The Tingler!

I've read about this movie for as long as I can remember. The showmanship of Willaim Castle is renowned, and I've seen House on Haunted Hill, so I have a taste of his style and its effect on the audience.

The Tingler stars Vincent Price in the role of a very very strange scientist who simultaneously seems a gentle and just soul but also plays with the lives and emotions of those around him. His blend of kindness and cruelty is something only an actor of Price's dimension could sell and he does just barely. The movie also stars "Dobie Gillis" (Darryl Hickman), but his part is small and according to the actor he did it mostly as a favor to Castle who put him in it to draw the teenage girls.

The story is simple enough. The Vincent Price character discovers through his work with the executed prisoners that the human spine undergoes inhuman stresses during death or more specifically the mortal terror that precedes it. He further learns that screams relieve this tension. After finding a very odd couple running a silent movie emporium, a laconic mortician-like character named Ollie and his deaf-mute wife, the Price character decides to find the source of the tension. He experiments on himself with LSD and his trip is unusual at best, then the story suggests he gives LSD to the deaf-mute woman who then has her own horrifying trip which results in her death and the discovery of the creature "The Tingler", a wormlike critter that co-exists with us humans. Price tries to corral it but it gets away and escapes into the theater creating havoc.

I'll limit the review as there are a few twists and turns, but that's the general thrust of the story. When the Tingler gets loose, that's when Castle's gimmicks really kick in. "Percepto" is the name a system of buzzers attached to selected movie seats that would be activated intermittently when the Tingler is loose, adding the chaos in the theater. By some reports it was quite successful at creating a thrill and something of a sensation.

This is a peculiar movie, presenting very unlikeable charcters. Price's wife is a cheat and plots his murder, but then so does he in a way. The notion of fidelity and murder seems to be a theme in this story as much as I can make a theme out. The idea of communication and successful blending into society is in there too but it's a bit of a muddle admittedly along these lines.

The Tingler ain't a great movie, it might not even be a good one, but it's a diverting entertainment and I suspect might age well with repeated viewings.

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