Most famously, he sent crews to install vibrating motors in theater seats for his 1959 film, The Tingler.

Tickets to his first independently produced feature, Macabre (1958) came with $1000 life insurance policies in case audience members died of fright. As a filmmaker he is known as the master of the gimmick. A few years later, he leased a theater from Orson Welles and painted swastikas all over it to create a buzz around a play he had written in a weekend. Some here will be intimately familiar with William Castle, but for those who aren’t – as a tween, he goaded Bela Lugosi into giving him a manager position with the Dracula stage play.

This post will not attempt to expand on these elements but instead, aims to suggest that William Malone’s “remake” of a 1959 William Castle film occupies an important, or at least an interesting place in horror history. I’ve spent considerable oxygen defending this film’s creature effects, its shlocky acting, and its oddly paced, tensionless plot.

House on haunted hill (1999 cast)