The Tingler, Starring Vincent Price

Like a pool hustler carrying his own cue, Vincent Price should have had his own specially tailored lab coat. Usually, he portrayed mad doctors conducting evil experiments. However, Dr. Warren Chapin is a more ambiguous researcher, who is working on some real science. It is crazy, but his discovery, a parasitic creature brought out by fear, nicely complimented showman-director William Castle’s “Percepto” gimmick. Scream for your life Castle advises viewers in his signature campy introduction to The Tingler, which airs Friday night on TCM.

Fear is Dr. Chapin’s specialty, as he explains to nebbish Ollie Higgins, who is exercising his court-mandated right to observe the autopsy of his freshly executed brother-in-law. It turns out his homicidal brother really died of fright from the anticipated voltage of the electric chair. That gets Chapin to thinking about his own emerging theories regarding the physical effects of fear.

When he scares the wits out of his unfaithful wife Isabel, he manages to x-ray the centipede-like “Tingler” on her spine. After conducting a sort of controlled experiment on himself, by dropping acid, Chapin develops a hypothesis that Tinglers feed off human fear, until the noise of their hosts’ screams forces them to break contact. That’s the theory, but what happens when someone can’t scream, like Higgins’ deaf-mute wife, Martha?

The Tingler is notorious for Castle’s Percepto stunt. According to urban legend, he rigged select theater seats to give patrons electric shocks, but other sources say he merely hooked them up to buzzers. He also hired fainting shills and posted phony nurses in theater lobbies. In fact, The Tingler is probably more responsible for Castle’s huckster reputation than any other film.

Yet, the film never really gets credit for a pretty original concept. Frankly, Castle was arguably punching above his weight with his rather distinctive and even stylish execution. Dr. Chapin’s acid trip nightmare is creepy, but Martha Higgins’ freak-out sequence is truly surreal and sinister, inventively integrating the bright crimson red color of blood into the film’s shadowy black-and-white (despite his shticky rep, Castle was quite familiar with European art cinema and you can see the influence here).

Plus, Robb White’s screenplay pulls of some surprisingly clever misdirection. Admittedly, the dark sequences in which Price warns the audience to scream their lungs out because the Tingler is loose in their theater (or drive-in, according to alternate version) are definitely Castle-corny, but that is all part of the film’s charm.

IFP: The Spine Tingler

How can you turn down a screening that offers you a $1,000 insurance policy should you die of fright? Hip viewers will recognize this homage to horror movie director-showman William Castle, and indeed Spine Tingler is a biographical documentary of that Hollywood legend, which was screened in its entirety at IFP yesterday.

Castle is actually fondly remembered by many for his promotional gimmicks, like issuing insurance policies in theater lobbies, or installing electric buzzers in select seats for the Vincent Price film The Tingler. John Goodman’s character in Matinee is almost wholly modeled on Castle, and its director Joe Dante is one of those paying tribute to the master in Spine Tingler. Producer director Jeffrey Schwarz also covers lesser known, but no less colorful incidents, in what was a darn interesting life.

We learn of the early William Castle, who built a successful publicity campaign for a summer stock play by ostensibly standing up to Hitler, when his German émigré leading lady was invited (but hardly expected) to a reunion in Nazi Germany. Throughout his career, Castle did have an eye for the commercial, buying the rights to Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby. Due to studio machinations, he would not actually direct the Roman Polanski classic, but it was a William Castle Production.

Schwarz clearly has a love of the material, creating an entertaining looking film, through retro graphics and clever use of vintage film. He was able to obtain clearance for all of the important works in the Castle canon, and had the cooperation of the family and many of those who worked with Castle, including Marcel Marceau. This is a film for film-lovers, not just goofy horror movie cultists, as it captures a unique filmmaker’s love for his craft. It deserves distribution (and it will be screening at the upcoming AFI Film Festival.)

The film is complete (trailer here), except for a little color correction, according to Schwarz (actually, it would have been totally appropriate if someone had turned up in the film with a green head, but it all looked right at the screening). Castle’s films enjoy a revival life, so this film should have a market, and despite the Tingler footage, I obviously did not die of fright (and Mother Spins will not be collecting $1,000), so the uninitiated can safely attend.