Monster of the Day #1257

Updated on December 14, 2015 By Ken Begg 26 Comments

The old “Rig up a fake skeleton on lines and chase your murderous wife around with it until she falls in the acid bath” trick.

What an easy to use rig! And those lines are all but invisible!

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By Ken Begg

http://jabootu.net

Gamera977

Is it too late for me to add ‘Life-size Skeleton Puppet’ to my Santa list???
Gamera977

Jim Henson eat your heart out!!!
Eric Hinkle

Ah, William Castle. His movies never made a lick of sense but wow did they ever entertain you. SyFy Channel, why can’t you do stuff half as good as this?
The Rev.

To be fair, Homicidal makes quite a bit of sense. This one, I grant you, not so much. I do enjoy this one a lot, though. It probably would’ve scared the crap out of me had I seen it as a kid.
bgbear_rnh

My mother told me a story about seeing this film in Hollywood at the Pantages back when it was a new film and they had a skeleton rigged to fly across the audience and into the balcony where she was sitting.
kgb_san_diego

Man! What I wouldn’t give to have been able to attend Castle movies on premiere!
rtpoeman

SyFy’s primary mission is to fill 24 hours in the day with programming. Castle’s primary mission was to get butts in the seats at the Saturday afternoon matinee.
Rock Baker

EMERGO the process was called. Reportedly, it worked great the first few showings, but then patrons began pelting it with popcorn! I believe they stopped using the EMERGO skeleton by the time the film had finished it’s first run.
Rock Baker

The ultimate haunted house flick. I almost said “no bones about it” but I’m a card-carrying pun-hater. I had my fill from reading FM backissues as a kid.
bgbear_rnh

I was going to rib you for that pun use.
bgbear_rnh

Thanks. Love a verification of one of my mother’s childhood (teenhood) memories.
Flangepart

He’s just got a bone to pick with ya.
bgbear_rnh

but does not have the backbone to try it
Eric Hinkle

Wasn’t there a story that originally they used a plaster skeleton, until it fell off the wires and hit some poor guy right in the head?
Eric Hinkle

I hope this skull session is over.
Eric Hinkle

This is such a great movie. My favorite scene for some reason is the one where the young lady is in the basement checking for a secret door or the like. She looks up to see the old housekeeper just as she roller-skates right out of the room while the girl screams her head off. It always looks to me like something that should have been in a Three Stooges or Bowery Boy movie.
rtpoeman

I can handle skeleton puppets. What has always bothered me about this movie and others like it is: “Who keeps vats of highly corrosive acid in their basement?”
bgbear_rnh

Who delivers it?
Rock Baker

I’m not familiar with said account. I’ve heard only of the balloon version of the skeleton. An inflatable one would certainly be more cost effective.
Flangepart

Result of a missplaced and overloaded litterbox?
Eric Hinkle

I read it in one of those bad movie books by the Medveds. And further reading tells me that the plaster skeleton thing happened to one of the studio big shots when they were being shown the movie. Apparently they wanted to see how the skeleton thing would work.
Eric Hinkle

I could swear I remember reading something by Mister Begg covering this very aspect. Possibly it’s on his old list of great Halloween movies.

My own take on who keeps those acid vats around is ‘acid bath murderers’.
Cullen Waters

Wow, all this ribbing is great.
Ken_Begg

The learned dissertation was from my old comrade Andrew Muchoney. The whole article is brilliant, just put the link together.

http:// jabootu.com / muchoney2000 .htm
Galaxy Jane

Whether this movie as a whole is good or bad, I love the dripping venom in every scene between Vincent and his wife. Beautiful! The Tingler does the same very well. I am always surprised, given his movie couples that William Castle appears to have had a very happy marriage and family life.
Rock Baker

Very neat. I did not know that.

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