William Castle sure was a master of macabre spooky tales. My personal favorite of Castle's films will always be the delightfully eerie "House on Haunted Hill" (1959) starring the great Vincent Price, but Castle's repertoire includes quite a bunch of other immensely entertaining gems, such as "The Tingler" (1959, also starring Vincent Price), or this "13 Ghosts" of 1960. "13 Ghosts" may be as campy as it gets, but it is nonetheless (or therefore) great fun to watch. My only regret with William Castle's films is that it is not quite possible to see them in their original greatness, as Castle always came up with ingenious gimmicks in cinemas (such as a skeleton flying through the hall, directly at the audience, in "House On Haunted Hill", for example). Seeing his films in all their glory would therefore require a film technician and cinema owner willing to restore all these gimmicks, which is unfortunately never going to happen. But even without these gimmicks, "13 Ghosts" is a great fun flick that no fan of Classic Horror films should miss. Buck Zorba, a museum employee and family man with monetary problems inherits a mansion from his eccentric uncle Cyrus. Cyrus, a scientist whose field of research was the supernatural, had the strange hobby of collecting ghosts... Even though more fun than uncanny, 13 Ghosts has several eerie scenes, especially the film's climax is quite creepy. Other than "House On Haunted Hill", however, this delightfully camp spooky tale was in for some improvements. It is therefore too bad that the 2001 remake was a missed opportunity, and more or less a piece of crap that hasn't any of the charms of the original (Even more so as the "House on Haunted Hill" remake of 1999 was basically a tribute to the original, which made it very enjoyable). My advice: Stick with the original and have great fun!
Review of 13 Ghosts
