The Tingler (1959)

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).

The Fly (1958)

Director: Kurt Neumann

Cast: Al Hedison, Patricia Owens, Vincent Price, Herbert Marshall

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I’m a little surprised as well. I’ve seen the remade The Fly (1986) any number of times, but the original stayed just off my radar. If it hadn’t been the one-two punch of picking up the Shout! Factory box set of all the Fly-films, and that one of my co-hosts on Beyond the Cabin in the Woods really made the case for this being the superior attempt at the story, I might never have gotten around to it.

Did I Like It: I’m not sure why precisely I would have resisted as long as I did. I have no qualms about claiming 50s Sci-Fi as a favorite. Vincent Price has never been bad, even when he was in something horrible.

Even so, the Goldblum version is so good, that I can help but sit through large swaths of this resolute in my commitment to not enjoy it all that much. It’s a bit too mannered for it’s own good. Is it possible it’s just too Canadian for it’s own good, making the entire affair seem a bit ridiculous, beyond that which one might expect to find in a story where a man slowly turns into a fly.

But damned if the thing didn’t win me over after a bit. There’s no gore to set one’s teeth on edge. The eventual makeup work is quite correctly hidden for most of the movie, because once it is finally revealed its just as likely to amuse as it is shock or horrify. But there are a couple of added dimensions here that the other film doesn’t bother to use. For one, the terrible fate of the family cat in this film is far more frightening than anything that happens to any baboon in another movie. The notion that there might be some fate beyond the act of teleportation that still allows one to meow so that people can hear it is one of those unnerving elements of a horror movie that stick with you long after it is over. For another thing, there is the idea that not only there is a man who is slowly becoming more fly-like with every passing moment, but there’s also a fly who is slowly becoming more man-like with every passing moment. The “help me” moment may be famous, but it plays far better than its reputation suggests.