I SAW WHAT YOU DID 1965

My not exactly unfounded opinion of gimmick-driven showman/producer/director William Castle is that he was the man with a Copper Touch: the genial, bargain-basement horror schlockmeister had the uncanny talent for making everything he came into contact with feel somehow cheap and derivative.

Take I Saw What You Did, Castle’s teen-targeted follow-up to the poorly-received Barbara Stanwyck feature The Night Walker (a film which, in nabbing the big-name star, he’d hoped would duplicate the success of Joan Crawford’s Strait-Jacket); its clever, harmless-prank-gone-wrong premise—which seemed to also anticipate the '80s trend in teen horror films—is actually a pretty nifty and original idea for a suspense thriller. But in William Castle's unremarkable hands I Saw What You Did comes off as a form of lukewarm hybrid: The World of Henry Orient meets “The Telephone Hour” number from Bye Bye Birdie, as envisioned as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Joan Crawford as Amy Nelson 

Andi Garrett as Libby Mannering

Sara Lane as Kit Austin

John Ireland as Steve Marak

Seventeen-year-old Libby Mannering (Garrett) lives way out in the fog-bound boonies with her parents (Leif Erickson and Patricia Breslin), kid sister Tess (Sheryl Locke), and a menagerie of dogs, ducks, ponies, and goats. While her parents are away on an overnight trip, Libby invites best friend Kit (Lane) over and the girls amuse themselves—as teenagers with names like Kit and Libby are wont to do—by making prank phone calls to strangers.

Picking random numbers from the phone book, they pretend to be mysterious “other women,” children abandoned at movie theaters, or merely poke fun at people with “asking for it” names like John Hamburger and Donald I. Leak. What sets the suspense plot in motion is when they start calling people and whispering cryptically into the mouthpiece: “I saw what you did, and I know who you are.” A harmless enough, all-purpose head-game that spearheads a passel of trouble when it just so happens one of their phone-victims (John Ireland) has just killed his wife and takes the call seriously. Dead seriously.

I Saw What You Did marks the film debuts of high-schoolers Andi Garrett (17) & Sara Lane (15).
Making Sharyl Locke (as Tess Mannering), 9-years-old and already two films under her belt, the show business veteran in this shot

So where does top-billed Joan Crawford fit into all this? Joan plays John Ireland’s wealthy, single, 60-something neighbor with the pre-teen babysitter name of Amy Nelson. Amy, whom Ireland has been carrying on with behind his wife’s now knife-perforated back, is part Gladys Kravitz, part Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction; so small wonder he’s beginning to show signs of having second thoughts about her before the film even clues us in on the nature of their relationship.

Crawford’s role is really just a high-profile cameo, but, Crawford being Crawford, she makes every onscreen second count by giving each of her scenes at least ten times the emotion required.

I Saw What You Did reunited real-life (clandestine) lovers and co-stars Joan Crawford and John Ireland, who had appeared together in 1955's Queen Bee.

I Saw What You Did was adapted from the 1964 novel Out of the Dark by Ursula Curtiss. I’ve never read the book, but I have a hard time imagining it having as much trouble establishing a sustained and consistent tone as Castle does with his film. Sabotaged at every turn by a distracting (and annoying) musical score better suited to a family sitcom or Hanna-Barbera cartoon, I Saw What You Did is a pleasant enough diversion, working in fits and starts as a light comedy and taut suspenser. That being said, the film rarely ever seems to be of a single mind about itself, and comes off like three TV programs spliced together to make a feature film.

Show #1 is a pleasant teen comedy of the Gidget/The Patty Duke stripe, comically exploring the social habits of ‘60s teens. Show #2 is one of those twisty noir thrillers in which lovers with secrets to hide keep playing one-upmanship games on one another. Show #3—the core premise of the film and most effective element (when it’s allowed to be)—the harmless prank that’s taken too far and goes dangerously awry.

Although 60-something Joan Crawford had no problem portraying a woman 30 years her junior when she subbed for her daughter in the soap opera Secret Storm in 1968, Crawford is said to have balked at the idea of her adoptive daughter, 25-year-old Christina, campaigning for one of the teenage roles in I Saw What You Did. Three years later, Christina (who clearly couldn't take a hint) hit the same maternal roadblock when she rallied for the role of Crawford's daughter in Berserk. A role that went to Judy Geeson. 

