It was like stepping into a time machine…only better.

The Film Forum on Houston Street in Manhattan was presenting a William Castle retrospective from August 27th through September 6th. All of the showman’s famous gimmick films were in the lineup, as well as some of his earlier, noirish work and 3D films.

I started off by catching two of his three “Whistler” films from the mid 40s. All three starred Richard Dix, however in different roles. The ‘Whistler’ of the title was not Dix, but a shadowy figure that set us up for the ill-fated stories to come, appearing again midway through the film to keep us on track. This unidentified phantom got his moniker by whistling some melody that was too abstract ever to have become popular with viewers.

Even with the Whistler’s dire warnings about the forlorn trajectories of the films’ protagonists, I wasn’t prepared for how downbeat MYSTERIOUS INTRUDER would end up. Pretty wild. To quote the Forum catalogue “Crooked private eye Richard Dix, hired to find the mysterious ‘Elora’ to receive a mysterious bequest, hires a fake one to grab it for himself and then the double crosses and murders start coming.” That barely hints at the darkly nuanced touches, but it was mostly the ‘B’s in those days that were allowed to get away with such unrepentantly villainous protagonists, as well as the sort of bleak finale the film delivers.

MACABRE was a motion picture I had missed in 1958. The first of Castle’s ‘gimmick’ films, patrons were refused entrée to the theater unless they filled out an insurance policy with Lloyds of London for ten grand in case they croaked of heart failure during the screening. Sure enough, the policy was still in force at the Forum, fifty-two years later, only the payoff had been updated to a million dollars for this playdate. The print was splicey, making the convoluted narrative even more difficult to follow, but it was a deliciously noir-ish little exercise nonetheless. Very satisfying for me, after all these years, to finally catch up with it.

13 GHOSTS (1960), in Illusion-O, beckoned you to put on the red-blue 3D glasses when a title appeared on the bottom of the screen, and if you weren’t up to witnessing the dreaded thirteen spectres, you could look through the left lens and see nothing but the set. However, using the right (red) eye filter, you were privy to a lion chewing on the neck of a tamer who’d lost his head in the cat’s jaws long ago, an ax-wielder striking anew, etc. The effect was cheesy in the extreme, but the Forum audience was primed for it. They laughed and had a great time. The lead actor, Donald Woods – a cross between Dana Andrews and Hugh Marlowe – was just the right milquetoast casting choice for the father who endures the manifestations in bewilderment. And it was wonderful to see Margaret Hamilton in the ‘in’ role of the witchy housekeeper who the hapless family inherits along with the haunted mansion. I particularly liked the Ouija Board sequence, when the clueless family members keep ratcheting the stakes higher with each absurd question (“Will one of us be killed?”). The print was excellent, and the glasses were dutifully passed out to each and every patron – unlike in the DVD collection release where, if you start having heart palpitations, you don’t have a choice concerning the ghosts.

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959) came with ‘Emergo’ – the living manifestation of a skeleton floating over the heads of the delighted audience. Vincent Price is the master of ceremonies in this Ten Little Indians tale, nicely shot, with a solid scare or two.

MR. SARDONICUS (1961), my favorite Castle film, found the ushers handing out ‘Punishment Poll’ cards, to be held up near the film’s conclusion, either with the imprinted thumb up, or down. Castle then appears on screen and counts the votes from his vantage point, and of course Sardonicus is to be punished for all the atrocities he’s committed. According to Castle, at the studio’s insistence, a happy ending was filmed, just in case, but never used. However, scavenger hunts in the Columbia vaults have produced no trace of the alternate ending.

Which brings us to THE TINGLER (1959). Back then, fourteen years old and very into horror films, only I – in the rural town of Harrison, NY – knew about the two rows of seats that had been wired to deliver electric shocks at the critical moment when the Tingler would escape from the screen into the audience. I had a crush on a local girl named Linda Elin, and I brought her to the theater, keeping her in the dark about what was to come. Nothing like a good electric shock, I figured, to have her jump into my lap.

An ancient ticket-taker was standing at the entrance to the lobby as we arrived, and I surreptitiously whispered to him, “Where are the ‘tingle’ seats?” He looked confused. “Where are the tingle seats” I repeated. Then he seemed to understand, and led us…to the bathrooms! How mortifying.

