10 Movies That Used Insane Gimmicks To Get Attention

This was probably William Castle's dumbest gimmick ever. In the 1960 film 13 Ghosts, a family who moves into a haunted house is able to see ghosts by wearing a special pair of goggles, and viewers would have that same experience. 

Each member of the audience was given a "ghost viewer" with red and blue filters. If you looked through the red filter, you could see the ghosts on screen, but if you looked through the blue filter, you'd see everything but the ghosts. Brave patrons could use the red filter, but if you were too scared, you could choose to look through the blue one.

That begs the question, why the hell would you go to see a movie called 13 Ghosts if you didn't want to see any ghosts? The gimmick was sort of pointless anyway because the spirits were visible even with the naked eye. Castle claimed that the blue filters helped avert nervous breakdowns, but obviously he completely made that up. 

This is now considered to be a horror classic, but the gimmick didn't really add anything at all and was just laughably unnecessary. 13 Ghosts could have easily been released without the ghost viewers, but then it probably wouldn't have grossed $1.5 million. Sometimes you need something like this to stand out from the crowd.