For all his faults as a director, William Castle, thanks largely to his eye for bizarre material and his naïve genius for mining unintentional camp in every performance and line reading; makes entertaining movies that remain watchable almost in parallel proportion to one’s awareness that they’re not really very good.

I Saw What You Did benefits from an engaging cast of youngsters and a genuinely suspenseful premise those of us of a certain age can relate to (with today’s caller ID technology, I don’t suppose kids make crank calls anymore…not with the sophisticated joys of cyberbullying and fake identities to distract them). Though conspicuously padded out and sorely lacking in as much Joan Crawford “realness” as I’d like, I Saw What You Did is situated somewhere between being one of Castle’s best (Homicidal, Strait-Jacket) and his worst (Zotz, The Old Dark House, The Busy Body).

Leif Erickson and Patricia Breslin as Dave and Ellie Mannering
Both are William Castle alumni: Erickson appeared in Strait-Jacket, and Breslin starred in Homicidal 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM 

As much as I’m entertained by I Saw What You Did, there’s no denying that frustration is as defining a characteristic of the William Castle movie viewing experience as cheesy promotional gimmicks. Frustration born of seeing one promising story idea after another given the blandest, flattest treatment possible.

I'm not sure whether it was ego or ambition that led Castle to invest his meager talents toward trying to emulate the careers of his idols Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, but whatever it was had the double-edged effect of motivating him to indulge his strengths (producing and promotion) while blinding him to his weaknesses (directing).

As I’ve stated before, William Castle isn’t a bad director in the Ed Wood vein, he’s mostly just artless and mediocre. In fact, had Castle not been so consumed with wanting to be one of the big players in motion pictures, I’m sure he would have found much more success (and considerably more respect) in television; a realm where mediocrity is not only encouraged but in most cases required.

William Castle - Master of Composition,  Blocking, and Framing
This kind of pedestrian, line 'em up, nail the camera to the floor shot would look right at home on 1965 television. Indeed, shorn of about 20 minutes of its running time, I Saw What You Did would probably have played better as a 1-hour episode of one of those suspense anthology TV programs so popular at the time

That being said, I’d be lying if I inferred that I don’t find some of Castle’s movies to be a great deal of fun. And by fun I mean disposably watchable fun in the way that B-movies and Drive-In exploitation films are fun. One enjoys them because, by virtue of their wholesale inconsequence, they give us permission to indulge the junk-food side of the cineaste appetite.

PERFORMANCES 

The stars of I Saw What You Did are the two teenage “discoveries” making their film debuts: Andi Garrett and Sara Lane. Speaking volumes about Castle’s directorial skills, the observable amateurism of these neophytes blends seamlessly with the caliber of performance typical of any William Castle production. In fact, both girls are engagingly natural in their roles, and awkward in ways both appropriate and believable to their characters. Little 9-year old Sharyl Locke, however, poses no immediate threat to the memory of Margaret O’Brien.

An interesting story angle centering around adolescent sexual precocity is introduced when the girls, intrigued by Steve Marak's voice on the phone, stake out his house in hopes of 
getting a glimpse of the "sexy" older man.

After hitting pay dirt with Joan Crawford in Strait-Jacket, William Castle hoped to corral her for The Night Walker, but she declined, having already signed to reteam with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? co-star Bette Davis in Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte. When Crawford got "sick" during the making of that film (sick of Bette Davis) and had to drop out, Castle offered Crawford, an uninsurable health risk, top-billing, and a $50,000 paycheck for a 4-day cameo in this little opus. 

Ever the style-icon, Joan Crawford's elaborate bouffant looks to have inspired
 the coiffure adopted by Gary Oldman in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

In her forays into low-budget cinema, Crawford took to wearing clothes from her own closet.  
This extreme example of suburban glamour (outsized  hair, scoop-necked frock, and ginormous necklace) calls to mind the Afrocentric glamour getup of another diva favorite: Diana Ross in Mahogany

Crawford’s character and story arc is not the major focus of I Saw What You Did; but judging by the intensity of her performance, you probably would have had trouble convincing Crawford of that fact. Because I’m such a Crawford fan, I think she’s wonderful in that camp, overarching way that typified so many of her late-career performances. I can never tell if she outacts the others or merely overacts, but every one of her scenes is charged with a tension and electricity noticeably absent elsewhere in the film.

"I'm going to give you a nice, stiff drink."
(followed by the most superfluous sentence in movie history)
"I'm going to have one myself!"