I never did get anywhere with Linda.

The Film Forum did not wire up the theater seats for the show I attended, yet they managed to out-do Castle nonetheless. When Vincent Price drops acid – a hilarious scene all on its own – suddenly a swirling, hallucinatory color mélange was superimposed on Price’s terrified face. When he stared in horror at the skeleton in his office, the HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL skeleton was yanked out over the audience for an unexpected encore. And when the Tingler escaped into the theater…suddenly a man stood up three rows in front of me, grasping a Tingler to his throat, choking and screaming, while ushers shined a flashlight on him and carried him up the aisle. During each of these delightful intrusions into our placid theater-going experience, the packed house roared with laughter and screamed their heads off. It was like ROCKY HORROR SHOW for adults. I’ve had my occasional problem with Film Forum audiences not being generous with older films, laughing too easily and breaking the spell. But we were all in synch that night. With me was Mark Talling, FIR reviewer, and he had a terrific time. A few days later, FIR’s webmaster Oren Shai caught the flick, and this time there were scattered electroshocks going off under select seats.

Credit for the series, and for the lengths to which the staff went to give us an ultimate viewing experience, goes to Film Forum Programmer Bruce Goldstein. I can’t say enough about how much fun, and what an event, the Castle retrospective was for everyone, and for me. My two favorite movie-going memories this year took place at the Film Forum. This was one, and the other was their screening of NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH, with Producer Richard Gordon and actor Richard Nielson in attendance.

Hello out there, Trick or Treaters, all trussed up in your Thing With Two Heads (Obama and Limbaugh) outfits and ready to go. The delectable offerings below will probably not be dropped in your gift bags with trepidation by wary home-owners, but they’re worth checking out.

WILLIAM CASTLE FILM COLLECTION
(Columbia Pictures)

All except for the documentary were directed by William Castle.

THE TINGLER (1959)
82 mins. B&W. AR: 1.85:1.
Screenplay by Robb White. With Vincent Price, Darryl Hickman.

13 GHOSTS (1960)
85/82 mins. B&W/Color. AR 1.85:1.
Screenplay by Robb White. Cinematography by Joseph Biroc. With Charles Herbert, Jo Morrow, Martin Milner, Margaret Hamilton.

HOMICIDAL (1961)
87 mins. B&W. Full Screen.
Screenplay by Robb White. With Glenn Corbett, Patricia Breslin. Music by Hugo Friedhofer. Cinematography by Burnett Guffey.

MR. SARDONICUS (1961)
89 mins. B7W. AR 1.85:1.
Screenplay by Ray Russell. Cinematography by Burnett Guffey. With Oskar Homolka, Audrey Dalton, Guy Rolfe.

ZOTZ! (1962)
87 mins. B&W. AR 1.85:1.
With Tom Poston, Julia Meade, Jim Backus, Fred Clark, Cecil Kellaway, Mike Mazurki, Margaret Dumont.

13 FRIGHTENED GIRLS
(1963) 89 mins. Color.
Screenplay by Robert Dillon. With Kathy Dunn, Murray Hamilton, Joyce Taylor, Hugh Marlowe, Lynne Sue Moon.

THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1963)
86 mins. B&W/Color.
Screenplay by Robert Dillon, from the novel “Benighted” by J.B. Priestley. Title sequence backgrounds by Charles Addams. Produced by Anthony Hinds. Shot at Bray Studios in a co-production with Hammer Films. With Tom Poston, Robert Morley, Janette Scott, Mervyn Johns, Peter Bull.

STRAIGHT-JACKET (1964) 93 mins. B&W. AR 1.85:1.
Screenplay by Robert Bloch. Production Design by Boris Leven. With Joan Crawford, Diane Baker, Leif Erickson, George Kennedy.

SPINE-TINGLER: THE WILLIAM CASTLE STORY (2009) 82 mins. Color/B&W.
Directed by Jeffrey Schwarz. With Forrest J. Ackerman, John Badham, Diane Baker, Robert Bloch, Budd Boetticher, Bub Burns, Terry Castle, Roger Corman, Joe Dante, FIR’s David Del Valle, Stuart Gordon, John Landis, John Waters, and, in archival footage, Joan Crawford, William Castle, Cary Grant, Alfred Hitchcock, Adolf Hitler, Jacqueline Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Mia Farrow, Harry Cohn.

