He wasn't alone on this celluloid planet of fright and flight. His adversary was also a seasoned suspense director of some note, Alfred Hitchcock...you may have heard of him, if not you surely have heard of Norman Bates and his oedipal love of his taxidermied momma..in fact Norman was a momma’s boy with some deep psychological problems to say the least from a murderous temperment to transvestism.
So, to borrow an old vaudeville question..."who's on first?" Castle or Hitch? The line of demarcation is murky and muddled at best ,but in a nut case nutshell their comets collided at the same time. Although both had been doing suspense films at the time, nothing was to compare to what they were about to unleash in a battle royale of blood curdling terror.
Hitch had directed some sophisticated and highly cosmopolitan fare for movie goers to keep them guessing, if not on the edge of their seats. The one exception in my book was "Rear Window" with Jimmy Stewart and that nemesis of Godzilla, the equally behemoth Raymond Burr. While Godzilla crushed Tokyo, Burr was so large in real life that he could have threatened Tokyo by eating it!
Castle, born in 1914 was destined for Hollywood. He had the drive and determination and started out as an assistant to Orson Welles on various Welles films. As he mastered his craft he wrote, directed and produced such scream classics as Thirteen Ghosts, Macabre, Homicidal and Straightjacket among others. He also used theatrical gimmicks for his films such as fake insurance policies should you die from fright while watching his concoctions and the use of 3-D glasses to jack up the screams in 13 Ghosts. One of his film trailer lines for "Homicidal" was an admonishment to not reveal the outcome of the film to your friends..because.."If they don't kill you, I will..." now that's chutzpah.
Hitch on the other hand had been around for decades producing films in Europe and then in America, and much has been written about him so no sense going into it here. Needless to say he left behind a body of work that still stands up today as modern classics. However, his suspense thrillers were pretty tame and not necessarily qualified for the sobriquet of "horror classics" that is until William Castle opened the Pandora's Box of "don't spare the scare" on the film going public with the release of "House on Haunted Hill" where guests were invited to spend the night at a haunted mansion by a millionaire playboy, Vincent Price. If they survived they would be awarded a rather substantial cash prize. One of the outstanding characters was played by Elisha Cook, Jr. one of my favorite demento's with his "woe is me whoopee we're all going to die tonight" speeches.
The film was box office boffo and the crowds were around the block and the cash was in the bank. Hitch, not being one to be left behind in the dust of box office receipts saw the success and formulated his own virgin for offering on the sacrificial table of fear and terror. In a departure from the suave suspense thrillers with the likes of cock sure Cary Grant, he came up with an idea for a deranged motel owner with a hobby of taxidermy that not only preserved a variety of birds to adorn the motel office walls, but also his mother who had died and was now a stuffed bird herself with a shawl Norman kept sitting silently, and slightly mummified in a rocking chair in the upstairs window of the Bates Motel home.
Eventually Janet Leigh, yes, Jamie Lee Curtis' mom was the first scream queen with Jamie to follow in moms bloody footsteps years later. The shower scene was the visual highlight and the blood filled tub was actually chocolate syrup and you never actually saw the knife penetrate her..it was all in the mind along with the help of some excellent editing and of course the music...ree-ree-ree-ree..right up there with the theme from Jaws and Redrum, Redrum in later films.
It was a smash...now the battle was on and Castle took it one step further and produced "Straightjacket" with Joan Crawford about a deranged ax murderess who is released to her family after years of straightjackets and bizarre therapy and the murders started all over again..but was it her? I won't spoil the surprise ending. Besides if I tell you...William Castle will kill me..from the grave!
Hitch then went for the birds eye view of horror. Filming began in Bodega Bay in Northern California which produced the avian classic "The Birds" Now it gets interesting....the battle was on, but strangely enough this is were Hitchcock gets looney. In reality he had a crush on Tippi Hedren and when she wouldn't respond to his advances he treated her like last weeks leftover corned beef hash. She recently wrote a book about her misadventures with Hitch and gave a talk in Bodega Bay about it this year. Lets just say she was not fond of him.
Hitchcock is a puzzle himself. While Castle went for pure story line and diverse characters...Hitchcock was the definitive mama's boy masturbator. Psycho and the Birds had domineering mothers with sons who bent over forwards to take it in the ass to cater to her every whim. There is something bizarrely sexual in the relationships and downright necrophelia laden in the case of Norman Bates. ("A boys best friend is his mother" he says.) "Mother Norman" is upset over Janet Leigh who may give Norman an erection, something mama has been doing all these dead years. Norman then goes transvestite with an attitude and starts hacking up his possible love interest. It was if J. Edgar Hoover donned a dress and went chasing after Bonnie and Clyde in full drag with a tommy gun.
In "The Birds" mother is always critical of the women in her sons life, specifically Annie the school teacher, and Tippi who is new on the scene and poses mothers first real threat to her overbearing dominance of her son played by Rod Taylor. Annie is pecked to death by crows so was no longer competitive. Hard to entice a kiss when your eye sockets have been plucked clean and your flesh has been eaten as hungry and angry birds enjoy a human happy meal. In "North by Northwest" the character played by Cary Grant is ridiculed constantly by his mother...in "Frenzy" the killer hates women and kills them, but loves his mother beyond healthy boundaries. In "Strangers on a Train" the main character hates daddy but loves mommy..to almost obscene depths...women in Hitchcock films are handcuffed, pecked to death, knifed, or otherwise killed off or humiliated...I think the womens liberation movement would or should have much to say regarding Hitchcocks lust for mom and hatred of mostly blondes!!! Maybe it was the peroxide fumes that addled his brains...By the way...Karen Black, a brunette in the film "Family Plot" wore a blonde wig!!!
I think if I were a woman I'd rather spend the evening locked in a Haunted House on the Hill with Elisha Cook Jr. rather then checking into the Bates Motel. In a William Castle film....you can have your murder and mayhem ala mode and in 3-D too! In a Hitchcock film, blondes do seem to have more fun....if you have a death wish!