That was an excellent one.
Best movie of this year hands down!
A brilliant film that helped define a genre
Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.
View More2 stars for good ideas, a few good scenes, great character actors. But what a dud. Rambling, tepid, pointless, wasted ideas. Like a soap opera with a 3 foot centipede. That can barely move.So I wanted to like this, I assumed I never did because of me. Wrong. The problem is the entire B story about price and his wife and niece and who the hell cares. The film just stops dead for me as soon as I see his house.Which is a shame because Ollie is such an appealing character, the A story, silent theater, isolated shrewish wife, well meaning sad sack bad guy all add up to fun, plus the brilliant gimmick of a monster disabled by screaming set loose in a movie theater --- wasted.Another issue is the story just doesn't seem to make sense. Or maybe its there is so little of it. Prices theorizes about the tingler, finds a tingler, the tingler causes a tiny bit of havoc, price kills the tingler. Dull.And I don't see the Tingler loose in the theater as any kind of real threat. There is only on of them, and the thing can barely move. And you can paralyze it by yelling at it. Some monster.HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL integrated soap opera and horror so smoothly. This feels like 2 movies, one I would never watch.
View More*Spoiler/plot- The Tingler, 195? A morgue scientist has a theory about a invisible creature that effects people to death when they cannot scream to express their fright. This creature kills people by breaking their spine.*Special Stars- Vincent Price. DIR: William Castle.*Theme- Science helps mankind.*Trivia/location/goofs- B&W. 3-D. William Castle was the 50's film producer that had many different gimmicks in the theaters to add to the film going experience. With the screening of this film, certain theater seats were wired with lox voltage shocks for the seated film watcher to feel and react to with their loud screams during specific terrifying times of the film's gruesome crime scenes.*Emotion- A great and fast paced film. Would be nice to see it in 3-D and have the theater seat wired for that special effect. Quite fun.*Based On- 50's film going race.
View MoreI had the distinct pleasure of catching this at the Edinburgh Dead by Dawn festival for the first time and wasn't prepared at just how much fun it was. While essentially a silly cheese laden b horror, it's also a surprisingly layered film in terms of plot development and its main premise- Vincent Price's slightly unethical doctor discovers a parasite who feeds off of our fears- would be right at home in any 70s Cronenberg film. The characters themselves reveal themselves to be wholly unscrupulous whenever it suits them, and it even has Vincent Price tripping on acid! Speaking of which there's a very clever and well made for its time hallucinatory sequence which actually holds up well today still.And that's not even taking into consideration the whole amount of gimmicky fun that goes with it. I've always shamefully had little interest in horror pre '68 (some exceptions like Psycho to the rule and mea culpa) but films like The Tingler have me kicking myself for having such disinterest as for me, this was a campy schlocky but surprisingly clever little gem and I'm delighted I got to see it for the first time in a theater. 8/10, great little film.
View MoreI very much enjoy old-fashioned Horror films; even the REALLY old, OLD Classics such as 'THE MUMMY' (1932) 'THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN' (1935) and even 'THE OLD DARK HOUSE' (1932) were great! And many of the Horror films of the 1940's such as 'THE WOLFMAN', etc. and the later Corman / Price Poe films are quite good, not to mention the excellent HAMMER films. But... honestly, the direction, writing, and ESPECIALLY acting in this one was quite honestly almost painful to watch. The acting was so bad that it quite literally took me out of the film. ALL 3 of the women in the film are such TERRIBLE actresses that I am surprised that any of them got hired at all. And the one playing the deaf wife was just about one of THE most truly AWFUL actresses that I have ever seen. So overplayed and overdone. I honestly think that the movie could have been pretty good if they had just written it better. Price has always leaned heavily toward the hammy side, but the dialog that he was given in this film was truly pushing the limits.Old Horror films are great; and this one SORT OF has an interesting premise (and of course, as usual, some great Castle gimmick) but unless you really like VERY corny Horror films, maybe just for the 'charm' of the time period or perhaps the nostalgic value, this one, sadly, does NOT seem to hold up very well at all.
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