Classic Films in Focus: THE TINGLER (1959)

The Tingler (1959) is one of William Castle's most famous horror gimmick pictures, partly because of its star, Vincent Price, and partly because of its wacky use of wired seats and paid plants to elicit screams from the theater audience. Sadly, the modern home viewer can't enjoy the weird thrills of Percepto, but The Tingler is still a lot of fun. In addition to Price, always a pleasure even in his campiest roles, the picture offers Castle himself doing an intro bit, some wonderfully meta moments of the Tingler in a movie theater, and a striking climax that mixes color and black-and-white cinematography to lurid effect. For fans of the fun house sci-fi horror that flourished in the late 1950s, The Tingler is a must-see film, and it's certainly at the top of Castle's strange canon.

Vincent Price plays Dr. Warren Chapin, a pathologist who performs autopsies on executed criminals in search of the force that causes people to scream when they experience fear. During one such autopsy, he meets Ollie (Philip Coolidge), whose brother-in-law is Warren's latest subject. Warren is fascinated to learn that Ollie's wife, Martha (Judith Evelyn), is a deaf-mute who cannot scream even when terrified. He wonders what would happen to her if she were subjected to intense fear, and then she is, in fact, frightened to death. Warren discovers the parasitic Tingler gripping Martha's spine, but it turns out to be a lot harder to control than he expected, and he soon repents of his taboo research into the unknown.

There's actually a lot more going in The Tingler than its central plot suggests, and at times it's hard to tell the good guys from the monsters. Warren has a cheating, evil wife (Patricia Cutts), who would murder him if she could, and perhaps he has the same plans for her. He's obsessed enough to consider experimenting on the defenseless Martha and to take large doses of LSD. At the same time, he seems fond of his assistant and his sister-in-law, the movie's obligatory young lovers. The ambiguity is part of the fun; is Warren going over the edge? Who scares Martha to death? It's not a mystery story, really, but there's enough uncertainty about the central characters to keep us guessing until the end.

The tricky plot sustains the picture when it isn't relying on its gimmicks, but the tricks are Castle's calling cards, and the buzzing seats must have generated plenty of screams in pitch-black theaters back in 1959. The home viewer will have to imagine the scene as the screen goes black and Price's voice calls out to the audience to "Scream! Scream for your lives!" It's corny, yes, but Castle's films are like spook house rides, and that's what makes them so much fun. Home viewers won't have to stretch their imaginations during the scene where Martha is literally scared to death by a series of freakish events. The segment has a terrific silent film quality, something Castle cultivates by having Ollie and Martha run a silent movie theater, but its pièce de résistance is the final moment, when Martha sees bright red blood in a black-and-white bathroom, complete with a bloody hand emerging from a tub of crimson ooze. Poor Martha doesn't stand a chance. The effects of the Tingler itself, hopping across the floor on visible strings, are more typical of the hokey stuff we expect from low-budget shockers of this era, but for many classic sci-fi horror fans it's an endearing flaw, as essential to the genre as the scientist's hubris or the crazy pseudo-scientific dialogue. The Tingler offers plenty of those elements, too.

For another William Castle collaboration with Vincent Price, try House on Haunted Hill (1959). Castle's other pictures include Macabre (1958), 13 Ghosts (1960), and Mr. Sardonicus (1961). Look for more of Price's great camp roles in The Raven (1963), The Comedy of Terrors (1963), and Theatre of Blood (1973). You'll find Judith Evelyn in Rear Window (1954), Hilda Crane (1956), and Giant (1956). Philip Coolidge turns up in North by Northwest (1959) and Inherit the Wind (1960). Be sure to note former child actor Darryl Hickman, who plays Warren's assistant; you might recognize him from Men of Boys Town (1941), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). Hickman enjoyed a long career that jumped to television, and he ended up doing voice work for a number of cartoons, including Pac-Man, The Biskitts, and Pole Position.

THE TINGLER is currently streaming on Shudder!

Classic Films in Focus: MR. SARDONICUS (1961)

Horror showman William Castle ventures into Gothic territory more familiar to Roger Corman and Hammer Studios with his 1961 feature, Mr. Sardonicus, which saves its trademark Castle gimmick, the Punishment Poll, for the very end of the film. Adapted from the story by Ray Russell, Mr. Sardonicus also includes visual and thematic nods to Dracula (1931), The Man Who Laughs (1928), and the frock-coated period horror that flourished during this era. Castle's version indulges his perverse sense of humor, especially when Castle himself appears on screen to open and close the picture, but there are some real horrors to be found, too, especially in sexual violence that is more suggested than shown.

