Horrors! In the Spirit of William Castle

Terry Castle was still in her mother’s womb when her father’s campy horror film, “House on Haunted Hill,” starring Vincent Price, debuted in 1958. But Castle thinks her dad, famed B-movie horror director William Castle, would be thrilled to see how today’s baby boomers still embrace his movie. “My father passed away in 1977 when I was 19,” Castle said. “My whole life, people came up to me and said, ‘I saw “House on Haunted Hill” [as a child] and didn’t sleep for two months!’ ” Now a producer in her own right, Castle said the public’s nostalgia prompted her to call Warner Bros., which had wound up with the rights to the original, and pitch the idea of remaking the cult classic. Her timing couldn’t have been better, because “Forrest Gump” director Robert Zemeckis and “Lethal Weapon” producer Joel Silver were then in talks with the studio to form a film company that would make Castle-like horror movies. They even call their venture Dark Castle, which they created “in the spirit of the late William Castle.” This Friday, just in time for Halloween, Warner Bros. will release a new version of “House on Haunted Hill” starring Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush (“Shine”) on about 2,500 screens. Terry Castle, a 41-year-old mother of two young children who lives near San Francisco, is co-producer. Castle said the filmmakers avoided doing an exact remake of her father’s film because “it needed to stay sort of sacred” to its large cult following. A master showman, the cigar-chomping William Castle went to great lengths to promote his film in the 1950s. “He had a wonderful skeleton called ‘Emergo,’ ” his daughter recalled. “The projectionist pushed a button and the skeleton flew over the heads of the audience. Half the time it didn’t work and people threw popcorn at it. It was supposed to heighten the experience.”

NBC ‘50s Movie Still in Batter’s Box

Having already struck out once, NBC’s “Mr. Rock ‘n’ Roll: The Alan Freed Story” finds itself on deck this week, waiting to see whether baseball will bump it from the lineup again. Originally scheduled for Oct. 17, the movie--starring Judd Nelson as the controversial 1950s deejay--was preempted when the Braves-Mets playoff game that day ran 15 innings and nearly six hours. The movie has now been set for Sunday but would have to be delayed again if the World Series lasts a full seven games. While the fall classic only goes the distance about a third of the time, a second postponement would mean “Mr. Rock ‘n’ Roll” probably wouldn’t be shown until after next month’s similarly themed CBS miniseries, “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” which NBC clearly intended to beat to the punch. In fact, NBC has irked some rivals this season by ordering movies seemingly designed to undercut previously announced projects. A case in point would be “Mary, Mother of Jesus,” which NBC will air Nov. 14. CBS charged that NBC rushed the film into production to precede its version of the biblical epic, the four-hour “Jesus,” which CBS will broadcast in May.

Meat Loaf Gets a Taste of Synergy

At first blush, a new Meat Loaf tour looks like just another reheated dish of 1970s nostalgia rock but, on closer inspection, the 22-city trip that starts Saturday in Albany, N.Y., tells a different story--and offers a lesson in that all-important concept of “branding.” That’s because on this tour of the East and Midwest, Meat Loaf will share the bill with a television show--VH1’s “Storytellers,” which, along with the cable channel’s “Behind the Music” documentary series, has in recent years ushered VH1 out of MTV’s sizable shadow. How does a television show tour? Instead of staging straightforward concerts, Meat Loaf will re-create his recent appearance on “Storytellers” by leaning heavily on acoustic numbers and punctuating them with accounts of his songwriting inspirations, personal travails and the other insider perspectives that have become a staple of VH1’s programming mind-set. He will also take questions and requests from fans in an attempt to import the show’s casual intimacy to theaters. It may sound like a format gamble for Meat Loaf, but he gets a lot in return--namely, the cable outlet’s marketing machine. The singer will appear in no fewer than four shows that are airing on the network in heavy rotation this month to promote the tour and a new album culled from the original “Storytellers” performance. VH1 is also taking Meat Loaf to the Internet, selling tickets to the concerts, offering digital downloads of Meat Loaf songs and setting up live chat opportunities with the singer, who hit it big in 1977 with the mega-selling “Bat Out of Hell.” This is the first national tour for a VH1 show, but don’t expect it to be the last. “I would love to see us pull together a multiartist ‘Storytellers’ tour maybe for next spring or next summer,” says Wayne Isaak, VH1’s executive vice president for music programming. “We’ve also had thoughts about a ‘VH1 Divas Live’ tour. . . . It’s a great chance to expand our brand off-air. The odds of someone going to the channel on a Sunday night after seeing the concert is greatly enhanced.”

--Compiled by Times Staff Writers