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Strong and Moving!

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The main thing about this gimmick movie is the central twist. The mid-story surprise goes against decades of movie convention and certainly undercuts ordinary expectations. Otherwise, the so-called horror movie is pretty tame, the ghosts more like wisps than anything scary. In fact, the scariest thing is witchy-looking Margaret Hamilton doing her usual inimitable thing. Seems a nice all-American family-- momentarily impoverished-- inherits a haunted house and happily moves in. Soon, however, they're confronted by strange goings-on, but don't seem to really mind. And since they aren't much scared, neither was I and maybe the audience generally. In fact I sort of expected the family to evolve into a version of Father Knows Best kind of feel-good. Certainly, little Charles Herbert makes a first-rate mischievous boy, while parents De Camp and Woods are winsomely engaging, as is wholesome daughter Morrow. Mustn't overlook Morrow's heartthrob, handsome young attorney Milner. Together, however, their perpetual good humor further undercuts supposed horror.I recall the ballyhoo surrounding the movie's showing in my town. A lot was made of needing the glasses to see the ghosts. It's a gimmick, of course, but producer Castle needed something to offset Roger Corman's steady wave of drive-in cheapos. Anyhow, I wish the horror drama had equaled scripter White's effective use of plot surprise. Then we might have had something really memorable.

Cash-strapped paleontologist Cyrus Zorba (Donald Woods) inherits an old mansion from his strange, occult-obsessed Uncle Plato and immediately moves in with his family despite the house being haunted by 13 ghosts, which are only visible through a special pair of goggles.William Castle is renowned for promoting his low budget B-movies with silly gimmicks. For Macabre, he offered a $1000 life insurance policy to every viewer should they die of fright; Emergo—developed for showings of House on Haunted Hill—saw a skeleton with light-up eyes float over the audience; The Tingler employed buzzers attached to the cinema seats to shock unsuspecting viewers; Homicidal's Fright Break was designed to weed out the cowards in the theatre; and, for 13 Ghosts, we have Illusion-O, which requires the viewer to look through a special 'ghost viewer' at certain points during the film.As such, Castle's films possess a certain hokey charm, the sheer corniness of these cheap gimmicks adding a degree of novelty to proceedings. Even though 13 Ghosts is predictable haunted house cheeze, with a creepy housekeeper (played by Margaret 'Wicked Witch of the West' Hamilton), a séance, secret rooms, and a Ouija board (which Cyrus is all too happy to let his kids play with), one can't help but admire the showmanship involved (watch the film with red/blue filters if possible; it's fun to switch from red to blue, thereby making the ghosts appear and disappear).

This film just is not as good as House on Haunted Hill, but Vincent Price was at his very best in that one. Not that the cast in this one is bad or anything, this film just suffers from being a bit too predictable and while most of the cast was good, the kid playing the son was just annoying. The effects were about what one expects from a film from this era while the tone is a bit more comedic in tone than what I was expecting.The story has a man who works at a museum who seems to have a hard time paying his bills on time. His stuff is getting repossessed and his son wishes that they could get a house with furniture that no one can take away. As if by magic, the curator finds that he has inherited an old mansion. Of course, the catch is that he and his family has also inherited the ghosts the old man who owned the house 'collected'. A strange woman who insists on living on the premises tells the son of the ghosts as does the lawyer of the man who owned the house. Something seems suspicious, but at the same time the house does seem to be haunted as a box containing special glasses is also given to the curator and with them he sees the spirits at play.I actually watched the remake of this one well before ever viewing this one. I am surprised by how much of this one's plot did make it into the remake. I was thinking it was going to be a remake in name only and perhaps both featured 13 ghosts, but the glasses in this one made their way to the remake's plot as did the fact the family was getting kicked out of the house. I prefer the remake, only because the ghosts in this one were just not very scary mainly being more funny in nature.So I am glad I finally watched this film, if for no other reason to get another horror film under my belt. I prefer other haunted films from this era though like House on Haunted Hill, the one with Roddy McDowell and various others. This one was just a bit too cutesy as it played off a lot of the ghost encounters as funny. It started out with a bang, but after awhile it also gets repetitive and if you cannot figure out the one character's motives then you are really young or really naive.

William Castle directed this amusing comedy/thriller about the Zorba family, who have just inherited a house from Cyrus's(played by Donald Woods) uncle, a reclusive inventor who created a set of special goggles that enable the viewer to see the 12 ghosts said to haunt the home. So wife Hilda(played by Rosemary De Camp) daughter Madea(played by Jo Morrow) and son Buck(played by Charles Herbert) move in, to discover that the ghosts are real, and that there is a hidden treasure in the house, and that someone will kill to find it, thus creating the 13th ghost... Fun film used the "Illusion-O" gimmick of giving film goers tinted glasses so that they can also see the ghosts with the characters. Margaret Hamilton and Martin Milner costar in effective roles.