A loving tribute to the poor man's Alfred Hitchcock.

Remember when a movie producer could ride on a smile and a shoeshine and ballyhoo was as American as apple pie? This was when William Castle - the last of the great American showmen - transformed watching schlock-horror B-movies into an event. Buzzing seats, flying skeletons and luminescent ghosts were just some of the bizarre gimmicks cinema-goers experienced during William Castle's outlandish career as a producer, director and marketeer.

Filmmaker Jeffrey Schwartz chronicles Castle's entrepreneurial drive for success and notoriety, charting the quintessential rags-to-riches tale of the man Variety called “the PT Barnum of the nuclear age”.

“I just wanted to be taken into William Castle's world and live there.” - filmmaker John Waters