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It's another delightfully dumb Castle picture, juvenile and amatuerish yet an infinitely more professional production than, say, STRAIT-JACKET.
A middleclass family in economic straits has been evicted yet again from their home, their furniture re-possessed (all in that lighthearted '50s way), when they learn their mysterious Uncle Plato Zorba has left them a haunted mansion in Los Angeles. Naturally, they move in without hesitation.
The ghosts' enslavement is given minimal explanation, the threadbare plot makes little sense, and Martin Milner as the crooked lawyer needs a few more Stanislovski classes before his cruising down Route 66 or busting heads on the streets of L.A. will be convincing.
But as a vaguely pederastic shyster, he's the creepiest thing in the movie. He is, after all, the 13th ghost; he's the title character.
Strong points: The lovely music score and Joseph Biroc's B&W cinematography give the movie more dignity than it really warrants, Margaret Hamilton always gives good witch, and Charlie Herbert is a really cute kid in an obviously Capricornian David Archuleta kind of way and an excellent child actor; I want to take him home and burp him to stave off the 40 years of drug abuse that awaits him in real life... And how do you not love Rosemary DeCamp (who played everybody's mother in nearly every TV sitcom ever made)?
The movie's effectiveness is a result that eerily doomed early-'60s, JFK-era (give-or-take), end of the world, TWLIGHT-ZONE/PSYCHO, traumatized child, nursery rhyme thing. Nothing's "purer" in its innocent creepiness, even though the violence and gore are at a minimum. It's the poignance of post-war optimism mixed with utter doom, shuddery and forlornly macabre. Even when in the fumbling hands of a non-auteur like William Castle.
It's hard to believe that this silly movie was once spooky as hell (I defined it, as a child, as "the second scariest movie I've ever seen", both first and second on my list having been photographed by the aptly-named Mr Biroc, though of course I didn't know that then). But the high-pitched voices of the superimposed ghosts on screen once left an indelible impression on the more naive audiences of an earlier bygone period. For years, I used to get the meat cleaver murder at the hands of the ectoplasmic chef confused with the meat cleaver murder of Bruce Dern during the plantation prologue soiree of HUSH... HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE.... I think it's the cook's toque...
Again, the era helps. It feels like a cozy Halloween party, one in which a lot of the pranks and games don't quite come off, but you had a good time anyway and you're glad you went.
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But I've never viewed it thru the ghostly "Illusion-O" goggles.
The same house, by the way, is also seen in 1944's strange little gem, THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE.
I've also never seen the entire 13 GHOSTS remake from ~40 years later. Clearly, it's of a different sensibility.
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