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Did I mention how much I disliked this film’s musical score? Oh, I did?…well, when the music isn’t doing its best to subvert and undercut the onscreen action, I Saw What You Did mines a pretty fair amount of suspense out of the mounting trouble the girls unwittingly get themselves into with their silly phone prank. There’s a brutal Psycho-inspired murder early on that could have been very disturbing had it not been shot so incompetently (thanks, Mr. Castle, I guess), and since Castle has such a reputation for derivative homages, a “surprise” murder in the third act comes as no surprise at all. Rather, it feels like a narrative inevitability that simply took a very long time in coming.

Luckily, Joan Crawford is on hand to provide the one truly chilling moment of the film.

Catching Libby peering into Steve's window and jumping to the conclusion that the gray-curious teen has DILF designs on her man, Joan (ahem, Amy) launches into a memorably violent assault and slurred-speech tirade that brings those "night raids" passages in Christina Crawford's Mommie Dearest to vivid, blood-curdling life.


THE STUFF OF DREAMS
I grew up as the only boy among four sisters, so the rare occurrence of a movie with a teenage girl as the protagonist was well-nigh a must-see TV occasion in our house. I Saw What You Did, The World of Henry Orient (1964), and The Trouble With Angels (1966) are all a kind of happy blur in my mind being that each was such a favorite of my sisters when we were young. I cannot even count how often I've seen these films, yet every time I see them it brings back memories of occasions when my sisters and I would sit around the family B&W television set and laugh.

Another reason I Saw What You Did holds such a special place in my heart is because when our parents were away, my sisters and I played similar silly phone pranks. Nothing as provocative as what's said in the film—and mind you, I'm not the least bit proud of this—but we'd call up pizza and take-out joints and place party-sized orders for addresses we got out of the phone book. The only variance I recall was to call strangers and pretend to be a radio DJ offering a chance to win a prize if they could answer a simple question (Q: Who's the sexiest male recording artist today? A: Tom Jones). I have no idea what prize we offered or how the hell we even got away with it, what with our kiddie-sounding voices, but in those pre-video game/internet days, we kids had to find our fun where we could. Ah, youth!

If in the final analysis, I Saw What You Did fails to live up to the level of thrills promised on this high-strung poster, it nevertheless remains, thanks largely to the deeply-in-earnest contributions of Joan Crawford, a movie I enjoy a great deal. Like one of those not-very-scary house of horrors at small-town amusement parks.

BONUS MATERIAL

Sara Lane & Sharyl Lock pose with one of the oversized phones William Castle arranged to have placed outside select theaters to promote the film. According to his memoirs, when the movie resulted in a rash of crank calls in the cities showing the film, the phone company had the prop phones removed

                                                                                           ZombosCloset.com

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I really hate the musical score for I Saw What You Did. Oh, I did? Well, wouldn't you know it; in addition to the usual William Castle gimmicks: intended but never used - seat belts for the prevention of you being shocked out of your seat; there was an actual 45 single of the vocal version of the I Saw What You Did theme song sung by a girl-group calling themselves The Telltales. Music by longtime William Castle composer Van Alexander, lyrics by Jerry Keller, a singer/songwriter who had a pop hit in 1959 "Here Comes Summer"  (which is actually pretty good). The song is about as awful as you'd imagine it to be, but since you'll have the instrumental version stuck in your head for hours after seeing this film, you might as well check it out with vocals HERE.

I Saw What You Did was updated and remade as a TV movie in 1988 (cue the fried perms and shoulder pads) with Shawnee Smith and Tammy Lauren as the phone-cradling teens. Brothers Robert and David Carradine co-star. 

I Saw What You Did, And I Know Who You Are

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2016

HOMICIDAL 1961

Warning: Spoilers, spoilers, everywhere! Only read if you have seen the film!

The late William Castle, schlock horror showman extraordinaire (The Tingler, Strait-Jacket, The House on Haunted Hill), wasn't a bad director so much as an artless one. His pedestrian, TV-bland style of moviemaking—if the word "style" can be used to describe merely pointing the camera at whoever is speaking and making sure it's in focus—flattened and benumbed the performances of his actors and tended to drain the life out of the otherwise intriguingly bizarre narratives that were his latter-career métier. In fact, the sole mitigating factor distinguishing William Castle's films from the formulaic, workaday B-movie mediocrity of, say, Roger Corman was the sense that lurking somewhere beneath William Castle's bland, middle-class nice-guy countenance was someone with a perverse, almost John Waters-like predilection for the grotesque and downright weird.