2 Episodes of the TV series GHOST STORY, William Castle featurettes, promotions and trailers.

I took Linda Elin, who I had a hopeless crush on, to see THE TINGLER in 1959. I was fourteen; she was a year younger. I was into horror films big time by then, and I knew that one row of theater seats would be wired to deliver a mild electric shock during the scene where the ‘Tingler’ escapes into the audience. When we arrived at the theater, I went up to the elderly ticket taker and asked, “Where are the ‘tingle-seats’?” He was confused. I repeated it: “Where are the ‘tingle-seats’?” Finally it seemed to dawned on him, and he led us to…the bathrooms!

I never did get to first base with Linda Elin.

If you had any hopes that the four titles in this collection new to DVD were going to make the collection collectible, I’m here to pretty much dash your hopes. One of the features, while not stellar, is worth checking out; the other two…were poorly paced and probably dated when they were released. However, the documentary is quite good, and the other five features are good examples of the Castle cannon, and there are good supplementals as well.

THE OLD DARK HOUSE was released in the US theatrically in B&W, indicating what the studio’s expectations must have been like. On TV the color was restored. And here, in a very clean print, the color is also on display, but it is not the creamy Technicolor we associate with Hammer Films, nor does the cinematography aid either the scare elements or the comedy of the piece. The prime offender, however, is the score. Since they recruited Hammer’s trusty Bernard Robinson for Production Design, they should have also dragged in James Bernard for the music. Anything would have been better than the mickey-mousing fiasco they ended up with.

James Whale would roll over in his swimming pool at the desecration of his work displayed in this remake. As a comedy it’s occasionally mildly amusing at best. As horror…well, there isn’t any of that to be found. For all his droll appearances in his horror flicks, Castle did not have a light touch for the comedy genre. Tom Poston, while dignified and doing his utmost, doesn’t carry the film very far at all, and some genuinely top-rank Brit talents are right beside him operating below par. Mervyn Johns, alumni of the watermark British horror anthology DEAD OF NIGHT, adds pedigree but no panache to the proceedings. Peter Bull, the Russian Ambassador in DOCTOR STRANGELOVE, is interesting to look at in Color. Robert Morley, who fares better in THEATER OF BLOOD, mugs his way through this one to little effect.

ZOTZ! finds Poston again teamed with Castle, doing his best to avoid over-acting, but his naturalism can’t sustain the loose editing, nor the underwhelming narrative concept of a magic coin endowing its owner with the powers to a) point his finger at someone and give them a stomach-ache, b) utter the coin’s name and make the victim move in slow motion, c) point and utter simultaneously and destroy whomever the coin’s owner focuses on. It’s such a silly notion, it never stood a chance of being memorable. THE ABSENTMINDED PROFESSOR had come out the previous year, and I suspect Castle and Columbia wanted a similar romp from this trifle (just as the director glommed on to PSYCHO for his HOMICIDAL), but Castle, alas, is no Robert Stevenson, and the fun is sparse. There are some pleasant ideas, and effective individual shots…nice effects here and there. There’s a bizarre scene where likeable actress Julia Meade appears outside Poston’s house nude, claiming she was struck by lightning and her clothes were blown off. And there’s a long scene of Jim Backus making a toast in slow motion that goes on long enough to be truly silly. But for each of these pleasant occurrences, there are many more that founder.

The film begins with Castle chatting up the Columbia insignia lady, who towers above him. A cute launch-pin. But it’s also the high-point of the film.

