The Tingler
                                                                                                    
Director: William Castle
Year: 1959
Rating: 7.5
Scream, scream while you can. A scream at the right time may save your life. This William Castle film is most famous for its gimmicks when it played in theaters. Under some seats was a device to send a buzz through certain audience members at the proper time. Castle also hired women to scream and faint near the end of the picture. The thing is this film doesn't really need the gimmicks. I watched it firmly entrenched on my couch and obviously had no device under it or screaming women in my apartment. I guess I could have asked my girlfriend to sneak up on me and give me an electric shock or have her scream but then the neighbors would probably have called the cops. This isn't her sort of film, so it was just me and the Tingler.


And that was just fine. I thought this was brilliant. There are so many ideas floating around in it and the casting is perfect. And the Tingler was as creepy as something moving under your blanket late at night and rubbing against your feet. A few of the scenes were wonderfully handled and imaginative. When the film was first released it was generally mocked by the critics and called cheap, campy and cheesy. Yes, it is but in a brilliant manner. Since then though its reputation as a Midnight Classic has grown. I would love to see this on the big screen with an enthusiastic audience. No tinglers needed.



Castle introduces the film with the warning - to scream when you are scared. We later find out why. Vincent Price can make any film feel like Shakespear but never more than here. He takes what is a ridiculous idea and makes it seem possible. He never gives a hint at how silly this is if you are of that mind. His character does the autopsies at the prison for people executed in the chair. We meet one man on his way - screaming. During the autopsy, a meek little man who looks like worrying is his hobby walks in on him and tells him that the man executed was his wife's brother.  "He killed two women, so I guess he deserved it".  Warren (Price) tells Ollie (Philip Coolidge) that what really killed the man was not the electric volt but fear. It snapped his spine. He has been theorizing for years that fear creates something physical, a parasite that feeds on fear in men to kill them. He says this all matter-of-factly like he isn't crazy as a bed bug. Because he isn't.



He later tells his assistant David (Darryl Hickman) that they have to capture proof of it at the time of death. Death from fear. And who better to experiment on than his wife (Patricia Cutts) who flaunts her infidelity in front of him like a brand-new Cadillac. At one point he shows her a cat and says "Have you two met? In the same alley." A happy marriage to be sure. He scares her to . . . near death and gets an x-ray that shows a creature within her but it soon disappears. What you need is someone who can't scream because screaming releases something that brings The Tingler back to normal.




And it so happens that Ollie who runs a theater that only plays silent movies has a wife (Judith Evelyn) who is deaf and mute.  She literally can't scream. There are three standout scenes - Price in order to scare himself has taken LSD and gone on a very bad trip - he is brilliant and overplays it just to the right amount. The lovely scene trying to scare the mute woman to death is good fun and the use of color in one bloody moment works great. And the Tingler has escaped into the theater during the playing of Tol'able David. It is a masterful scene with this large centipede-like creature working its way among the audience. A silent film except for the screams.