Cyrus Zorba (Donald Woods) is a paleontologist working at the Los Angeles County Museum. Cyrus has a wife, Hilda (Rosemary De Camp), and two children, daughter Medea (Jo Morrow) and young son Buck (Charles Herbert). Museum work doesn’t pay very well so the Zorba family has been having some money problems. In the last incident, the furniture in their house was repossessed.
Cyrus is notified that his uncle, Plato Zorba, has died and left him a huge mansion, completely furnished. Plato’s attorney, Benjamin Rush (Martin Milner) explains that, according to the will, the Zorba family must live in the mansion and are not allowed to sell it. Should they decide not to live there, the mansion would then be escheated and go to the state. Ben tells Cyrus that Plato supposedly turned all his assets into cash and hid the money somewhere in the house. Cyrus is also given a box containing special glasses developed by Plato.
The house comes with a spooky housekeeper/witch, Elaine Zacharides (Margaret Hamilton). She used to help Plato with his experiments and says that Plato collected ghosts. Buck finds an old Ouija board. The family decides to try it. When the Ouija board moves on its own, the family becomes nervous. When asked about the ghosts the board tells them that there are 12 ghosts in the house and that one of them will be killed thus making it 13 ghosts. The 13th ghost will free the others. The ghosts can be seen when using the special glasses invented by Plato.
The Zorba family moves into the mansion and, right away, begins experiencing paranormal activity. Unknown by the family is that one of the ghosts is actually human and was responsible for Plato’s death. Before the night is over someone else will also die.
“13 Ghosts” was released in 1960 and was produced and directed by William Castle. It is an American supernatural horror movie with old dark house elements.
Many of William Castle’s films had a hook or gimmick to promote the movie. For this film Castle had, what he called, "Illusion-O". It required special glasses to see the ghost effects. The viewer was actually a red filter strip and a blue filter strip. To see the ghosts clearly you looked into the red strip. To not see the ghosts, you looked into the blue strip. That way you could decide if you wanted to see the ghosts or not.
A lot of William Castle’s films are sort of tongue in cheek. They sometimes have bland dialogue with over-acting that can give his films a parody vibe. For the most part, the movie is pure camp and part of the fun. There are, however, actually some decent scary parts to the film.
The exterior shots of the mansion are of the Winchester Mystery house in San Jose, California. The lion ghost was played by Zamba. He played Kitty-cat in The Addams Family television series. Shadrack the headless lion tamer ghost was played by Ralph Helfer. He was Zamba’s actual trainer. The guy who delivers the telegram to Cyrus is David Hoffman. He was the head inside the crystal ball in the “Inner Sanctum” movies.
The 13 ghosts are 1. A wailing lady, 2. Clutching hands, 3. A skeleton, 4. Emilio, an Italian chef who murdered his wife and her lover with a meat cleaver, 5. The chef’s wife, 6. The wife’s lover, 7. A hanging lady, 8. An executioner holding a severed head, 9. A lion 10. Shadrack, the headless lion tamer, 11. A floating head, 12. Zorba’s ghost, and 13. The final murder victim.