The final new-to-DVD theatrical feature presentation, 13 FRIGHTENED GIRLS, is worth a look. At its best it sporadically works up a Hitchcockian sense of tension as a 16-year-old Ambassador’s daughter with a crush on an embassy agent begins gathering secret information to save him from getting sacked. Her flirtation with the agent is pretty racy even though he never Polanski’s her, and seeing her subsequently cause deaths and witness other violent demises is a bit strong for a perky teenage protagonist in what wavers back and forth between being a cute little caper flick and something more sinister. Castle, I presume, was on the fence, trying not to scare off audiences and critics, but every now and then some perverse element in his brain ignited, and this odd movie catches fire. Only to be doused a few minutes later by those god-awful music cues we’ve heard in his other semi-comedy newcomers-to-DVD, etc. The performances range from stiff to pleasant. There’s a long split-screen multiple-character telephone call that is very PILLOW TALK (made four years earlier). The print quality is excellent. And the oddest thing about the film is that the only time the eponymous13 girls get frightened is in the pre-title sequence when, as presented via the supplementals menu, numerous variations of the sequence are shown, each featuring a girl from a different country in the driver’s seat of a bus, with her voice-over (in her native tongue) propelling the initial narrative. It was a device to stir up interest abroad, and I don’t recall ever seeing anything like it before. Another Castle marketing gimmick, I presume.

And then there’s SPINE TINGLER: THE WILLIAM CASTLE STORY, an 82 minute (my favorite running time) documentary on the ‘B’ genre showman, a comprehensive film tinged with melancholy for an industry showman who both reveled in, and was trapped by, his gimmicks’ success. The film is nicely researched, and populated with a meteor shower of film personality interview bites. There is a warm, MATINEE-like feeling for the era and, fittingly, Joe Dante is one of the film’s talking heads. The filmmakers posit the case for a rivalry between Castle and Hitchcock in which it is Hitch who borrows Castle’s promotional strategies for PSYCHO, rather than the other way around as one might suspect. Joan Crawford’s demands on STRAIGHT-JACKET, and Castle’s capitulation to her, is sobering. And the morphing of ROSEMARY’S BABY from Castle’s directorial piece de resistance to a Roman Polanski over-budget, over-schedule box office hit proves both a heady success and a tragic missed opportunity for Castle. Rather telling is the omission of any mention of the three features new to DVD in this boxed set.

In addition to the impressive documentary, you get several successful, repeatable films from the gimmick-meister’s repertoire – MR. SARDONICUS (wonderful), STRAIGHT JACKET (Joan Crawford), HOMICIDAL (in the still-wet footprints of Hitchcock), 13 GHOSTS (however without the special glasses allowing you to see or not to see the threatening spirits), and THE TINGLER (Castle and Vincent Price).

The five discs fit into a relatively thin box-sleeve. It’s a lot of fun footage to have handy on your DVD shelf.

RECOMMENDED

Columbia/TriStar Home Entertainment – 1961
89 mins. – B&W. Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1, enhanced for 16X9 TV.

A bonafide phenomenon of 50’s & 60’s ‘B’ film showmanship, William Castle gleefully devised an elaborate gimmick to accompany each of his films – a thousand dollar Lloyds of London insurance policy, to be filled in before entering the theater, for MACABRE; an inflated skeleton on a wire that floated over the audiences’ heads during THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL; polarized glasses for THIRTEEN GHOSTS which revealed the otherwise invisible spectres on screen; a row of seats in each theater wired to deliver mild voltage directly into the hindquarters of the unwitting patrons seated therein during a particularly tense moment in THE TINGLER; and for MR. SARDONICUS, a card with a glowing hand displaying either a thumbs up or thumbs down for the eponymous villain, depending on the filmgoers’ media-interactive vote as to the old boy’s fate. Castle’s lively screen-expansive ideas and entrepreneurial personality was homaged sweetly by Joe Dante in MATINEE, with John Goodman capturing the ethos of the road stomping showman.

I remember taking my beautiful next door neighbor Linda Elin to THE TINGLER back in ‘61. I was sixteen and hooked on horror. The film was playing one town over in the White Plains RKO theater, and I had to have been one of the few patrons who knew about the electric shock gimmick. Wanting to show off for my date, I asked the ancient usher who was taking our tickets where the ‘tingle seats’ were and, much to my embarassment, he showed us to the bathrooms.

Seeing MR. SARDONICUS after all these years, what I didn’t remember was how delightful Castle was in his two screen appearances, as himself, pushing the ‘punishment poll’ ritual. Of course there was only one ending you were going to get: thumbs down for Mr. Sardonicus. But Castle paused and glowered, confided and cajoled, everything he could to convince our baser instincts to prevail in the voting. Then he pretended to count the votes, addressing a woman in the 9th row much as Hitchcock had done in his prerecorded loudspeaker talk to patrons standing impatiently on line outside the DeMille Theater on Broadway in 1960 waiting for the last act of PSYCHO to end. Hitch, too, liked the gimmicks, but they were not a central draw of his films as they were for Castle’s.