Ronald Lewis stars as Sir Robert Cargrave, an English doctor who specializes in paralysis cases. He is called to remote Gorslava by his former flame, Maude, now the Baroness Sardonicus (Audrey Dalton), who begs him to cure her cruel husband, the Baron (Guy Rolfe), of an affliction that twists his face into a permanent and horrific grin. The Baron eventually reveals his history to Sir Robert to explain his disfigurement; he was once a simple peasant who robbed his father's grave to retrieve a winning lottery ticket, but the sight of his dead father's face caused his own to become frozen in a matching grimace. He then threatens to mutilate the beautiful Maude if Sir Robert cannot reverse the paralysis. Under duress and running out of time, Sir Robert struggles to save himself and Maude by restoring the Baron to some semblance of his former humanity.

Mr. Sardonicus includes all the usual elements one expects from Gothic horror, especially in the films of the 1950s and 1960s. It has a distant, crumbling castle in a strange Eastern European land, with villagers who live in fear of the aristocratic sadist who lurks there. It has damsels in distress, including scenes of torture tinged with sexual connotations. There's a very straight-laced hero type to foil the ghoulish villain, and, of course, there's a leering, sinister henchman, played in this production by character actor Oskar Homolka. Homolka's Krull, a one-eyed fiend with a thing for leeches, belongs to a caste that includes any number of characters played by Dwight Frye, Boris Karloff, and Bela Lugosi. His menacing presence reinforces the familiarity of the whole setup, from Sir Robert's ominous summons to the castle to the final twist that proves the hazards of having an evil fiend for a right hand man.

The big shock of the picture is the Baron's rictus grin, which we see only a few times because the prosthetics were too painful for Guy Rolfe to wear for very long. He looks truly gruesome - and uncomfortable. Just pay attention to Rolfe's eyes when he appears in the fully realized face. The excruciating disfigurement recalls Conrad Veidt's turn as the more sympathetic Gwynplaine in The Man Who Laughs, although Baron Sardonicus' condition is the result of psychological torment rather than sadistic Gypsy surgery. In a modern context, the Baron's backstory would be the origin of a super villain, which isn't much of a stretch for a man who put out his own henchman's eye and enjoys tying up his wife. Despite his sins, we see him as a dynamic figure and the real protagonist of the narrative, and in the subtext we get the sense that his issues have as much to do with his shrewish first wife as his descent into ghoulish grave robbery. What the Baron fails to understand is that he can't restore his lost humanity, his human goodness, just by restoring his human face. That makes him a tragic monster, as all great cinematic and literary monsters are. It might say something about our own monstrosity that Castle knew how we would vote in the Punishment Poll every time.

For more of William Castle's shockers, try The Tingler (1959), House on Haunted Hill (1959), and 13 Ghosts (1960). You can binge on Gothic castle horror from this era with Roger Corman's House of Usher (1960) and Pit and the Pendulum (1961), as well as Hammer's Horror of Dracula (1958) and Mario Bava's Black Sunday (1960). Look for Ronald Lewis in Scream of Fear (1961), and catch Audrey Dalton in The Monster That Challenged the World (1957). Oskar Homolka earned an Oscar nomination for his performance in I Remember Mama (1948), but if you prefer him being evil go with Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage (1936). You'll find Guy Rolfe playing the vile Prince John in Ivanhoe (1952); he ended his career as something of a horror staple in Dolls (1987) and a series of Puppet Master films.

MR. SARDONICUS is currently streaming on the horror subscription service, Shudder.

Classic Films in Focus: 13 GHOSTS (1960)

Modern viewers probably won't watch this William Castle haunted house feature with Illusion-O viewers, the way original audiences did, but 13 Ghosts (1960) is still a treat for classic horror fans. It's quintessential Castle fare, with low-budget thrills, a nutty gimmick, and all the features - or failings - of its genre and era, right down to its painfully stereotypical American family and pseudoscience mixed with the supernatural. Castle fans, however, embrace his pictures warts and all, and they have an enduring charm that makes them perfect picks for long Halloween evenings. 13 Ghosts boasts a baker's dozen of grotesque ghouls, some of whom are delightfully weird, along with performances by child star Charles Herbert, Martin Milner, and Donald Woods, but the icing on the creepy cake is the appearance of Margaret Hamilton as the family's inherited housekeeper.

Donald Woods plays Cyrus Zorba, the patriarch of a family with perpetual financial problems. Just as the Zorbas reach the bottom of their bank account, Cyrus inherits a furnished house from his reclusive uncle, who spent his life trying to see and interact with ghosts. Cyrus moves his wife and two children into the house but soon finds that the ghosts are inhospitable housemates. His uncle's attorney, Benjamin Rush (Martin Milner), urges the Zorbas to abandon the home, but young Buck Zorba (Charles Herbert) makes a startling discovery that holds both opportunity and danger for the family.

