William
Castle’s The Tingler, released in
1959, is one of the most well known examples of the gimmick films of the
time. Many films were released in 3D or
had skeletons fly through the theatre during the movie in hopes of adding
excitement to an otherwise mediocre fright flick. In the case of The Tingler, buzzers were attached to theatre seats that would go
off whenever a scream was heard during the film.
While
these gimmicks could be fun, I believe The
Tingler would have been a better film without it. The opening introduction
by Castle warning the audience of the devices is only effective to audiences of
the time. Now, it is distracting and serves as a way to remove the audience
from the film. This is a shame, because for the most part, the film is not as
bad as its reputation.
The plot
involves Vincent Price doing his thing as an obsessed, jealous mad
scientist. While performing autopsies on
the bodies of executed criminals, he comes across the discovery that they have
an additional attachment to their spine. His hypothesis is that this was caused
by fright. He continues to experiment on people and discovers that the
attachment is actually a separate organism, dubbed The TIngler. Price manages to remove one from a body and
it escapes, leading to a chase climax.
The
majority of the film plays as a low budget David Cronenberg predecessor. Price’s mad scientist is similar to the Jeff
Goldblum Character in The Fly.
(Vincent Price was the star of the original version of The Fly, released in 1958) The Tingler creature itself calls to
mind the odd centipede type bugs of Naked
Lunch. It’s easy to imagine this was an influence on Cronenberg.
The
unique aspects of the film are severely over shadowed by the gimmickry,
however. The creature eventually is let
loose in a movie theatre, obviously an excuse to turn the audiences’ buzzer
seats up to 11. The film limps to an ending that feels detached from the rest
of the film as an apartment is suddenly possessed and a body comes back to
life. This closing has nothing to do with the preceding events and feels like a
letdown, most of all because Price is no longer in the scene.
Seeing so many horror films remade these days, this is a movie that could actually
benefit from an update. With less gimmicks and better effects, I think a filmmaker such as Cronenberg or Guillermo Del Toro could do a lot with the concept.
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| Vincent Price in The Tingler |
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