I think this film is a soupier classic like I think the acting was great in my opinion. My score is a 7.5/10 by the way. Honestly I don't care if it's "cheesy" or it's "black and white" this film don't need color to be good. I love how you can use 3D glasses to see ghost with them like that's the cool part like I wish they did that in the remake. I'd pretty much like the film.

Cyrus Zorba (Donald Woods) and his family learn they have inherited the house of his late uncle Plato. This couldn't come at a better time for the Zorba family as they are struggling with financial problems. However, once they move in they discover the house is haunted by ghosts that dear old uncle Plato collected from all over the world. Uh-oh.Filmed in "Illusion-O," William Castle never missed a beat with a good gimmick. This is a fun movie with no pretensions about doing anything other than entertaining you for eighty minutes. Charles Herbert was an enjoyable child actor with a good screen presence. Sadly this was his last credited film role. I guess the same fate befell him that would many other child actors. Donald Woods, decades removed from his leading man days, is very pleasant and likable in this. Lovely Jo Morrow plays the daughter Medea. Margaret Hamilton has fun with her Wicked Witch reputation here. The direction is solid, the music very nice, and the special effects are fun. Okay, they are relatively simple effects but still fun. Maybe it's not that scary but it sure is enjoyable. Way more entertaining than the gory CGI remake.

It's another delightfully dumb Castle picture, juvenile and amateurish yet an infinitely more professional production than, say, STRAIT-JACKET.A middle-class family in economic straits has been evicted yet again from their home, their furniture re-possessed (all in that lighthearted '50s way), when they learn their mysterious Uncle Plato Zorba has left them a haunted mansion in Los Angeles. Naturally, they move in without hesitation.The ghosts' enslavement is given minimal explanation, the threadbare plot makes little sense, and Martin Milner as the crooked lawyer needs a few more Stanislovski classes before his cruising down Route 66 or busting heads on the streets of L.A. will be convincing.But as a vaguely pederastic shyster, he's the creepiest thing in the movie. He is, after all,the 13th ghost!Strong points: The lovely music score and Joseph Biroc's B&W cinematography give the movie more dignity than it really warrants, Margaret Hamilton always gives good witch, and Charlie Herbert is a really cute kid in an obviously Capricornian David Archuleta kind of way and an excellent child actor; I want to take him home and burp him to stave off the 40 years of drug abuse that awaits him in real life... And how do you not love Rosemary DeCamp (who played everybody's mother in nearly every TV sitcom ever made)?The movie's effectiveness is a result that eerily doomed early-'60s, JFK-era (give-or-take), end of the world, TWLIGHT-ZONE/PSYCHO, traumatized child, nursery rhyme thing. Nothing's "purer" in its innocent creepiness, even though the violence and gore are at a minimum. It's the poignance of post-war optimism mixed with utter doom, shuddery and forlornly macabre. Even when in the fumbling hands of a non-auteur like William Castle.It's hard to believe that this silly movie was once spooky as hell (I defined it, as a child, as "the second scariest movie I've ever seen", both first and second on my list having been photographed by the aptly-named Mr Biroc, though of course I didn't know that then). But the high-pitched voices of the superimposed ghosts on screen once left an indelible impression on the more naive audiences of an earlier bygone period. For years, I used to get the meat cleaver murder at the hands of the ectoplasmic chef confused with the meat cleaver murder of Bruce Dern during the plantation prologue soirée of HUSH... HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE.... I think it's the cook's toque.Again, the era helps. It feels like a cozy Halloween party, one in which a lot of the pranks and games don't quite come off, but you had a good time anyway and you're glad you went.But I've never viewed it thru the ghostly "Illusion-O" goggles. The same house, by the way, is also seen in 1944's strange little gem, THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE.I've also seen very little of the 13 GHOSTS remake from ~40 years later. Clearly, it's of a different sensibility.

I actually loved this movie (and so did my six year old!)..... I watched it over and over again with him! The "special effects" are quirky and funny and clearly 1960's but that was the allure of the movie to me. It was Vintage Royalty Gold and I immediately became a fan of "William Castle" Movies. I loved many of the scenes: 1. Appearance of ghosts were quite strange and quirky. 2.The Seance, with the Ouiji Board gave me the chills...which was interesting, because the special effects were quite odd. 3. Then the diabolical, attorney who's trying to get the treasure from the bowels of the house who meets an untimely demise by being "smooshed" in a canopied bed that becomes a death chamber. (OK then....). Watch it...you just might like it.