Castle Films was afilm company founded inCalifornia by formernewsreel cameraman Eugene W. Castle (1897–1960) in 1924. Originally, Castle Films produced industrial and advertising films. Then in 1937, the company pioneered the production and distribution of8 mm and16 mm films for home projection, moving its principal office to New York City. It became a subsidiary ofUniversal Pictures and was eventually renamedUniversal 8 from 1977 before folding in the early 1980s due to competition from home video.
In 1937, Castle branched out into8 mm and16 mm home movies, buying newsreel footage and old theatrical films for home use. Castle's first home movie was a newsreel of theHindenburg explosion.[1] That same year, Castle launched his "News Parade" series, a year-in-review newsreel; travelogues followed in 1938. Castle also eventually compiled sports films, animal adventures, and "old time" movies excerpted from silent theatrical films. The films were all issued as one-reel entities, running about 9 minutes, affordably priced and box packaged. The films were sold at camera shops, indepartment stores, and by mail-order catalog. Castle Films were extensively advertised in national magazines.
Castle obtained home-movie rights to cartoons from severalanimationstudios, includingTerrytoons (1938) andUb Iwerks (1941). DuringWorld War II it produced numerous documentary and training films for the U.S. armed services.[2] In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Castle released a series of 16 mm "Music Albums" assembled from theSoundies musical shorts, combining three 3-minute songs into each nine-minute subject.
Castle Films distributed two dozenChristmas subjects over two decades, the first being Christmas-Time in Toyland (1939) and the last being The First Christmas (1959). The perennial in this category was The Night Before Christmas (1946), a live-action dramatization of the poem; it remained in print for 26 years.
In 1947, United World Films, Inc., the non-theatrical subsidiary ofUniversal Pictures, purchased a majority stake in Castle Films.[3] Castle Films thus became the brand name of the United World subsidiary, and began drawing upon Universal's library of vintage films (withAbbott and Costello,W. C. Fields,Boris Karloff,James Stewart, etc.). The merger with Universal also brought to Castle the cartoons ofWalter Lantz Productions withWoody Woodpecker,Andy Panda,Oswald Rabbit, andChilly Willy.
In the 1950s, Castle released a highly successful series ofHopalong Cassidy excerpts, licensed from the series' starWilliam Boyd. When Universal was purchased byMCA Inc. in 1962, Castle also gained non-theatrical access to the pre-1950Paramount Pictures sound feature films owned by MCATV division, releasing sequences fromCecil B. DeMille's spectaculars andMarx Brothers comedies, among other Paramount titles. Newsreels edited fromNASA footage of U.S. space flights were timely in the 1960s.
Castle's most popular series was its line of science-fiction and horror films, many featuring theUniversal Classic MonstersDracula,Frankenstein,The Wolf Man,The Mummy,Creature from the Black Lagoon, andThe Invisible Man. The series launched in 1957 and grew to 30 titles.
Castle Films' name was changed to Universal 8 in 1977 and the new management experimented with longer-length films, but the era ofhome video brought an end to Universal's home-movie enterprise in 1984. Universal 8 dealt mostly in movie excerpts and shorts, whileUniversal Pictures Home Entertainment (founded in 1980) offered the complete feature films on videotape. Pretty soon, collectors abandoned the excerpts in favor of the complete films.
The largest U.S. competitor of Castle Films wasOfficial Films, until rival movie studios entered the marketplace, includingColumbia Pictures andWarner Bros., andUnited Artists and20th Century-Fox (both under the Ken Films brand name).
The complete inventory of Castle Films (more than 1,000 titles over 40 years) is listed inScott MacGillivray's bookCastle Films: A Hobbyist's Guide,ISBN 0-595-32491-6.
