Vincent Price (Dr Warren Chapin), Philip
Coolidge (Ollie Higgins), Patricia Cutts (Isabel Chapin), Judith Evelyn
(Martha Higgins), Pamela Lincoln (Lucy Stevens), Darryl Hickman (David
Morris)
PRODUCTION:
Director/Producer – William Castle,
Screenplay – Robb White, Photography (b&w + one sequence colour) –
Wilfrid M. Cline, Music – Von Dexter, Art Direction – Phil Bennett.
Production Company – Columbia. USA. 1959.
SYNOPSIS:
Ollie Higgins visits coroner Dr Warren
Chapin to claim the body of his wife’s brother, following his execution
by electric chair. Chapin notes how the body died in a state of great
fear and the spine has been snapped by an incredible force. He believes
that this was caused by a living creature that he has named The Tingler.
Chapin believes that a Tingler is a parasite that lives inside every
human’s body and feeds on fear but can be destroyed by screaming. Chapin
wants to capture a living Tingler. He locks himself in his lab and
takes some LSD but is unable to prevent himself from screaming and thus
killing his Tingler. Chapin then decides to use Higgins’s deaf-mute wife
Martha as a subject in an experiment. He wants to scare her and because
she cannot scream, she will be unable destroy her Tingler, meaning that
he will be able to capture it. He sets about scaring Martha with
various staged phenomena but instead this kills her. Chapin succeeds in
extracting a live Tingler from her dead body. Meanwhile, Chapin and his
unfaithful wife Isabel have been blackmailing one another. She now seeks
to dispose of him by unleashing the captured Tingler.
COMMENTARY:
William Castle was one of the great genre
producers and directors of the 1950s/60s. Castle was not a terribly
great filmmaker but what he specialised in was promotional gimmicks.
With Macabre (1958), he issued an insurance policy with Lloyd’s of London against audience members dying of fright; in House on Haunted Hill (1959), cinemas were equipped with a skeleton that was winched across the theatre at an appropriate point; in 13 Ghosts
(1960), audiences were given ghost viewers – glasses with pieces of
coloured cellophane over them that allowed them to see the ghosts; in Homicidal (1961) there was a Fright Break where the faint of heart could leave the theatre; while Mr. Sardonicus
(1961) had the opportunity for audiences to vote on an ending where the
title character would either be saved or doomed. (See bottom of the
page for a full listing of William Castle’s genre films).
The Tingler was William Castle’s greatest moment of triumph (unless you count Rosemary’s Baby (1968) – but he was only producer on that). The Tingler
has become a cult classic. Watching it you can see why – it has
everything including an outrageously entertaining premise, Vincent
Price, William Castle at the height of his gimmick-based ingenuity,
wonderfully torrid scenes of marital in-battling between Price and his
calculating tramp of a wife Patricia Cutts, even LSD trips (The Tingler
was the first film to ever depict an acid trip). It is a wonderful
little B film that lives up to its cult reputation in every way.
The concept of The Tingler and its being
defeated by the “release of fear tensions” (ie. screaming) is positively
ingenious (although the idea that something the size of what the
Tingler is finally revealed to be could hide inside the human body
undetected is preposterous). Frequent Castle collaborator Robb White
turns in a tautly effective screenplay – there is a fine twist that
reveals Philip Coolidge as having deliberately murdered his wife.
Although the final seemingly tacked-on twist ending with her returning
to life and coming after him makes no sense.
As a director, William Castle seemed driven
by the crude sensationalistic approach of a P.T. Barnum more than
anything. His actual direction was always flat and pedestrian. That
said, some of the time here Castle’s brute force shock theatrics could
prove effective. The scenes trying to scare deaf-mute Judith Evelyn –
where she is pursued by a man in a mask waving a knife, hatchets being
thrown and death certificates placed on bathroom mirrors – have a
mechanical pedestrianness, but these are transcended by one wonderful
scene where the water in a bath turns blood red (in a film that is
otherwise shot in black-and-white) as a hand reaches up out of it. Where
William Castle always succeeded was when it came to his gimmicks – not
through any necessary imagination but more through his brazen
hucksterism. With The Tingler, he
was at the height of ingenuity after which he never achieved the same
again. Castle’s inspired scheme here was the wiring up of theatres with
electroshock buzzers beneath the seats, which would zap people at
selected intervals (although the extent to which this was done and the
number of theatres that were wired up was not as widespread as B movie
myth would have it).
There is a marvellous prologue where
William Castle himself appears to introduce the film: “At any time you
are conscious of a tingling sensation, you may obtain immediate relief
by screaming. Don’t be embarrassed about opening your mouth and letting
rip with all you’ve got.” The finest moment in the film occurs near the
end where Castle has The Tingler get loose in a silent movie theatre.
There is that wonderful moment where the screen goes completely blank
(this was probably the point where the electroshock buzzers were turned
on and audiences jolted out of their wits). Castle’s voice again appears
to assure audiences that there is no cause for alarm. A couple of
moments later The Tingler is seen in silhouette entering the projection
booth, whereupon Castle invokes the audience to scream for all they are
worth and stun The Tingler. It is an absolutely glorious moment where
both the film and the meta-filmic combine – the invocation is as much to
the audience that is watching the film and being jolted as it is
anything to do with what is going on on screen. The film ends with
another blank screen and Castle’s voice: “Ladies and gentlemen, just a
word of warning, if any of you are not convinced you have a Tingler of
your own, the next time you are in the dark, don’t scream.”
In recent years, there have been a number of remakes of William Castle films and a remake of The Tingler was at one point announced, although has yet to emerge.
William Castle’s other films of genre note as producer-director are:– as director of Crime Doctor’s Manhunt
(1945), the sixth in a series of Columbia crime thrillers, of which
Castle directed several, featuring a forensicologist against a
split-personalitied killer; the psycho-thriller Macabre (1958); House on Haunted Hill (1959); the haunted house film 13 Ghosts (1960); the psycho-thriller Homicidal (1961); Mr. Sardonicus ((1961) about a man with his face caught in a grotesque frozen smile; the juvenile comedy Zotz! (1962) about a magical coin; the remake of The Old Dark House (1963) for Hammer; the Grand Guignol psycho-thriller Strait-Jacket (1964) with Joan Crawford; The Night Walker (1965), a psycho-thriller about a dream lover; the psycho-thriller I Saw What You Did (1965); the psycho-thriller Let’s Kill Uncle (1965); the ghost comedy The Spirit is Willing (1967); the reality-bending sf film Project X (1968); as producer of the classic occult film Rosemary’s Baby (1968); as producer of the anthology series Ghost Story (1972-3); Shanks (1974) with Marcel Marceau as a puppeteer who can resurrect the dead; and as producer of the firestarting insect film Bug! (1975).
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