They Don’t Make Trailers Like That Anymore: MR. SARDONICUS (1961)

Remember all that time I spent talking about Alfred Hitchcock being a brand onto himself?

Remember that time I talked about ‘The Warning Crawl’?

This article is connected to both instances...because we’re going to talk about The Man Who Wanted To Be Hitchcock, William Castle.

William Castle may not have been as good a director as Hitchcock--truth be told, his movies are mostly just okay, the stories solidly told but unmemorable as far as style is concerned--but he more than made up for it in the way he promoted his films.  Castle would appear in the trailers (and, in cases like this, the actual films!) hawking his latest offering and the gimmick that he inevitably would come up with.  Castle understood the idea of movie-going as an experience, and through his marketing encouraged us to collaborate with each other in making this night out in the theater particularly memorable.

The gimmick for Mr. Sardonicus is ‘The Punishment Poll,’ and Castle spends the first minute...well, giving us a history of mob rule and another half minute doing a mild carney-crawl about Sardonicus’ face.  That thirty seconds of him explaining why you’re not going to see our titular character’s face is pure ‘Warning Crawl,’ and true to his nature, Castle is good on his promise--there are two shots where Guy Rolfe’s Sardonicus’ face is clearly seen (one where, if you know the movie, you know he’s wearing the emotionless mask he wears for the bulk of the film), and that face is obviously, almost clumsily, smudged out! The second of these shots, where the only thing left unobscured is Rolfe’s soulful eyes staring off to the side, actually seems more horrifying than the actual shot is!

Then we’re back to Castle, who proceeds to emphasize the Punishment Poll by displaying the glow-in-the-dark placard with the drawing of a fist with its thumb extended and promising that some of us will show mercy despite what a horrific douchenozzle Sardonicus is, but the power is In Your Hands.  The final shot is of the placard itself with the admonishment that we’ll ‘See You At The Punishment Poll!’ 

Notice how roughly a third of this trailer is all about the gimmick--there’s only a minute of actual footage from the film, and some of that is just going through the cast list!  Castle utilizes the novelty of the Poll to spearhead his pitch, which disguises the fact that he tells us very little about the film itself.  This is the epitome of how a trailer should work.  It intrigues you so much and yet does the barest minimum of telling you what the actual story is all about.  Granted, part of this is achievable only because of Castle’s affable, laid back persona...but it works to get you wanting to see the movie just to participate in this cool gimmick.

‘The Punishment Poll’ was the last of Castle’gimmicks.  Castle was so secure in his knowledge of human nature that he never shot the ‘mercy’ ending.  It still didn’t stop Castle from promoting an urban legend in his autobiography about it existing...

I’m going to revisit the world of William Castle in the future, even presenting some of his trailer from late in his career.  Like his inspiration Alfred Hitchcock, he knew how to sell a movie.

Trailer Courtesy of annubis44.