Category Archives: Film

Coming to DVD this Tuesday, June 21: SPINE TINGLER! THE WILLIAM CASTLE STORY

Jeffrey Schwarz’ tribute to one of American horror film’s great showmen premiered at the AFI Fest in 2007, where it claimed the Documentary Audience Award. During its run of more than fifty festivals, it received nine additional awards or special mentions. The film is now available for the first time on DVD with hours of bonus features.

William Castle cultivated press attention for his horror productions of the 1950s and ’60s by uniquely incorporating over the top gimmicks to try to stand out from the pack. Audiences found themselves wooed by devices like “Emergo” or “Percepto” – trick skeletons that flew out from the movie theatre’s ceiling, or buzzers hidden underneath patrons’ seats, activated at key moments. Like a vaudeville announcer, Castle built up his films, and his own career, with these tactics, but still felt underappreciated compared to more respected contemporaries like Alfred Hitchcock. Schwarz’s thoroughly entertaining and loving biography grants Castle the respect he deserves, putting his career, achievements, and even shortcomings in the context of the more innocent times in which he made films. If you haven’t seen films like THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL or THE TINGLER before you see this doc, you’ll want to afterward.

Coming to DVD this Tuesday, June 21: ORGASM INC

For my take on Liz Canner’s doc on female sexuality and the pharmaceutical industry, click here.

Coming to HBO for its cable premiere this Father’s Day (appropriately enough), Sunday, June 19: THE KIDS GROW UP

Doug Block premiered this exceptional look at father/daughter dynamics and the impending empty nest at IDFA in 2009. Since then, it screened at more than a dozen festivals, including Full Frame, Hot Docs, Dokufest, and Silverdocs, before embarking on a successful limited theatrical release.

Block continues to mine the rich terrain of family relationships that was central to his previous film, 51 BIRCH STREET. While that film focused on his own parents and just how much (or how little) he understood their relationship, THE KIDS GROW UP extends that analysis to Block’s own relationship with his daughter Lucy, whose life he has filmed extensively over the past 18 years. Documenting the last year Lucy spends at home before embarking for college on the other side of the country, Block and his wife struggle with the idea that their home won’t have children in it for the first time since they got married, and, frankly, that Lucy is becoming an adult. Revisiting decades worth of footage featuring Lucy from a toddler through to the present, Block constructs a truly remarkable and unique portrait of not only his daughter, but of fatherhood, aging, and the complex inner workings of family. Like the best of personal documentaries, THE KIDS GROW UP is able to move beyond the individual, specific story of the Blocks and tap into something universal that will resonate with all viewers on a fundamental level.