Hunsecker is manipulative and smart, Falco is manipulative and also too desperate to play things as cool as they should be played, and Curtis portrays his character as someone constantly hopping from one foot to the other, desperately buying time with everyone around him (contacts, Hunsecker, people he is setting out to blackmail). Harrison does well in her role, and the brother-sister relationship at the heart of the story is one with disturbing undertones (considering how crazed Hunsecker becomes as he aims to constantly "protect" his sister), and Milner is perfectly cast as a good person undeserving of the attempted attacks upon his character.

As iconic as anything else that Curtis or Lancaster did, Sweet Smell Of Success is a pitch-black classic through and through. If you have yet to see it, do so immediately. If you see it and somehow don't like it, well . . . "That's fish four days old. I won't buy it!"

10/10

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