The movie revels in contrasts between the normal and the bizarre. The Zorbas are an aggressively typical clan, struggling to hold on to middle class aspirations even as the furniture is repossessed. Older sister Medea (Jo Morrow) is pretty and unambitious, despite her provocative name, while mother Hilda (Rosemary De Camp) just wants the ghosts to stop wrecking her kitchen. Cyrus, who works in natural history at the Los Angeles County Museum, is a devoted father and husband, if a little too inattentive to paying the bills. Only Buck possesses an interest in the supernatural, but his fascination with ghosts is passed off as perfectly normal for a young boy and not at all macabre. This is the family thrust into the freakish drama unfolding in the old house, where a headless lion tamer grapples with a ghostly lion, an Italian cook confronts his faithless wife with a cleaver, and old Dr. Zorba himself moans and walks out of his portrait. There's no psychological suspense here, and even with a looming death threat the Zorbas maintain their usual bedtimes and leave their kids alone in their own rooms. The whole situation recalls Eddie Murphy's old joke about white people and haunted houses.

The Zorba family might be dull, but the household ghosts are something else entirely. They can be ridiculous; the Italian ghosts, for example, talk like Cousin Itt, and the lion tamer seems determined to stick his headless neck into his lion's mouth. Others, like the ghosts that menace Cyrus in a secret room, are scarier, while the hanging ghost and the executing arms are more unnerving. We only get snatches of backstory for most of the spooks, just enough to pique our imaginations, although the biggest mystery is the identity of the 13th ghost, since there are only a dozen inhabiting the house when the family arrives. Which of the living characters will join the dead? If you're paying attention you'll see it coming a mile away, but it's all part of the fun. Occupying a space somewhere between the ghosts and the mortals is Margaret Hamilton's medium turned housekeeper, Elaine Zacharides, who warns the family of the peril the house brings. The film relishes a running gag about Elaine being a witch, an unsubtle nod to Hamilton's iconic role in The Wizard of Oz (1939), but Hamilton is game for the gag. The best moment of the whole picture might be its last, when Hamilton breaks the fourth wall to acknowledge the audience and her own stunt casting.

If goofy, fun horror of the Castle variety is your favorite Halloween treat, try The Tingler (1959) and House on Haunted Hill (1959) for more, or check out the 1993 love letter to kitsch horror, Matinee, which stars John Goodman as a Castle style showman. You can see Charles Herbert in The Fly (1958) and Houseboat (1958), although he mostly worked in television. Look for Donald Woods in A Tale of Two Cities (1935), Mexican Spitfire (1940), and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953). Martin Milner, best remembered for television roles on Route 66 and Adam-12, makes other big screen appearances in Life with Father (1947), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), and Sweet Smell of Success (1957).

13 GHOSTS is currently streaming on Shudder.

Classic Movie Haunted Houses for Halloween

Last week we spent a few days in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where, at the insistence of my teenage daughter, we visited a commercial haunted house. It's called Mysterious Mansion, but there's nothing very mysterious about it. Visitors pay $16 a pop for 15 minutes of being jumped at and chased around by people in weird makeup and masks. There was the obligatory scary clown, some girls covered in fake blood, and a guy in a Grim Reaper outfit wearing jeans under his robes. My daughter had a good time, but for the adults the most entertaining part was watching a teen girl in the group ahead of us totally lose it and bail a third of the way through the house. The rest was just darkness, narrow spaces, and some irritating strobe lights. The underwhelming experience left me thinking about my favorite haunted houses in classic movies and why they're so much better than these attractions that pop up all over the place come Halloween.

For me, a good haunted house movie has several elements. One is atmosphere that I'm given time to appreciate. Another is a compelling narrative that explains the supernatural phenomena and creates a reason to care about the characters (including, ideally, the dead ones). I like weird effects more than gore; in fact, I'm not much on seeing anyone's intestines or brains, which is why I don't watch slasher films. I want my haunted house to have ghosts, not psychopaths (but I'll forgive the occasional psychopathic ghost). With those criteria, it's probably no surprise that my top shelf haunted house movie is...


THE HAUNTING (1963)

Robert Wise's neurotically eerie horror classic wins hands down in the Haunted House Hall of Fame. It has everything, including deliriously Gothic atmosphere and a heroine who is going completely off the rails. Who can forget that moving door, an effect so simple and yet so unbelievable when you see it? I think everyone who runs a haunted house ought to be made to watch The Haunting a dozen times first (and don't let them anywhere near the dopey 1999 remake).





