Director: William Castle
Cast: Vincent Price, Judith Evelyn, Darryl Hickman, Patricia Cutts
Have I Seen It Before: Never. Matinee (1993) always left it as something of a curiosity, but I took my damn time, figuring that without the jolting presence of the PERCEPTO system, what would the film have to offer? Wouldn’t it be watching an endless array of nonsensical jump scares, not unlike trying to watch any number of objects flying to the camera in B-movies built for anaglyph 3D in the era*?
Did I Like It: I’m surprised to say I was pleasantly surprised. Sure, it’s a B Movie with nearly no budget. The titular Tingler (say that five time fast, I dare you) is just a piece of rubber dragged along by a string. The cast is populated with bland day players, save for the always dependable gravitas offered by Price. It will never be considered a great film, nor was it probably much more than a curiosity during the original, wired theatrical exhibition.
The novelty is more clever than annoying. You can see in the sequence where the Tingler accidentally falls into the theater the beginnings of the most fun parts in both Gremlins (1984) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990). I always applaud more modern films for embracing the chaos of Joe Dante, I’ve got to be willing to give the same praise to his forebears.
But the film does oddly play without its novelty. It is an interesting meditation—despite its pulpy foundations—on the usefulness of fear. It makes that which startles us useful in the attempt to destroy that which we truly dread.
Am I suddenly advocating for a modern-day remake of this? No, I don’t think I would go that far. We don’t really scream at horrific things anymore.
Maybe we should.
*To say nothing of the vast majority of 3D movies produced since Avatar (2009).