In 2010, my friend, Jay- from Film Reviews in the Basement , took part in a special story telling project hosted by the ghost of William Castle.  Every four days,a new chapter of the story (titled " Angel Island ") would be published on William Castle's blog .  Each chapter would be written by a different person.  A total of 31 chapters were written. Well, this year, William Castle is once again proud to present " Scare It Forward! "  This year, there was such an overwhelming response to his request for writers, that the project is starting early- June 20th, and continuing until Oct 31st. Due to the number of writers volunteering for this project, the ghost of William Castle has divided the writers into three stories of about 13 writers each.  Just like last year, a new chapter will be posted on the William Castle blog every four days. Not only is this a fun project, but I'll be taking part in it this year as well!  I will be writing Chap...

William Castle is well known for his horror movies- especially "House on Haunted Hill", "The Tingler", and "Homicidal", but he didn't start out in my favorite genre. Castle actually got his start working on Broadway in various jobs from set construction to even acting.  All of this experience would help him in the future when, at the age of 23, he moved out west to Hollywood and got started in the movie industry.  Even before he directed his first film at the age of 29, he'd worked with such people as Orson Welles as his assistant.  He worked on his film, "The Lady From Shanghai"- doing most of the second unit location work. In 1943, William Castle directed his first film- "The Chance of a Lifetime", which was a crime drama feature the character of "Detective Boston Blackie".  Castle claimed that he had been "saddled with a hopeless project", and in order to make the film watchable, he had to re-arrange t...

I'm going to go back in time for my first movie... all the way back to when Francis Ford Coppola was just starting out... back to 1963... Producer Roger Corman hired Coppola to direct "Dementia 13" right after shooting the movie "The Young Racers," with a budget of $22,000.00, and his friends acting in it for about $600.00.  The script was written in about three days, and shows in the slight stiffness of the dialogue.  When it was released in theatres, Corman insisted on having a William Castle-like "prologue", where a "professional psychiatrist" discusses the D-13 test handed out to the audience... in order to see if they were mentally fit to watch the movie. For me, this is one of my favorite horror movies.  True, the dialogue is stiff and awkward, and the storyline is a little confusing and disjointed, but under that roughness created by the short span of time used to write and film the movie, you can see the potential sparkle of a tru...