Castle was king of campy horror flicks

when it was released in 1960, Alfred Hitchcock's classic horror film "Psycho" came to theaters with a promotional gimmick of the old-fashioned ballyhoo variety.

A large standee with a photo of Hitch was outside each theater, warning that no one would be seated once the picture started and also urging moviegoers not to reveal the ending to their friends.

But Hitch was a piker compared to William Castle.

A veteran B-movie director, Castle became the king of horror hype in the mid-20th century, starting with his 1958 fright flick "Macabre," at which moviegoers received $1,000 insurance policies from Lloyds of London — just in case anyone died of fright during the movie. There were even nurses stationed in the lobby!

Castle's next project was the black-and-white Vincent Price classic "The House on Haunted Hill" (1959), which featured a new process, "Emergo" — actually just an inflated rubber skeleton that dangled from the ceiling at the moment a walking skeleton appears onscreen.

He followed that with another Price picture, "The Tingler" (1959), for which he actually wired theater seats for electric jolts — hailed as yet another new process, "Percepto." Actually, there were only a few seats set up that way, and it was really just a variation on the old handshake joy buzzer.

In 1960, he came up with "13 Ghosts" in "Illusion-O," a variation on 3-D with special glasses fitted with two rows of lenses — through which viewers could choose to see or not see the ghosts.

And in 1961, there was "Homicidal," which bears a not-so-subtle resemblance to "Psycho." For this one, each patron received a money-back-guarantee certificate — anyone leaving the film before the ending would receive a full refund.

Near the end of "Homicidal," the soundtrack picks up a heartbeat that gradually becomes louder and louder, then a 45-second countdown clock appears on the screen as Castle's voice explains that anyone who is too frightened to see the end of the picture should leave now!

Naturally, no one did. Genius.

Castle has often been characterized as a "low-rent Hitchcock," but when I was a kid, he was the king of horror movies. Oh, I loved Hitch. But he only made a couple that could be classified that way ("Psycho," "The Birds" … "Frenzy" if you stretch the definition of the word).

But Castle was cranking out cheesy horror annually. Sometimes two in a year.