13 Ghosts (1960) Review

IT'S FUN TO BE SCARED BY 13 GHOSTS

13 Ghosts is a William Castle movie which means it comes across a bit cheesy by today's standards. William Castle gets a bad rap these days due to the gimmicky tricks he pulled back in the 50's to sell tickets. But I personally don't see the problem with it. He made movies into big events for people and gave them props to play with throughout (in this case they were 3D style glasses that were needed to see the ghosts). I recently went to an Evil Dead II movie party at an Alamo Drafthouse that was hyped up as an event, had props like foam chainsaws, was a total cheese fest, and was awesomely fun.

So now that we put the whole William Castle thing behind us... the movie itself wasn't great. The characters were supposedly poor but were clearly high class, the ghosts were slapstick funny when they were billed as scary and the ending was anticlimactic. There were some cool details, such as the glasses that were needed to see the ghosts (the same glasses the audience props were based off).

Overall, it's a fun classic, just not so memorable. It's like a popcorn family thriller (clearly what Castle was going for).

Worth Watching?

I don't think so. When there's so many great classic horrors to choose from there's no real need to burn 90 mins watching this. Oh, and there's also no need to waste time on the 2001 remake Thir13en Ghosts. I'd watch 13 a dozen more times before I'd watch Thir13en twice.