Unpretentious in the extreme (none of Castle's films give the impression of aspiring to anything darker than the good-natured "Boo!" shouted in the dark), and with nary a subconscious demon to exorcise, Castle was a seemingly decent man who was more a gifted showman than deep-thinker. But he is also a very ambitious man. A man inarguably more overburdened with self-confidence than artistic vision. Castle built his career on the imitation/emulation of his idols, Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock. But Castle's crude, over-simplistic approach to his material revealed that he lacked the aesthetics and innate vulgarity necessary to be a truly interesting filmmaker.

As fate would have it, William Castle, through sheer huckster's bravado and none of the genius, actually managed to carve out a more prolific producing/directing career than former colleague Orson Welles (Castle served as associate producer on The Lady from Shanghai). And in a twist worthy of O. Henry, after years of dogging Alfred Hitchcock's footsteps like an admiring, less-gifted little brother, the public taste pendulum had swung to such a corkscrew angle that it was eventually Hitchcock who wound up being the copycat: borrowing William Castle's low-budget/heavy-hype style for 1960s Psycho.

And while it must be said that both Castle and Hitchcock are principally beholden to Henri-Georges Clouzot for his 1955 horror classic Les Diaboliques (whose final frame beseeches audience members not to be diabolical and reveal the film's surprise ending to friends), Psycho's then-groundbreaking "No one will be admitted after the film starts" screening gimmick was a page lifted straight out of the William Castle hoopla handbook.

Which brings us to Homicidal, a clear case of "Who's copying whom?"

Joan Marshall as Emily

Glenn Corbett as Karl Anderson

Patricia Breslin as Miriam Webster

Jean Arless as Warren Webster

Euginie Leontovich as Helga Swenson

Richard Rust as Jim Nesbitt

Alan Bruce as Dr. Jonas

William Castle had slogged away for years, churning out crime programmers and private eye 2^nd features before ultimately achieving moderate notoriety and success (if not respectability) in the Drive-In/Saturday Matinee horror circuit. Thus, it must have really burned his biscuits when a slumming Alfred Hitchcock came along with the critically and publicly well-received Psycho, fairly beating Castle at his own game and emerging with his A-list reputation not only intact but reinforced. The horror gauntlet had been thrown down. Castle had no choice but to prove that he was still a game player in a field he'd heretofore had all to himself.

Homicidal is basically Psycho-lite: all the sturm with none of the drang. It's a largely inept, ergo wildly entertaining homage/rip-off of only the most superficial of Psycho's exploitation-worthy plot points and identifiable Hitchcock templates. All served up with William Castle's trademark bargain-basement theatrics and nonexistent visual style.

A sure-footed director like Hitchcock can afford to string his audience along for nearly fifty minutes before unleashing the big shocker moment. William Castle, not so much.

After an intriguing but amateurishly-executed prologue set in 1948 wherein a little boy enters a playroom and swipes a doll from a little girl who's no Margaret O'Brien in the crying department, Homicidal jumps to the present-day and embarks on the film's one genuinely effective suspense setpiece, a protracted sequence in which an icy "Hitchcock blonde" buys a wedding ring, rents a hotel room, and offers a bellboy $2,000 to marry her on September 6^th, the wedding to be annulled immediately after. All this leading up to Homicidal's big shocker moment: a brutal knife attack. All probably quite shocking for 1961, but the best that can be said for it now is that it matches in unintentional laughs what Psycho's shower sequence provided in screams.

From setup to dénouement, the sequence clocks in at a brisk fifteen minutes, and, primed as we are with apprehension by the non-stop allusions to Psycho and our own piqued curiosity over the cryptic behavior of the woman, Homicidal begins on a fairly suspenseful high note. A note conspicuously lacking once the story proper kicks in.

After an extended stay in Denmark (!), odd-looking Warren Webster, the androgynous, slim-hipped heir with the $10 million overbite, returns to his family home in Solvang, California, to claim his due inheritance on the occasion of his fast-approaching 21^st birthday. 
In tow are Helga, Warren's childhood nurse and guardian following the death of his parents, now a mute invalid after suffering a stroke, and Emily, Helga's striking but equally odd-looking nurse of mysterious origin and whiplash mood swings. Emily, whose manner is as stiff and brittle as her severe blond flip hairdo with fringe bangs, shares an ambiguous relationship with Warren (Friend? Companion? Wife?), which rouses the genteel suspicions of his half-sister with the dictionary name Miriam Webster. Nurse Emily meanwhile tries to rouse more than just suspicions (if you get my cruder meaning) of Karl, Miriam's square, square-jawed sweetheart who at one time was Warren's childhood bully-for-pay playmate. (Fearing his son not masculine enough, Warren's screwball of a father paid Karl to engage Warren in fistfights).

