If you say William
Castle, you immediately think of horror films.
But before he became a producer and showman extraordinaire with such
horror classics as House on Haunted Hill, The Tingler, 13 Ghosts and Strait-Jacket,
he learned the craft of movie-making at Columbia Pictures under the guidance of
Harry Cohn and “Jungle Sam” Katzman.
Between 1943 and 1956 he
directed 40 films … and not a single one of them was a horror film. He did four films in The Whistler series (with
Richard Dix), a trio of the Crime Doctor (Warner Baxter) movies
and some gangster/crime films — Johnny Stool Pigeon (1949 with
Howard Duff, Dan Duryea, Shelley Winters and newcomer Tony Curtis) and Undertow
(also 1949 with Scott Brady, Johnny Hart, John Russell and another newcomer Roc
Hudson … soon to be Rock Hudson).
He also did Westerns,
really good Westerns, during this period and Mill Creek Entertainment let it be
known this past week that on May 1 they will be releasing as a double-disc DVD
set The
William Castle Western Collection: The Fastest Guns of the West …
collectors, film buffs and Western fans are already salivating at the thought
of picking up this beauty at the bargain price of just $19.98 (and that’s
before discounts at retail).
Included in the mix is
one of his first films at Columbia Pictures, the 1943 Western, Klondike
Kate, starring Ann Savage and Tom Neal, who would make screen history
together in 1945 with the film noir classic, Detour.
He then became very
active in the genre during 1953 through 1955, delivering Conquest of Cochise
(1953, in Technicolor with John Hodiak, Robert Stack and Joy Page), Masterson
of Kansas (1954, in Technicolor with George Montgomery as Bat
Masterson, James Griffith as Doc Holliday and Bruce Cowling as Wyatt Earp …
with Nancy Gates and Jay Silverheels) and Jesse James vs The Daltons (1954, in
Technicolor with Brett King as the “son” of Jesse James, Barbara Lawrence as
woman he saves from the hangman and James Griffith, William Phipps, John Cliff
and William Tannen as the Daltons … and Rory Mallinson as Bob Ford, the man who
shot Jesse James).
Klondike Kate, Conquest of Cochise, Masterson
of Kansas and Jesse James vs The Daltons make up
half of the collection … you could quit right there and call this a “keeper,”
but Mill Creek Entertainment has four more in The William Castle Western
Collection: The Fastest Guns of the West set on May 1 to thrill fans.
These are: Battle
of Rogue River (1954, in Technicolor and starring George Montgomery,
Richard Denning and Martha Hyer) and The Gun That Won the West (1955, in
Technicolor) starring Dennis Morgan as Jim Bridger with Paula Raymond and
Richard Denning).
Rounding out the
collection, which are not really Westerns (in the truest sense) are Duel
On The Mississippi (1956, in Technicolor … the action takes place in
1820, starring Lex Baxter, Warren Stevens and Patricia Medina as Lili Scarlet)
and Uranium
Boom (1956, black and white with Dennis Morgan, William Talman and
Patricia Medina).
WOW, just WOW, that’s all
you can say about these William Castle films that Mill Creek Entertainment has
assembled for the May 1 DVD debut of The William Castle Western Collection: The
Fastest Guns of the West.
Also announced this past
week is the May 1 DVD release of director Lee Philips’ 1986 biopic, Barnum,
starring four-time Oscar nominee Burt Lancaster (with a win for Elmer Gantry)
as the legendary showman Phineas Taylor “P.T.” Barnum (of note, 20th
Century-Fox Home Entertainment’s The Greatest Showman arrives in the
home entertainment marketplace on Apr. 10).
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