13 Ghosts

When occultist uncle Dr Plato Zorba bequeaths a large house to his nephew Cyrus and his impoverished family, they are shocked to find the house is haunted by twelve ghosts. Their furnished residence comes complete with a creepy housekeeper Elaine, and a hidden fortune concealed somewhere on the property. The spirits include a wailing lady, clutching hands, a fiery skeleton, an Italian chef continuously murdering his wife and her lover in the kitchen, a hanging lady, an executioner holding a severed head, a fully grown lion with its headless tamer, a floating head, as well as that of Plato Zorba himself, all held captive in the eerie house looking for an unlucky thirteenth ghost to free them. Dr Zorba leaves a set of special goggles, the only way of seeing the ghosts.

The executor of Zorba's will Benjamin Rush knows of the hidden money and wants it for himself. He tricks Cyrus' son, Buck, into searching for the money secretly, then attempts to kill Buck after the boy finds the cash. Using the same method he had used to kill Plato Zorba, a four-poster bed which has been designed to have the canopy crush the body. Zorba'a ghost appears driving the terrified Rush under the canopy as Buck wakens and escapes. The next morning, Cyrus and his family count the discovered money and decide to stay in the house. Buck keeps the mask Benjamin had used earlier to scare Buck's older sister and Elaine states that the ghosts have left for now, but will be back. The special goggles are blown into smithereens by an unknown force witnessed by Elaine.

• Charles Herbert as Buck Zorba
• Jo Morrow as Medea Zorba
• Rosemary DeCamp as Hilda Zorba
• Martin Milner as Benjamen Rush
• Donald Woods as Cyrus Zorba
• Margaret Hamilton as Elaine Zacharides
• John van Dreelen as Van Allen

As with several of his more famous productions, Castle used a gimmick to promote 13 Ghosts. Audience members were given a choice: the "brave" ones could watch the film and see the ghosts in 3D.

In the theaters most scenes were black-and-white, but scenes involving ghosts were shown in a "process" dubbed "Illusion-O." The filmed elements of the actors and the sets — everything except the ghosts — had a blue filter applied to the footage, while the ghost elements had a red filter and were superimposed over the frame.[4] Audiences received viewers with red and blue cellophane filters. Unlike early 3D glasses, where one eye is red and the other is cyan or blue, the Illusion-O viewer required people to look through a single color with both eyes. Choosing to look through the red filter intensified the images of the ghosts, while the blue filter "removed" them.[5]

Television and home video releases are edited to simulate the effect without the need for special glasses.

Howard Thompson of The New York Times called the film "a simple, old-fashioned haunted house yarn" that "would be a lot better off without this gimmick."[6] Variety wrote, "The idea is sound and exploitable, but the execution doesn't fully come off," explaining the ghosts "lack personality and aren't frightening, so that there isn't sufficient tension in the sequences during which the 'ghost viewer' comes into play."[7] The Monthly Film Bulletin called it "a workmanlike but not very frightening horror film ... the ghosts, which are a dull red colour, are far less effective when witnessed than when their presence is merely suggested, especially when their viewability depends on a process as unremarkable as Illusion-O."[8]

The film was remade in 2001 with a spelled-out title, Thirteen Ghosts, and was directed by Steve Beck. Like the original, the film was distributed by Columbia Pictures, except in the United States and Canada, where it was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures.[9]

• List of American films of 1960
• List of ghost films

• 13 Ghosts at IMDb
• 13 Ghosts at Rotten Tomatoes
• 13 Ghosts at AllMovie