Faster than you can say, "We all go a little mad sometimes," local outbreaks of assault, vandalism, and long-winded elder abuse alert authorities of a possible connection to the stabbing murder that opened the film. A link tied to Warren, his inheritance, and all those around him who may or may not be exactly as they seem.

Emily having a particularly trying day.

Written by William Castle's frequent collaborator Robb White (Macabre, 13 Ghosts), Homicidal has the makings of a reasonably decent thriller, its potential submarined by the inadequacy of its particulars. Happily, for all us lovers of camp, William Castle's carnival barker instincts as a director never allow the film's wan performances, risible dialog, and dry criminal procedural to distract from what are obviously his foremost points of interest: Homicidal's two gimmicky hooks. 
There's the gimmick he could openly promote: the one-minute "Fright Break," which stopped the film and allowed audience members too frightened to see the finale an opportunity to flee the theater and get their money back (but only after suffering the indignity of sitting in the "Coward's Corner" in the lobby). Then there's the "surprise" gimmick which raises the stakes of Psycho's cross-dressing twist, pulls a Christine Jorgensen reversal, and introduces movie audiences (a first?) to the "Ripped from today's headlines!" sensationalism of gender reassignment surgery.

William Castle assigned TV actress Joan Marshall the gender-neutral name of
Jean Arless to better conceal Homicidal's twist ending

William Castle was responsible for some of the oddest films to come out of the '50s and '60s. When they were silly, essentially one-note genre programmers like The Tingler, Castle's barely-above-average B-movie skills were a perfect match for the minimal demands of both the audience and the stories themselves. But as Paramount head of production, Robert Evans knew when he wrested Rosemary's Baby from Castle and handed it over to Roman Polanski; Castle's uninspired directing style is woefully ill-suited to anything requiring an understanding of things like editing, pacing, composition, the building of suspense, and the appropriate application of a music score. Homicidal is no Rosemary's Baby, but its compellingly preposterous plot is not without its appeal. That is, disregarding the obvious handicap of Robb White's terrible dialogue:

"Warren, what do you really know about her?"

"What do we really know about anybody?"

Homicidal cries out for a director with more creative ingenuity and a willingness to go to some of the darker corners of its twisted plot than Castle could muster.

I can't vouch for how all this played for '60s audiences (alarmingly, Time Magazine placed it on its list of Top 10 films of 1961). But behind some of the pleasure I take in laughing at Homicidal's excesses and liabilities, there's the nagging frustration born of an opportunity lost and potential squandered.

Emily's strong response to children and the topic of marriage is only vaguely addressed 

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

If you're gonna rip off Psycho and need a gimmick to pull it off, you'd be hard-pressed to find one as effective as the Warren/Emily gambit. Why? Because it's a gimmick that works even when it doesn't work.

The first time I saw Homicidal was when it aired on one of those weekend "Creature Feature" horror movie TV programs in my early teens. I was unfamiliar with the plot then, but right from the start, one thing stood out: there was something really strange about the actors playing Emily and Warren. Emily seemed carved out of wood, so angular were her striking features. And what with her stilted manner of speech and rigid carriage, she came across like some alien being trying to approximate human behavior. (Actress Joanna Frank achieved a similar quality when she played a queen bee in human form in "Zzzz," my absolute favorite episode of the TV program The Outer Limits).

Something about Miriam brings out the full-throttle biotch in Emily

Warren was downright eerie with his odd, immobile features and that robotic, disembodied dubbed voice. I knew there was something "off" about this pair and never once thought the roles were played by different actors. But having grown up on Some Like it Hot, Uncle Miltie, and a particularly disturbing episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour titled The Unlocked Window, I immediately assumed female impersonation was the gimmick and that Warren was an actor playing a dual role. I was genuinely surprised to learn that it was a woman engaged in the cross-dressing.

The exceptional thing about Joan Marshall—and you'll never convince me of this being an intentional acting choice on her part—is that whether dressed as a man or woman, what's compelling about her is that she never comes across as entirely "human" whatever the gender. Hers is such a disorienting, androgynous presence; she (and the brilliant work of makeup artist Ben Lane) single-handedly imbue Homicidal with the surreal, creepy vibe William Castle nearly buries under his bromidic guidance.