Castle’s effective cameo was what I didn’t remember. What I did remember were Oscar Homolka’s scene stealing presence (resembling an elderly Michael J. Pollard), the effective screenplay structure and decent dialogue, the handsome broad-stroked B&W cinematography, and the still-frightening reveal, at the fifty minute point, of Sardonicus’ hideous secret. It made members of the FIR screening group shriek in horror. What a moment!

Oscar Homolka, by the way, was a juicy character actor whose mischievous performances and thick accent always felt real. (Think Akim Tamiroff) Born in Vienna in 1899, he enjoyed a long, though for my taste not nearly visible enough film career in Germany, Austria, England and America. He worked with Hitchcock (SABOTAGE, ‘36), George Stevens (I REMEMBER MAMA, ‘47), Billy Wilder (THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, ‘55), Carol Reed (THE KEY, ‘58), George Pal (THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM, ‘62), and created a memorable Russian official twice, in the 2nd and 3rd Harry Palmer spy films, Guy Hamilton’s FUNERAL IN BERLIN (‘66) and Ken Russell’s BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN (‘67). Homolka died in 1978. Would that more directors had appreciated his ability to deliver vivid, likeable performances, even in villainous roles, as Castle did.

A brief featurette on the DVD is hosted by FIR’s very own David Del Valle, who waxes enthusiastic about Castle, the ‘punishment poll’ gimmick, and actor Guy Rolfe.

In the tight story, actor Rolfe succeeds in making us believe he is, in flashback, a sympathetic, henpecked mid-Eastern European, and later, after his dreadful misfortune with a lottery ticket, a cold, sadistic nobleman with a veneer of culture. For half the film he has to perform while wearing a full face mask, and so a fun double feature might be THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES (on DVD from MGM/UA), with Vincent Price doing his campy bit with a similar prop, or perhaps even VANILLA SKY (on DVD from Paramount), with Tom Cruise venturing into the territory of facial concealment.

And William Castle penned an autobiography, “Step Right Up!…I’m Gonna Scare the Pants off America” in ‘76. What sticks most in my memory is his depiction of producing ROSEMARY’S BABY (1968), which should have been his crowning achievement, but instead was a nightmare wherein the accumulated negative vibes of all his past films seemed to visit a curse upon him, almost driving him into the grave. It didn’t, though, and he continued making films until ‘75, two years before his death.

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Featurette with David Del Valle.
Theatrical trailer.

Credits:
Produced, Directed, and with a screen appearance by William Castle.
Written by Ray Russell, from his Playboy novella.

Cast:
Guy Rolfe, Ronald Lewis, Audrey Dalton, Oscar Homolka.

]]> http://www.filmsinreview.com/2002/03/12/mr-sardonicus/feed/ 0 http://www.filmsinreview.com/2002/01/01/camp-david-winter-20012002/ http://www.filmsinreview.com/2002/01/01/camp-david-winter-20012002/#comments Tue, 01 Jan 2002 11:06:21 +0000 David Del Valle http://www.filmsinreview.com/archives/2002/01/01/camp-david-winter-20012002/

STEPHEN KING RETIRES!!! After the disastrous debut in prime time of ROSE RED, one of the worst TV presentations in recent memory, the news is not surprising. There was a time when even I was a fan of writer Stephen King. The man who penned such original novels as ‘Salem’s Lot, Carrie and The Shining had much to recommend him. However, fame and fortune have corroded what was once a well of macabre inspiration into the Zane Grey of Horror.

My theory about the decline of such talent is that in days long gone, great authors did not enjoy the kind of wealth and exposure of today’s media kings. Can you imagine Edgar Allan Poe with a hundred million dollars? The man died a pauper and achieved immortality. Stephen King may die a millionaire but his legacy is a tarnished one.

ROSE RED is a disgrace to such a career. To steal openly from a superior source as is the case with The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and to have $25 million dollars put at your disposal to simply plagiarize with little imagination is a sad commentary.

