You might not remember his name nor know his game.

But William Castle is a B-movie legend, the P.T. Barnum of Hollywood.

Like a circus barker, he invigorated horror and thriller movies in the 1950s and 1960s with gonzo gimmicks. For the Vincent Price mad-science movie The Tingler, Castle wired giant joy buzzers under theatre seats to give patrons the illusion of an electrical shock.

Producer-director Castle (1914-1977) is honoured this week with a five-disc box set, The William Castle Film Collection.

It contains all eight of his Columbia Pictures titles from The Tingler (1959) through 13 Ghosts (1960), Homicidal (1961), Mr. Sardonicus (1961), Zotz! (1962), 13 Frightened Girls (1963), The Old Dark House (1963) and Strait-Jacket (1964). You have to go elsewhere for his non-Columbia titles, including the much-loved House on Haunted Hill.

Three titles here are new to DVD. All eight are beautifully remastered. There are good extras. A fascinating doc with The Tingler offers an overview of Castle and delves into his eccentric stunts. What is missing -- because people focus on his outlandish showmanship -- is that Castle was a good filmmaker. I don't mean like a Welles, Ford or Hitchcock. But, in his own realm of slapstick horror and comedy thrillers, Castle was king. His films are adept, off-kilter, clever.

His take on sex-and-violence, for example, is transgressive for the time. Price's wife in The Tingler mocks him while openly cheating on him. In the underrated comedy Zotz!, a terrific Tom Poston gets all goofy when he discovers a naked hotie outside his window after conjuring a storm with an invocation.

Castle never just shot the obvious.

There were wild and crazy guys in showbiz long before Steve Martin -- and one of them was William Castle.