(As further proof of the enduring effectiveness of this gambit, as recently as a year ago, my partner watched Homicidal for the first time, and he too thought it was a male actor playing the roles of Warren and Emily.)

PERFORMANCES

Actress Joan Marshall is absolutely the best thing about Homicidal and the only reason I can still watch the film. Her campy performance may not be "good" by conventional standards (we're talking a William Castle film here), but in every aspect, it is oh, so "right."

In a cast of yawn-inducingly ordinary actors giving by-the-numbers performances, Marshall comes off as an arch drag queen in her Emily persona (she's like a proto-Coco Peru), and her Warren reminds me of Ron Reagan Jr. (only with charisma). 

I'd read somewhere that Raquel Welch had wanted to play both Myra and Myron in Myra Breckinridge, and actress Sally Kellerman sought the same in the stage version of Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Interesting ideas that make me think about how those roles rely on a degree of inflexible gender presentation. I remember many years ago when I saw Julie Andrews in Victor, Victoria, and came away thinking she was never very convincing to me as a man. Part of this was due to Andrews' limited range, to be sure. But it also had to do with the stereotypical gender signifiers I came to the movie with. I never asked myself, "What is a man SUPPOSED to look like?"...ironically, a question built into the film's themes. 

In Homicidal, Marshall may make a weird-looking man. But for the purpose of the movie's plot (the characters in the film have to unquestioningly accept her as a male), her impersonation is wholly successful, as she pretty much looks like any member of your average '80s punk band.

Handsome Glenn Corbett, in Homicidal's equivalent of the John Gavin role in Psycho, isn't given an opportunity to make much of an impression. Perhaps his photo from his early days as a physique model (circa 1955) will help to rectify that.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
What a difference a year makes. Psycho came out in 1960, and fast on its heels in 1961 came Homicidal. There's always been a thin line between homage, inspired-by, borrowed from, and just plain ripped-off, but Homicidal owes so much to Psycho, were the film made today, Castle would likely have to split his profits with Hitchcock. Here are a few of the most glaring similarities. Fittingly, the Psycho images are first.

                                                         Location Identification

The Fugitive Kind: Janet Leigh and Joan Marshall on the lam

Psycho's Laurene Tuttle & John McIntire in roles (and robes) similar to those later 

occupied by James Westerfield and Hope Summers 

Martin Balsam and Patricia Breslin apprehensively climb the stairs

                                   

John Gavin unmasks and subdues Anthony Perkins,
Alan Bruce performs the same duties for Joan Marshall

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I don't know whether William Castle intended to mask his shortcomings as a director behind distracting gimmicks and promotional ploys or merely use those devices to make a name for himself as an independent filmmaker during a time when the major studios dominated the marketplace. Whichever the reason, the fact remains that Castle succeeded—limitations and all—where many more talented and better-financed directors failed: he made entertaining movies and movies that endured. My personal favorites, Strait-Jacket, The Tingler, I Saw What You Did, and Homicidal, are more innocent than ominous. But they guarantee viewers a good time at the movies...an ironic good time, perhaps, but a good time nonetheless. 

Halloweenlove.com

BONUS MATERIAL:

Joan Marshall appeared on many TV shows (many available on YouTube) before making her "debut" as Jean Arless in Homicidal. She married director Hal Ashby (Being There, Harold & Maude) in 1970. Both she and William Castle appear in Ashby's 1975 film, Shampoo, rumored to be based, at least in part, on aspects of her life (for example, Tony Bill's character is said to be based on her brother). Although their marriage was troubled, Marshall remained married to Ashby until his death in 1988. She passed away in 1992.

Walking past a seated Warren Beatty, Joan Marshall as she appears in 1975's Shampoo. 

Joan Marshall stars in this 1964 unaired pilot for The Munsters. Network execs thought Marshall's Phoebe Minster (changed to Lily Munster when cast with Yvonne De Carlo) bore too close a resemblance to The Addams Family's Morticia.

This is The Fright Break! You hear that sound? It's the sound of a heartbeat. A frightened, terrified heart. Is it beating faster than your heart or slower? This heart is going to beat for another twenty-five seconds to allow anyone to leave this theater who is too frightened to see the end of the picture. Ten seconds more and we go into the house! It's now or never!
Five..four... You're a brave audience!

Copyright © Ken Anderson    2009 - 2015