Zotz! (1962)

Nowadays cinematic wish-fulfilment fantasies mostly take the form of superhero movies, but back in the day they took more prosaic forms, involving genies or magical objects which can give characters seemingly magical powers.  Of course, there were also the science fiction equivalents of such stories, involving aliens or radioactive phenomena giving ordinary people extraordinary powers - a step toward contemporary superhero films.  Zotz! (1962), though, falls into the former category, (although it develops some of the trappings of the latter kind as it progresses).  A bit of a departure for William Castle after a string of popular and gimmicky horror movies, Zotz! is played primarily for laughs, with college professor Tom Poston's sudden acquisition of magical powers via possession of an ancient coin leading to all manner of confusion and chaos and his colleagues questioning his sanity.  Much hilarity ensues.  Actually, to be fair, the movie is still mildly amusing in parts thanks mainly to the playing of experienced comedic character actors like Poston, Jim Backus and Cecil Kellaway.  Nonetheless, the film's script largely abandons the source novel's satirical allegory about the development of nuclear weapons in favour of more straightforward slapstick and comedy.  Only in the film's latter part does it attempt to use the coin as a metaphor for the arms race, as communist agents try to gain control of it and the US militaty belatedly become interested, (having initially dismissed Poston as a crank).

The powers that the coin confers upon Poston are fairly random: if the points at person it causes them intense pain, if he points and says 'Zotz!' then it kills them (or destroys inanimate objects), while just saying 'Zotz!' puts anyone or anything he is observing into slow motion.  Like all good superpowers, there are limitations, namely that he actually has to have the coin on his person for any of these powers to work.  Which, of course, results in the inevitable comic sequence where Poston tries to demonstrate his powers at a faculty function, not realising that he doesn't have the coin on his person.  Shot in black and white like Castle's horror movies, Zotz! is well put together, with decent production values, (not to mention more exterior scenes than most of his mainly studio bound horror films).  Being a William Castle production, Zotz! obviously came with a gimmick.  In this case, it was a plastic replica of the coin in the film, which was handed out to viewers who bought tickets for the film.  There have been claims that the coin was withdrawn after some recipients thought that it really would give them powers and started jumping off of roofs and the like.  Which seems highly unlikely to me - surely they would try pointing their fingers at people and shouting 'Zotz!'.  More likely that such stories were propagated by Castle himself in order to create more publicity for the film after supplies of the plastic coins ran out.