Reference/tribute to William Castle

Yes, especially House on Haunted Hill, where in the theatre, from someplace above, at a certain point in the film, a skeleton came out of the dark, above the audience . . .

You're right. As an original member of the William Castle Fan Club, he was always one of my favorites, with his schlocky gimmicks to give his audience their money's worth.

I recall sending off and joining his fan club by cutting a coupon from an old Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. I had two subscriptions -- one magazine never opened, all the way back to #1 -- and another that I read (carefully) and very rarely cut coupons from. When I left for the Army in 1964 my mother promised that she'd take care of that big box of FMOF, carefully packed away in her attic, even though she laughed at my insistence they'd be worth money someday. Almost 20 yrs later, when I bought my own house, I also discovered that a #1 FMOF had auctioned for a huge amount of money, so I called and asked her to send me the box.

Unfortunately, she had ignored her promise and let my evil nieces and nephews play with those mint old issues, and basically dissected them into barely recognizable pages. That box, intact, would probably have paid off my $150,000 house -- but now it's probably worth a few hundred bucks as rough "reading copies."

And so life goes ....