This atrocity took three nights to tell its ragged tale, and to waste the life of actor David Dukes in the process is beyond pathetic. Mr. King has vowed to write no more after five more novels. Please tell me he’s kidding.

2002 has just begun and Hollywood has already survived the Golden Globes, the facelift of its main thoroughfare and the subtle diminishing of its middle class. It’s beginning to look a little 42nd Street with a splash of Las Vegas.

One bright spot in the renovation of Tinseltown is the increasing hipness of Silverlake and Los Feliz with jazzy boutiques and sinister nightspots, clubs and hangouts for rich 12-year-olds.

Over on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood I discovered a unique and exciting venue by the name of ODIUM. Here, in a jewelcase of black velvet lined with bookcases devoted to Satanism, psychics, witchcraft, sex and filth, celebrities at their worst and much, much more is to be savored. The proprietor is Stanton LaVey, whose grandfather Anton was the founder of the Church of Satan. Stanton is an acknowledged expert in the occult and with a pedigree to match. Our mutual friend, avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger, recently advised me to stop procrastinating and come on down to the store. I was glad I did. Among the arcane items to tempt the unwary I discovered rare photographs of Sharon Tate by Polanski and had to add them to The Del Valle Archives. If you find yourself in Tinseltown, make a point to stop by and tell them Camp David sent you. ODIUM is located at 7523 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles 90046; open noon to midnight every day; phone (323) 851-6661.

Things just keep getting better over at A & E. My own Miss Lemon informs me that more divine episodes of The Avengers with Tara King and Secret Agent Man with Patrick McGoohan are being released and they are simply some of the best written television available. Kudos to A & E for putting them out in digital remasters looking better than they did the first time around. Science-fiction is not being neglected either with more episodes of the British series Space: 1999 with then-husband and wife Martin Landau and Barbara Bain.

For those who follow the Star Wars franchise and its cast Princess Leia herself, Carrie Fisher made an appearance at the Beverly Garland Hotel in North Hollywood to sell her autograph and memorabilia. Ms. Fisher is one of the highest paid script doctors in the business as well as being the ex-wife of Paul Simon and yet was compelled to charge $25.00 for her signature on anything you cared to present. In case you arrived empty-handed she provided a bevy of photographs from Star Wars and even a few things from Shampoo. Believe me, Erich Von Stroheim was not the only one to recognize Greed in Hollywood.

Even going to the supermarket here can be an event. The other day in the checkout line who should be in front of me but sex queen Edy Williams (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls), the ex-Mrs. Russ Meyer looking very 1968 and feeling pretty damn good about it. Our Miss Edy spotted former football giant turned movie star turned activist Jim Brown and the two had a mini-confab over which gym they were frequenting and how healthy they were. It really made me stop and think (about what, I don’t remember).

Yours Truly is about to make his debut in the pages of Vanity Fair in an article about famed actor’s agent Henry Willson who discovered Rock Hudson as well as several well-endowed and hunky leading men. Variety reporter Robert Hofler is penning the piece having discarded the idea of doing a book on Willson. I knew Henry during the last years of his life out at the Motion Picture Home and gave an accounting of my experiences to Mr. Hofler. Having been an agent myself, I knew firsthand (so to speak) the hazards of mixing business with pleasure. And to find out more you’ll just have to read Vanity Fair. Will update in future column.

Those who follow the career of rapper Snoop Dogg E. Dog may want to check out the DVD of Bones, a horror film the rapper-turned-actor did last Halloween for New Line Cinema. One of the documentaries entitled “Urban Gothic” was shot in my apartment with screenwriter Adam Simon and at 19 minutes is one of the highlights in the DVD supplementals.

If you just can’t get enough of Yours Truly, the William Castle triple feature over at Columbia/Sony is a must. On March 12, you can pick up not only Straitjacket with Joan Crawford but Homicidal and Mr. Sardonicus as well. All three presentations have supplementals that include my observations on these nostalgic and fun excursions into madness and the macabre.

As I close this edition of Camp David, I am preparing to attend the ten days of the American Film Market in Santa Monica after an absence of many years. Will report on the best and the worst films coming your way for 2002-2003. So stay tuned for the next whiskey bar!