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William Castle didn’t cut the same silhouette as Alfred Hitchcock, but he shared the same pride in cutting a trailer. Backlit with a cigar dangling from his lip as he perches in a director’s chair, Castle sits silently as the words “from the screen’s No. 1 shock expert” blaze across the screen. Of course, audiences had seen Castle turn around from his chair before — just two years earlier in 1959, he could be seen touting “Percepto,” a device that gave random audience members a buzz in their seats as they watched “The Tingler.” But “Mr. Sardonicus” encouraged further audience participation with Castle unveiling the “Punishment Poll,” an opportunity for viewers to choose the ending of the film at the close of the second act.
Gleefully co-opting stock footage of Roman gladiators and the French Revolution dramas to describe how the “thumbs up, thumbs down” system of voting was going to work, Castle goes on to blur Mr. Sardonicus’ face from the subsequent scenes of the film, not wanting to taint the voting process. As director Stuart Gordon recounts over at Trailers From Hell, the whole thing was a con, but only a showman like Castle could pull it off. –Stephen Saito
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Tags: lists, Trailers
