Don't They Know It's the End of the World?

"Why does the sun go on shining?
Why does the sea rush to shore?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
'Cause you don't love me anymore"

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This week’s screening, Matinee, was surprisingly light-hearted and cute despite being about communism and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and atomic annihilation – easily one of the most enjoyable cult films we watched this semester. I found myself drawn in from the moment it opened, with that nostalgic carnival-esque music and the old-timey, 1960’s vibe. If that wasn’t enough, cut to the black and white educational-type video, giving me major Fallout vibes, complete with atomic bomb talk. And then, later on, que actual music from Diamond City Radio, and you’ve pretty much sold me on the movie. All in all, Matinee was an easy film that evoked nostalgia in a lot of ways as it tried to re-create the experience of being a pre-teen in post WW2 America. I found the similarities between the film’s crisis and the crisis our country is currently facing eerily similiar, so props for syllabus placement because Matinee kind of left more of an impact in some ways, due to that connection.

I also really enjoyed this week’s reading, “Collective Screams: William Castle and the Gimmick Film”, simply because I never really even knew what gimmicks were until I saw the way they were utilized in Matinee and then read about how they’ve actually been implemented in other films we’ve seen this semester.

"Gimmicks attempt to reach out to the audience and incorporate them directly into the cinematic experience, to restore the real or imagined experience of the early cinema spectator."

I find the whole concept of Castle’s gimmicks to be really interesting, the idea of immersing your audience so fully into the film that they’ve given this crazy experience. I loved that Matinee paid homage to Castle and his inventive ideas. When you think about electrical impulses and vibrating seats, the gimmicks that we see in modern cinema kind of pale in comparison, to the point where they’re unrecognizable as gimmicks – or at least a lot less “hands on.” To be fair, it’s hard to produce something that’s truly original and captivating in a world where it seems like everything’s already been done a hundred times over. Still, it’s a little disappointing to think about how impersonal cinema has become today. While Castle’s gimmicks were used to bring in money, he was also an active participant and you get the sense that he did these things because he loved it and because he wanted his audience to have this insane experience, not just because he was looking to make a quick buck.

Just for fun, after looking a little more into gimmicks I found an article talking about one of Castle’s earliest gimmick’s, for his 1958 thriller, Macabre:

“One of William Castle's earliest movie gimmicks was for a thriller called Macabre, in which a father has only five hours to find his kidnapped daughter, who has been buried alive. The film was so scary, Castle claimed, that he was required to offer audiences a $1,000 life insurance policy just in case they died of fright. Movie theaters had people in nurse's uniforms on standby, "just in case." The gimmick worked, and Macabre was a smash hit.“