“Spine Tingler” is a lot of fun, if you like the intentionally over-the-top horror films of the '50s and '60s. But if you’re having trouble choosing between this documentary and something else playing at the same time, choose it only if you’re a big fan of William Castle’s films. For the rest of you, any 20-minute stretch of this documentary will supply you with several good laughs and some inside information on Hollywood and Castle’s marketing smarts to let you enjoy all the more “Straight-Jacket,” which will be showing outdoors tonight for FREE. Castle also produced a few “high-brow” films, but he’s known more for producing and/or directing pictures such as “House on Haunted Hill” and “Macabre” than he is for “Rosemary’s Baby” and “Frankenstein” (Boris Karloff version).
Anyway, what you learn from this documentary is that Joan Crawford was a tyrant on the set of “Straight-Jacket,” that she insisted on prominent product placement for Pepsi for her own financial gain, and that she had an extra scene written for herself when she feared the penultimate scene with the much younger Diane Baker, who plays her daughter, was going to steal the picture from her. This shows one more time: Sunday at 12:30 at the UB Student Center.
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