THE TINGLER
US, 1959, 82 minutes, Black and white.
Vincent Price, Judith Evelyn, Darryl Hickman.
Directed by William, Castle.
The Tingler is a tongue-in-cheek thriller produced and directed by William Castle who specialised for a time in this kind of cheap and enjoyable horror: Homicidal, I Saw What You Did. The film is a star vehicle for Vincent Price who had already appeared in such horror films as House of Wax and The Fly. He was to specialise in this kind of film for the coming decades, especially in Roger Corman's Edgar Allen Poe adaptations. Here he is, it seems, a mad scientist with a theory about fear creating a parasite on the spine, a tingler. However, he is not quite as bad as seems and the innocent-looking thin bald-headed bystander is highlighted as the murderer. The film anticipates many of the horror films of the '70s and '80s - especially with the shock scares and the tingler itself. There is a coloured sequence in the centre of the film as the deaf mute wife is terrorised - especially with bright red blood in the sink and in the bath!
The film also has an introduction by Castle, has screams during the credits - and has a tongue-in~cheek climax where the tingler is let loose in a cinema (which may have caused havoc in the late '50s) and the screen goes black while Vincent Price talks about the tingler in the screen theatre hoping for scares in the real theatre. The film is modest by later standards - but is an enjoyable example of attempts at shock horror in the past.
1. Enjoyable horror story? Science? Mad scientists?
2. Black and white photography? B-budget? The coloured section - with the focus on the blood red? The darkness for scaring audiences? Vincent Price's voice and his scares and reassurances?
3. The musical score?
4. The title and audience response to tingling? The elaboration of the theory by Warren about fear, looking at victims of fear, the materialising of a parasite - and its holding onto the backbone? The appearance of the tingler - like a giant centipede parasite? Its being visualised in the X-rays, an actual tingler, its growth, its being reduced by screams (and the audience being invited to scream to shrink the tingler!)?
5. Vincent Price as Warren: as a doctor, his autopsy on the execution victim, David as his assistant? The clash with Isabel and her infidelity? Scaring her and taking the X-rays of a tingler? Her trying to poison him - and her leaving him? His friendship with Lucy and David? His support of them and asking Isabel to give the money? The encounter with the brother-in-law of the executed man, his going home, the encounter with Mrs. Higgins, her fainting? The friendship with Ollie? His going back to Mrs. Higgins, administering the drug, discovering her dead, the cutting out of the tingler, his later reinserting it? The experience with the tingler, its getting loose into the theatre, people screaming? His change of heart about the limits of scientific investigation? A Vincent Price character?
6. Ollie and his interest, his wife, the running of the theatre with the silent films? Mrs. Higgins and her fear, communication, preoccupation about the money? Her fainting? Ollie and his concern, Warren giving Mrs. Higgins the drugs? Her hallucination in the night, the colour sequence, her fear, the tingler and her death? The irony that it was Ollie terrifying her? His quiet manner, unobtrusiveness?
Wanting the money? The confrontation with the doctor, the gun? His being terrorised by the revived Mrs. Higgins - the final scream?
7. Lucy and David - and the romantic sub-plot, money difficulties, dedication to science?
8. The use of the theatre as a location, the screening of Tol'lable David? The sequences in the film corresponding to the atmosphere of the audience?
9. The melodrama? The scientific theory - fantasy or presented seriously? Themes of fear? Being scared to death? The filmmakers wanting the audience to tingle as they watched their horror film?
