Just SCREAM! SCREAM The Tingler is LOOSE!!!

 

The facial expressions in The Tingler (1959) are the best. Just the best. The relationships of the marrieds in this film are just so peculiar. I keep asking myself how Ollie (Philip Coolidge) and Martha (Judith Evelyn) could have ever ended up together. Martha, a deaf mute, kept her attentions dedicated to her safe and cleanliness. Ollie seemed obedient to her desires, opening and operating the silent film theater, but is seen first attending his brother-in-law's electrocution in the electric chair for killing two women who lived not far from him ("just down the street"). That Warren (Vincent Price) knows that his adulterous wife (Patricia Cutts) killed her father through poisoning and doesn't "poke around" as the signs of the poison could be verified is this detail among many in the script from Robb White that reveals the edgy in a film that is so often sighted as silly camp. Yes, the "fear creature" on the spine is ridiculous and how Price (and his sister-in-law and lab assistant) react to his taking LSD today could be seen as very much a hoot. The effects of LSD in a creature feature and gimmicky William Castle horror flick (complete with the monster loose in a theater as "Tol'able David" shows on the screen) played up as something that specifically elicits hallucinogenic terror is quite a trip in and of itself. A wife just brazenly, openly cheating on Warren, even committed to killing him with the creature and just leaving the film afterward was always such an odd resolution to the decaying marriage. But the entire terror of Martha, complete with Ollie donning a mask, wearing a monster arm sleeve and tossing an ax, even posting her obit on a cabinet door, is so played as if we should all be as horrified as her is more or less a knee slapper for bad movie aficionados today. I just adore this film, though. All the tricks--including the bloody arm reaching from a tub of blood, the only color in Castle's B&W picture--and the melodrama involving wickedness in bad marriages either resulting in murder or attempted murder is too irresistible to me. But the opening frightened faces screaming, right after William Castle prepares us for sheer terror, is such a wonderful introduction if you love this sort of thing. I can't help it. This is just such delish chum to me. It's chili cheese tots.