The Tingler (1959) Starring Vincent Price, Judith Evelyn, Darryl Hickman, Patricia Cutts & Pamela Lincoln Written by Robb White Directed by William Castle

Enter the Gimmick. Technicolor. Cinerama. Odor-rama. New draws that the theater could offer which television could not. Now, granted, the Gimmick was nothing new - according to Forrest J. Ackerman, when he saw Frankenstein in 1931, a woman ran screaming from the theater. At the very next screening, Ackerman related, she came back in, and ran out screaming again - at the exact same point of the film!

Inarguably, the King of the Gimmicks was producer/director (and sometimes actor) William Castle. In 1958, for the film Macabre, he offered certificates of $1000 life insurance from Lloyd's of London, and stationed fake nurses in theater lobbies and hearses in the parking lots. In 1959, he sent glow-in-the-dark skeletons zipping over the audience ("Emergo!") for The House on Haunted Hill. However, it is with the film we are concerned with today that Castle perhaps reached his pinnacle of gimmickry. I speak, of course, of 1959's The Tingler.

SYNOPSIS

The film opens with a short introduction from director-producer William Castle, in which he talks briefly about the film to follow, and in particular hints at the primary gimmick of the film - Percepto. He informs the viewing audience that if, at any point they feel overwhelmed with terror, they should scream - "let loose with all you've got!" He even reminds the audience, "if you scream at just the right time, it might just save your life."

Dr. Warren Chapin (Price), a forensic pathologist, is in the midst of autopsying a recent execution as confirmation of death when a small, balding, nebbish man - Oliver "Ollie" Higgins (Coolidge), a curious relative of the deceased -- interrupts him. Driving Ollie home after his work is done, Chapin warms to him as he, with his wife, maintains and runs a small local theater that screens older, silent films.

Being invited up for coffee, Chapin meets Martha (Evelyn), Ollie's wife, a deaf-mute. He soon discovers that Martha has an uncontrollable terror of blood and germs - he cuts his hand on a broken saucer, and she goes into a psychosomatic coma. Returning home, Chapin has to deal with Isabelle (Cutts), his haughty and unfaithful wife, who holds the purse strings that allow Chapin to continue his personal research into the physiological effects of fear. Isabelle's younger sister, Lucy (Lincoln), loves Chapin's assistant, Dave Morris (Hickman), but is forbidden from marrying him, under threat of being cut off from her inheritance.

Furious with her, Chapin terrifies Isabelle into a dead faint, X-raying her unconscious body. These X-rays reveal a strange, caterpillar-like creature, clinging to the spine (creating the tingling sensation of fear), shrinking down to nothing as fear subsides or fear tension are released via a scream.

Chapin pays a follow-up visit to Martha, giving her a shot of muscle relaxant and a prescription for sleeping pills. She goes to sleep, but is soon roused by a grisly, hatchet-wielding zombie that chases her around the house until she takes refuge in the bathroom, where the sink and tub faucets immediately fountain forth brilliant scarlet blood - in the midst of a black-and-white film! This proves too much for Martha, who keels over, stone dead.

Ollie brings her body to Chapin, who performs an impromptu autopsy - and removes a colossal Tingler, resembling a caterpillar or Lobopod (an obscure order of invertebrates, today represented almost solely by the tropical "Velvet Worm"), over twelve inches in length. The thing puts up a struggle, but is ultimately forced into a glass holding tank. Isabelle soon makes an attempt to use the Tingler to kill Chapin, but when this fails she disappears into the night. Running some tests, Chapin and Morris discover the monstrous thing to be unkillable - though perhaps returning it to it's original host body would allow it to die.

They find, however, that Ollie did not take her body to the morgue. Suspecting foul play, Chapin confronts him, discovering that the nebbish Ollie frightened her to death with a rubber mask. As Chapin moralizes, the Tingler escapes into the theater below the Higgins house.

Realizing the danger the theater patrons are in, Chapin rushes downstairs as the Tingler attacks the projectionist. Calling out to the audience, Chapin warns, "Ladies and gentlemen, please do not panic! But SCREAM! Scream for your lives!" Their screams immobilize the Tingler, allowing Chapin to restore it to Martha's body, where it will hopefully die as natural a death as possible for such an unnatural creature. As the scene fades to black, Chapin offers a final warning to the audience: "Ladies and gentlemen, just a word of warning. If any of you are not convinced that you have a Tingler of your own, the next time you're frightened in the dark... don't scream."

ANALYSIS

We have two Gimmicks at play here, readers. First off, the bathroom sequence in which vibrantly red blood spills from the faucets. A fairly simple though cunning and sophisticated trick, Castle filmed these sequence using color film stock - and painted the set (and Judith Evelyn) in grayscale. It matches beautifully, though if you look closely at the chrome of the faucets, you can see the deception.

The second Gimmick is the much-discussed "Percepto." Often erroneously referred to as giving audiences mild electric shocks, Percepto actually consisted of something resembling a large joy-buzzer (actually Army surplus vibrators, designed to shake ice off plane wings) installed under certain seats in select theaters. When Price called for audiences to "scream for your lives," the buzzers were activated, making seats vibrate and supposedly making the occupants of those seats shriek. Cult film director John Waters is on record as having loved The Tingler, and would go to the theater early, find the wired seats, and spend the day "having [his] ass buzzed."

That's John Waters for you.

As an interesting historical note, The Tingler marks the first time LSD and its use was shown on screen. Chapin obtained a sample for his experiments on fear, and dosed himself in an attempt to personally experience the Tingler's effect. Shortly after injecting himself with a solution of LSD, he begins to feel the walls closing in around him. He attempts to stifle a scream, but cannot resist it; and thus, his Tingler is defeated before he can experience the sensation of its growth.

Price gives a phenomenal performance here, but truly, when doesn't he? I don't think the man has ever disappointed me. He's given some fantastic material to work with here as well; his caustic conversations with Patricia Cutts are some of my favorite in the wide, wild world of psychotronic cinema. Truthfully, no one gives a bad performance here, giving their all with the material and crafting genuine, believably flawed human beings.

All in all, a unique premise, brilliant performances by talented actors, and a plain sense of fun in the production combine to make The Tingler a must-see piece of Classic Camp.