[HorrorScience] The Tingler (1959)

William Castle was a film producer and director who became famous because during the screening of his films, he used to use some type of practical effect to scare the viewer while they were watching the film (the seat would vibrate, a ghost or a skeleton would appear hanging in the movie theater...), thus managing to scare and disconcert the audience. It was also common for there to be “fake” spectators who screamed or fainted during the film (and who would be treated by fake doctors), in order to sow concern in the rest of the audience.

These clever tricks were very lucrative, so Castle continued using them in his films, to the point that they became his trademark.

One of the films that benefited from this kind of trick was The Tingler (known in Spain as Chill and in Latin America as The sting of death).

The film begins with Doctor Warren (played by Vincent Price), a man totally dedicated to his work, who by performing autopsies has come to the conclusion that when someone dies in a situation that horrifies him, they suffer a series of apparently inexplicable injuries to their back.

In one of his autopsies he meets a man named Oliver (Ollie) Higgins, who owns a silent movie theater, owned by his wife, a deaf-mute woman, who is easily horrified, fainting at the mere sight of a drop of blood.

After meeting the woman, Warren begins to discuss with his partner the possibility that there may be some kind of relationship between the fact of not being able to scream and the spinal injuries in the bodies he had examined, and that if they could take x-rays of a person in that state, they could know exactly what it was.

Without hesitation, Warren decides to scare his wife, who is constantly unfaithful to him and treats everyone with contempt. After scaring her by shooting her with a blank bullet, he makes her faint and takes x-rays.

The result of these tests reveals that there is something inside the human body (The Tingler), which takes possession of our body when we feel panic and that loses its control when we retaliate by screaming... but what would happen if a mute person died in a terrifying situation and could not scream to end the control of "The Tingler"?

We are looking at a film designed to be seen in the cinema with all the inventions that William Castle came up with to scare the public, and by this I mean that watching the film today, in the comfort of your home, is not even remotely the experience that those who went to see it at the cinema had.

Without Castle's artifices, we find a film with a slow first hour, full of dialogue (and explanations as incredible as they are heavy) that only improves in its last half hour. However, it must be admitted that the concept of the film is as implausible as it is exciting.

The mere fact of thinking that we all have a “Tingler” inside us and that it takes possession of our body, unless it is reprimanded by shouting, seems brilliant to me, and I think that concept is the best thing about the film.

And if we talk about the best thing about the film, we have to talk about its protagonist, played by Vincent Price, who takes it with his usual seriousness. Sometimes I think that this man could interpret anything (no matter how ridiculous) with his serious and disturbing style. The rest of the actors don't do badly, but they remain in the background, although I have to admit that Ollie and his wife are two perfect characters for a horror movie, because they don't transmit any type of confidence, I don't really know why.

Isabel, Wallace's wife, turns out to be an easily hateable character. In fact, her only function is to have arguments with her husband, where both threaten each other with death, first in a (more or less) subtle way and then directly. This character is quite secondary, I think more could have been done with her, but at least in the final part of the film she is slightly more important.

And well, it is inevitable to talk about the Tingler, the being that lives inside each of us, that if it is extracted from a human body, when it is still under its influence, it becomes self-conscious and dedicates itself to killing people... a marvel of concept, which makes it forgiven for its ridiculous appearance and some of its worst scenes.

Curiously, the best scene in the film, as far as special effects are concerned, is Ollie's wife's nightmare, as it surprises us with some ingenious tricks, such as the use of color to make the blood more striking (it is not common for black and white films to have any element of color).

So, The Tingler, I marvel at its concept and its characters (many of whom are horrible human beings), but it is undeniable that its first hour is remarkably long and that Tingler's own scenes could be improved.

I think there are many better Vincent Price films, but you also have to admit that if you had seen this film in the late 1950s, in the cinema, with William Castle's staging during his films, you would surely have had a very good time.

Curiosities of the movie

• The trick used to scare viewers in this film is known as Percepto, a seat that vibrated in certain scenes of the cinema.
• This was the last film Vincent Price made with William Castle.
• Darryl Hickman had to wear lifts so as not to look too short next to Vincent Price.
• The film that is shown in silent cinema is Tol'able David (1921).