Our ongoing series reviewing the greatest Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror movies. Note that these reviews may contain spoilers.
Directed by: William Castle
Produced by: William Castle
Written by: Robb White
Starring: Vincent Price, Judith Evelyn, Pamela Lincoln, Daryl Hickman, Patricia Cutts, Philip Coolidge
Original Release: 1959
Reviewed by: Sam Christopher
Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars
“I am William Castle, the director of the motion picture you are about to see. I feel obligated to warn you that some of the sensations… some of the physical reactions which the actors on the screen will feel… will also be experienced, for the first time in motion picture history, by certain members of this audience. I say ‘certain members’ because some people are more sensitive to these mysterious electronic impulses than others. These unfortunate, sensitive people will at times feel a strange, tingling sensation; other people will feel it less strongly. But don’t be alarmed, you can protect yourself. 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, because the person in the seat right next to you will probably be screaming too. And remember— a scream at the right time may save your life.”
(Fade to various shots of people screaming so the audience will know how to at the appropriate time.)
Synopsis: Dr. Warren Chapin (Vincent Price) performs autopsies on all state-executed criminals as a “day job” while researching the mechanism of fear in the human body. He meets the brother-in-law, Ollie (Philip Coolidge), of one such criminal and finds that the man’s wife, Martha (Judith Evelyn), is a deaf-mute. Chapin finds this interesting in that he believes there is something in the body that makes the spine tingle and grow rigid in extreme fear situations and that the only way to neutralize this “tingler” as he calls it, is by screaming. He shares some of his thoughts innocently with Ollie, who takes this as a means to “scare” his wife to death. Chapin performs an autopsy on Martha, freeing the “Tingler” which gets loose in a movie theater. I think you see where this is going.
Review/Comments: Ah, back to the halcyon days of just plain fun in the theater! I chose this one for the Must-Watch List because I felt the quirky showmanship of Castle deserved to be acknowledged and this is his best film. I know that The House on Haunted Hill and even 13 Ghosts are more celebrated—especially today after the remakes—but this film combines the quiet (seeming) malevolence of Price with Robb White’s best script and a great Castle gimmick, Percepto. It also boasts the first depiction of LSD in a motion picture by a recognized studio. White had evidently used LSD in college and put it in here to tie in with the overall theme of fear. The cast is also a very good ensemble, with Darryl Hickman playing Price’s lab assistant, David, with Hickman’s real-life fiancée, Pamela Lincoln, as Price’s sister-in-law and David’s fiancée Lucy. Patricia Cutts plays the scheming murderess Isabel, Price’s wife in the piece—the “husband and wife” have a… interesting… relationship, to say the least. This would be Castle’s second and last film with Price, although the director’s association with writer White would last another couple of films.
What more can be said about the inimitable consummate actor who was Vincent Price that hasn’t already been said? He was suave and urbane, honest and forthright, malevolent and cold—and that was just in this film! Price’s Dr. Chapin is a man driven by his love of science and his need to know, but not driven to the point of “Mad Scientist” status. He uses the LSD David brings him (it was legal at that time, and as a scientist he could probably even use it today for research), but only on himself. This leads to a fun scene in which Price is locked in the lab alone and nearly goes mad from fear before releasing a scream. He can be ruthless, however. Our first meeting with Isabel leads to Price forcing her into the lab at gunpoint and scaring her sufficiently that he might get a good look at the Tingler stretched along her spine. The spouses also trade some excellent dialogue during the film, with Price delivering cutting lines and insults that will leave the viewer wincing on occasion. Price is quietly vicious with Isabel, warm and loving with Lucy (whom he sees as a daughter), friendly though stern with David (as the latter’s supervisor and father-figure), sympathetic though eager then stern and resigned with Ollie. He really delivers an excellent though understated—and often underappreciated—acting performance that appears ho-hum because it is Vincent Price. And because Vincent Price was one of the greatest actors of the last century he made everything look easy.
Robb White wrote many articles for various publications, both under his own name and using pseudonyms (he was once quoted as saying, “I wrote as a woman for True Stories and got raped in a hayloft about once a month”), as well as 24 novels, most of which are teen-aimed adventure stories. He gained fame as Scholastic distributed some of his novels to school children via book-mobiles, clubs and fairs in the ‘50s through early ‘70s. As with many writers of the period, he dabbled in television and eventually penned a few scripts for Castle. Macabre, White’s first try, was an adaptation of the novel The Marble Forest, written piecemeal by fifteen members of The Mystery Writers of America (which should explain the inconsistencies in the story). Next came The House on Haunted Hill, which had Price as the millionaire who offers five strangers $10K apiece to spend the night in a haunted house. After The Tingler, White would write 13 Ghosts, about a man who invents an apparatus that allows one to see ghosts (and which also has Martin Milner on hand), and Homicidal, a distorted riff on Psycho that’s not nearly as good but still fun to watch. White hit his stride in The Tingler, with a literate, cohesive script that only benefitted from the vulgarity of Castle’s gimmick for the picture.
Percepto, the gimmick for this film, involved the wiring of buzzers to random audience seats which would go off when the Tingler was loose in the theater shown in the film. The screen would go black and Price instructed the viewers to, “Scream! Scream for your lives!” This followed in the footsteps of other attempts by Castle to drum up publicity for his films unrelated to their audience watchability or critical comment. With Macabre, there was a Lloyd’s of London life insurance policy that would pay in the event of an audience member’s death of fright while watching the film, along with nurses and hearses stationed at theaters during the showings. For The House on Haunted Hill, there was Emergo, in which a skeleton on a string was run above the heads of the audience at the appropriate time. For 13 Ghosts, Castle brought out Illusion-O, which was basically 3-D glasses that allowed the viewer to look through one side to see the ghosts or the other side if the ghosts were too frightening. Homicidal had the Fright Break, allowing any audience member too frightened to watch the last two minutes of the film to leave and get their money back. This last also involved nurses taking blood pressure and a Coward’s Corner where those leaving were led and forced to sign a paper stating they were a “Bona Fide Coward”. 1961’s non-Robb White outing, Mr. Sardonicus, has my favorite Castle gimmick, the Punishment Poll. Castle comes out near the end of the film and allows the audience to “vote” on the final fate of the title character. In what I’m sure is a shocking revelation to everyone reading this, apparently no audience anywhere ever let Baron Sardonicus off the hook, so the alternate “upbeat” ending has never been seen (and probably never existed).
William Castle’s films are easy to dismiss on the critical level. It’s all too easy to say that they weren’t extremely well-executed, that the production values are low, a lot of the acting average-to-shoddy, and the gimmicks too cheesy to be taken seriously. But that’s the point: these films are not meant to be taken seriously. They are just fun to watch, nothing more. The lore that surrounds them is fun to read about but the main fun in these pictures is to be had on the screen. All of the Castle films I’ve mentioned here are fun to watch; The Tingler is just the best one. It is a genre film I consider a Must-See.
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