THE TINGLER (1959)

 

(Producer/director: William Castle. Screenwriter: Robb White.)

Storyline

A pathologist traps and studies a parasitic creature that feeds off people’s fears, killing them if they are unable to scream.

Review

Dr. Warren Chapin (Vincent Price, THE TOMB OF LIGEIA, 1964) has been studying the effects of terror on its dead victims’ spines for six years─those who were electrocuted have cracked vertebrae─when a local, deaf-mute movie theater owner (Mrs. Martha Ryerson Higgins, played by Judith Evelyn), whom he experimented on with a fear drug, dies. An X-ray reveals a large centipede-like parasite attached to her spine. Chapin, with his cuckolding wife (Isabel Stevens Chapin) and Martha’s widower (Oliver “Ollie” Higgins) looking on, extracts the arm-length, well-fed creature from Martha, and it escapes. . . into a theater of people watching a 1921 silent action film, TOL’ABLE DAVID! Can Warren and Ollie stop the everyone-has-one beast with a “hydraulic press” grip before it kills them and those in the half full film palace? (Or is the theater half empty?)

An hour and twenty-minutes long, TINGLER is an excellent fun-blast of a flick, with a lot going for it. There’s the tightly written, character-twisty script, penned by Robb White (who worked with director/producer William Castle on many of Castle’s best films, including HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, released in February 1959, five months before TINGLER energized filmgoers). There’s Castle, a rigid practitioner of one-take shots and creative-with-often-effective-promotion gimmicks, at the helm. There’s first-ever-on-film LSD trips, courtesy of the fear-adrenalizing tinglers, which recall scenes from HAUNTED HILL and other Castle-directed movies. And of course, there’s tar-black humor, taking variable forms in the characters (Ollie and Isabel, who are devious spouses─HAUNTED HILL was also underscored with this acidic, marital-gallows tension).

Of course, this tale of duplicity, spinal-parasitic monsters and fear would not have been as effective with a less-than-talented cast. Price, as expected, imbues his character with sympathetic aspects, morally ambiguous motives (he’s willing to experiment on Martha without her and Ollie’s explicit consent) and wit─Warren’s wry, dagger-slice comments to Isabel are less venomous and intense than those of Frederick Loren (also played by Price) toward his wife, Annabelle (Carol Ohmart), in HAUNTED HILL, and Warren is not out to murder his wife (though he would not mind if she died). Patricia Cutts’s Isabel is a fun (in a bitter way) foil to her science-obsessed husband, dishing out as good as she receives.

The Higgins are also enjoyable. Ollie’s initially innocent, amiable façade and later desperate actions (spot-on performance by Philip Coolidge) and Martha’s briefly seen intensity and panic attacks are given full-blown life by Judith Evelyn, who played Miss Lonelyhearts in REAR WINDOW (1954).

Pamela Lincoln (as Lucy Stevens, Isabel’s younger sister) and Darryl Hickman (as David Morris, Lucy’s suitor, and a scientist) provide a positive counterbalance to the Chapins’ and the Higgins’ shadowy unions. (In real life, Lincoln and Hickman got married in November 1959; they divorced in December 1982.)

The tingler itself is impressive, in all its cheesy, B-movie glory. The scene where its shadow is seen, large as about-to-happen death, against the brightly illuminated movie screen makes it all the more fun, while theater patrons scream, trip over each other and spill popcorn in the aisles is a hoot.

It would not be a Castle film if there wasn’t a gimmick or two to accompany it.  For TINGLER, Castle coined the phrase “Percepto,” placing buzzers under some of the theater seats. During screaming scenes in the film, the buzzers would vibrate and those sitting in those seats would experience the sensations of someone being preyed upon a tingler─like the characters, they were encouraged to scream the deadly terror away. Other viewers, working for Castle, would scream as well. In a later biography, the director/producer said he buzzed twenty million butts (minimum) during this film, whose ending was intentionally volume-inducing

TINGLER is one of my favorite 1950s fun-monster films for the above reasons. If you’re looking for a low budget, tightly shot thrills and an excuse to make noise, this might be a worthy flick.

QUICK NOTE: I got most of my facts about this film from IMDb. If you were entertained by them, you might want to check the “Trivia” subsection on THE TINGLER’s information page.