Emergo For The 21st Century

Some of you may know the name William Castle and his reputation as a cinematic showman. For those who don't here's the short version. Castle wrote, produced or directed dozens of movies over a career that spanned thirty years. He is best known, however, for his film related gimmicks. For the movie The Tingler, he had seats in some movie theaters wired to buzz and vibrate when the titular monster was lose in an on-sceen cinema. In the movie Mr. Sardonicus, a"punishment poll" was conducted before the finale, in which the audience would decide the fate of the villain (although, of course, only one ending was filmed). And, in House on Haunted Hill, he came up with "Emergo." During the film a skeleton advances towards the screen. In some of theaters, a skeleton with glowing eyes on a wire was pulled across the ceiling of at that moment.

Now, it looks like William Castle's brand of ballyhoo for low budget B-movies is being resurrected for major studio blockbusters. Only they call it 4DX (because it's like 3D...only with one more D...and a variable...hey, calculus!) and it involves spraying water in people's faces. Seriously. Check out the promo video below.

Sweet! It has an ankle tickler. That would make any movie better.

Groan.

What a terrible idea. You go to a movie to be drawn into the story, through acting and images, dialogue and music. We go to thrill to special effects on the screen not to be subjected to gusts of wind, strobe lights (that sounds particularly horrible), shaking chairs...why not just have guys dressed up as characters from the movie running around the theater? This gimmick has been used before in some theaters, like Disney World's Muppet Show. But in these cases, it is part of the act. The movie was designed to work with the real-world effects as, basically, a ride. Movies, even movies described as a "thrill ride" are supposed to tell stories, not just bombard the audience with sound and light...and now water and air and kidney jarring vibrations.

Hopefully, this will be another fad, one that will never go beyond a theater or two. However, if theaters want to start wiring glowing skeletons to the ceiling, I'm all for that.