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As his finances have dried up, Cyrus Zorba (Donald Woods) is more than
pleased to all of a sudden be the heir of a house, even if that house is
said to be haunted - even attorney Ben Rush (Martin Milner), who handled
the inheritance, warns the Zorbas. Because you see, Cyrus's uncle, the
original owner of the house, has been collecting ghosts all of his life,
and it's said he is keeping twelve of them in the house. There is also a
treasure hidden somewhere in the house, but nobody knows where ... The
first few days, the spookiest thing about the house is its housekeeper
Elaine (Margaret Hamilton) though, and despite Ben's initial reservations,
he has become a frequent houseguest and popular especially with Cyrus's
teenage daghter Medea (Jo Morrow) - then though Medea is scared shitless
by a ghost, and when Cyrus investigates, he finds a ghost viewer that lets
him see ghosts - and it seems the house is swarming with them. Soon
enough, Cyrus decides to take his family and move out of the house,
something that is only supported by Ben - who has behind Cyrus's back
searched for the treasure with Cyrus's son Buck (Charles Herbert), found a
definite clue and used the boy's gullibility to his advantage. He
eventually tries to kill the boy trying to press him to death using a bed
with a mechanically retractable roof - but in the meantime, the rest of
the Zorba family have held a seance with housekeeper Elaine, and she has
summoned the ghost of Cyrus's uncle himself, who now comes to the boy's
rescue and sees to it that Ben dies in his stead, this way becoming the
house's 13th ghost. But since uncle Zorba's treasure is now found, the
ghosts go back to their resting places (?), and the Zorbas experience a
happy ending. Durinmg his career, William Castle has made
several horror movies that might have been a bit blunt in approach and
old-fashioned in style, but very effective in execution - and usually
helped by some fun gimmick. 13 Ghosts though is one of Castle's
lesser horror movies, basically because its story seems a bit too
long-winded, far-fetched, but also predictable and most of all not fun
enough, its gimmick - a ghost viewer (basically another employment of 3D
glasses) allowing one to, you guessed it, see the ghosts on screen - is
not fun enough and only works half as well as it's supposed to, and some
of its macabre details - first and foremost the ghost of the headless
liontamer complete with a lion - are just too silly to actually come
across as even remotely scary. Now I'm not saying this film is a total
trainwreck, there are some fun scenes after all, but it's definitely not
one of Castle's better shockers.
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