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Thursday, September 21, 2006

41. THE TINGLER

41. THE TINGLER
(1959)
Directed by William Castle

It was the late 1950's and there was a fear among filmmakers that the hypnotic blue glow of the television set was keeping too many kids away from the movie theatre. Exploitation genius William Castle was devoted to the task of filling seats and he embarked on a series of gimmicks to sell tickets to his films. It started in 1958 when he spread the word that he'd set up an insurance policy with Lloyds of London in case anyone died of fright while watching his movie "Macabre". The ruse worked, money rolled in and he followed it the next year with Emergo the flying skeleton in connection with "House on Haunted Hill" and then the ass shocking Percepto trick for "The Tingler". These gimmicks are detailed in loving fashion by John Waters in his essay "Whatever Happened to Showmanship?" (in short Percepto was nothing more than a couple electric buzzers delivered with the film canisters to be set up beneath random seats that could be activated to deliver a mild shock at strategic points in the movie). People loved it. Waters calls "The Tingler" "the fondest moviegoing memory of my youth" and, even without the thrill of being in a theatre of screaming kids, the movie remains highly entertaining. There are a lot of good reasons to watch this one. It stars Vincent Price, features the cinema's first ever LSD sequence and the tingler itself (a creature that grows on a persons spinal column in moments of fright) is a wonderfully disgusting wormy crustacean. Scream for your life!

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