The early 60’s must have been a strange time. The movie studios, at least, seemed to be confused. Hitchcock’s Psycho suddenly made the campy, gimmick-laden horrors of William Castle look positively quaint in comparison. At the same time, there were so many absent-minded and nutty professors on the screen. Castle decided to step out of his comfort zone and the result was 1962’s Zotz, a zany comedy in the mold of Disney. Supposedly, Uncle Walt himself was interested in the property at one time, though that seems unlikely to me.
With his mischievous mind and childlike glee, Castle is actually a good person for such a project. After all, the gimmicks used to promote his House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler could only have been the product of the mind of an overgrown child, one whose true calling would have been carnival huckster if movies hadn’t existed.
The titular being is an ancient god who also seems to have a quirky sense of humor, though it leans a bit towards the morbid side. Tom Poston’s professor comes into contact with an amulet from an ancient temple devoted to the deity. After transcribing the inscription, the bearer of the amulet will have an odd assortment of powers at their disposal. One of these is to slow down time. Another is to cause great pain to whomever they point. One can also kill a person or thing of their choosing, which is what Poston unintentionally does to a cute, little animated moth, and later a lizard, rather more intentionally.
The most baffling power demonstrated occurs only once, and that is when he first finishes the transcription. With that complete, a naked woman suddenly appears outside the house he shares with niece Zeme North. Soon, North is startled awake by Poston digging through her underwear drawer, which had to be a disturbing sight. I think it would have been darkly amusing to have her cry out, “Not again!” But he is only trying to find clothing for the unexpected visitor to wear so as to get her home.
Poston will later discover that woman is Julia Meade, the latest professor of modern European languages at the university at which he teaches ancient European languages. Another fellow professor is Jim Backus and, as he and Meade are in the same field, it appears either has a change of succeeding retiring dean Cecil Kellaway.
Kellaway is also considering Poston as this replacement, though the man seems insistent on making a poor impression. The most notable example is at a cocktail reception at the dean’s house, where our hero tries to demonstrate his newfound powers by letting loose a cage full of white mice which he then intends to control. Most of the antics which ensue involve high-society women jumping in fright at the sight of tame rodents. Yet there is one inspired gag where a mouse ends up covered a man’s toupee, and the result is like a hairpiece is suddenly endowed with the ability to crawl around the floor by its own power.
The most respectable of the society ladies at this gathering is Margaret Dumont. I love the work she did with the Marx Brothers, and this was one of the few times I have seen her outside of those pictures. This was her second-to-last screen appearance, and she exits in a manner befitting her legacy, that being a giant cream cake is shoved in her face.
Poston is an odd character, and one with whom I had trouble connecting. To be fair, the script doesn’t turn him into a man gone mad with power from these newfound abilities, but he doesn’t put them to any real use, either. He is an uninteresting lump of a man and his pious obsession with clean living doesn’t improve that assessment. He drinks a great quantity of sauerkraut juice, which I assume makes one healthier because the smell would keep at a safe distance anybody with a potentially communicable disease. And he has a curious disregard for his safety, and that of others, when he does such things as reading a book while bicycling to the university. For the most part, the power he most exercises is pointing at somebody and making them collapse in pain. Not once did I find this humorous.
I have some stray observations I could not work in elsewhere. First, isn’t is strange that, when somebody in any movie translates an ancient language, they use Ye Olde English? There is a lot of “cometh” and “maketh” and the like when Poston translates the inscription on the amulet. Also, the extent of the information he gleans from the writing on that doesn’t seem possible. It would be like if somebody could print the entire Gettysburg Address on a Ritz cracker. Also, there is talk at one point of a meeting at the Consolidated Building, and I was disappointed to find that wasn’t a mish-mash of various buildings of different architectural styles.
Zotz is an interesting curio, but one which didn’t leave much of an impact on me. Castle would go on to do a better comedy (The Old Dark House, also with Poston) and a couple which were much worse (Let’s Kill Uncle and The Spirit Is Willing). But he did not leave behind horror, which was clearly his first love. Even in Zotz, North goes on a date to the drive-in, which is conveniently showing Castle’s own Homicidal. The marque reveals short subjects will also be shown, and the full text of the sign was the moment I laughed the hardest: “Homicidal short subjects”.
Dir: William Castle
Starring Tom Poston, Julia Meade