THE UNINVITED (1944)

The slow burn of this ghost story might bore some viewers, but for me it's one of the best of the genre, combining elements of classic mystery with its spectral terrors. Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, and Gail Russell star as three people whose fates become entwined with that of a house inhabited by the spirits of the dead.  The Criterion Collection release of this film makes a grand Halloween treat for your plastic pumpkin.







HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959)

OK, so this William Castle classic is not a very serious haunted house movie, but it's just so much fun, and it does offer a couple of great jump scares. That blind housekeeper gets me every time! Besides, Vincent Price and William Castle have to be on this list somewhere. It's just not Halloween without them. This is the go-to pick for a Halloween party where you want to laugh and shriek in equal measure.





DRAGONWYCK (1946)

Speaking of Vincent Price, I love the haunted house atmosphere and his Gothic villain in this supernatural tale, even if the adaptation of Anya Seton's novel has some structural issues. Gene Tierney plays Price's new bride, who only slowly comes to understand the ghostly terrors of her husband's home. This is a good one for Jane Eyre fans in particular; it was part of a wave of creepy Gothic romances that followed the 1940 success of Rebecca.







So, if you're looking for haunted houses this Halloween, I suggest you start with one of these instead of standing in line to hand over your cash for fifteen minutes with scary clowns. These are the movies whose worlds I wish a haunted house would take me through, where ghostly music plays and the things you don't see are a lot more terrifying than the things you do.

Looking for related classic horror posts? Try "The Gothic Influences of Disney's Haunted Mansion" and "The Housekeeper in the Gothic Film Tradition."

Classic Films in Focus: MACABRE (1958)

Macabre is less gimmick-driven than some of William Castle's later, more infamous shockers, despite the opening warning that audience members should alert the theater management if patrons suffer fear-induced medical emergencies. The title makes a similar overstatement of the thrills on offer, since most of the movie follows a weirdly subdued search for a child who has been abducted and buried alive. While Macabre comes up short on genuine scares, it does have that B-movie drive-in appeal that entertains the right kind of viewer in the right kind of mood, and it offers the additional attraction of familiar TV stars William Prince, Jim Backus, and Ellen Corby in very different roles.

William Prince stars as troubled doctor Rodney Barrett, whose practice has suffered after the deaths of his wife, Alice (Dorothy Morris), and her blind sister, Nancy (Christine White). Police chief Jim Tyloe (Jim Backus) and other townspeople blame Barrett in both cases, and someone apparently hates him enough to kidnap his young daughter and bury her alive. With the help of his lovestruck nurse, Polly (Jacqueline Scott), and his frail father-in-law (Philip Tonge), Barrett searches for the little girl in the hours before Nancy's funeral, but the situation is even more twisted and macabre than anyone suspects.

The closing credits beg viewers not to give away the surprise ending, which certainly does come as a shock, but the lead-in to that conclusion mostly falls flat, with Barrett and Polly wandering around town and poking half-heartedly at various sites where the missing child might be interred. They barely pick up their shovels before giving up each successive spot as a dead end, and their efforts lack any sense of urgency. The flashback sequences, which shed light on the lives and deaths of the Wetherby sisters, prove more interesting, especially the ones that reveal the love affair between Tyloe and the reckless Nancy. The closing credits indicate that Nancy and Tyloe were married, although the movie itself contradicts that, especially given Nancy's reaction to her pregnancy. Tyloe, Nancy, and Barrett himself are all depicted as fairly unlikable characters, with Barrett absent during his pregnant wife's fatal delivery because of his dalliance with an attractive friend. Polly and the dead Alice are more sympathetic, although both waste their affection on a man who clearly has issues with fidelity.

Those interested in classic film and television stars will find the casting of Macabre more interesting than the movie itself. Jim Backus, best remembered for Gilligan's Island and his voice work on Mister Magoo, is the most palpable presence as the hostile, threatening police chief. He's surprisingly convincing as a dominant male antagonist, throwing his weight around to bully Barrett and lusting after blind, bewitching Nancy. Ellen Corby, who has a supporting role as Barrett's childcare provider, is familiar to a generation of TV viewers as Grandma Walton, but she was also an Oscar-nominated film actress with roles in I Remember Mama (1948), Caged (1950), and dozens of other productions. William Prince worked mostly in television after an unremarkable film career; although less familiar to modern viewers, he did brief stints on many popular series and soap operas.

For Castle's most iconic efforts, see House on Haunted Hill (1959), The Tingler (1959), and 13 Ghosts (1960). Catch Jim Backus making other big screen appearances in His Kind of Woman (1951), Don't Bother to Knock (1952), and Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Macabre is currently available for streaming on Warner Archive Instant.