I remember reading about "The Tingler" in Stephen King's "Danse Macabre", and I believe the original release had some sort of gimmick where there was something in the seat that was supposed to tingle you when the victims were tingled. I'm not imagining that, am I??
No, you're not imagining it. Here's the whole story, off the top of my pointy little head:
The film was produced and directed by William Castle, who almost always had some sort of outrageous gimmick associated with his films (at least, in their initial release) which would certainly guarantee the films (and him) a lot of publicity from the press. He called the gimmick for this film, "Percepto."
The actual "tingler" itself was a ridiculous-looking rubber thingy that could only be "neutralized" by screaming. At the climax of the film, the creature gets loose in a theatre showing an old silent film, almost kills the projectionist, and the film breaks. We, the audience, are in total darkness (just like the moviegoers in the film) and we hear Vincent Price's voice telling us that the tingler is loose
in this theatre and we all have to scream for our lives. In the blackness, we can hear all sorts of pandemonium on the film's soundtrack, as everyone is screaming and shrieking.
However, originally a select few seats in the theatre were wired to give off a small electric shock at this point to "lucky" patrons, so, in the pitch darkness of your local cinema, you were supposed to be fooled into thinking there really
was a real, live "tingler" scuttling about between the seats.
Fun, eh?
Oh, and here's the "monster" - it wasn't really animated, or anything (
that would've cost
money!). It was just dragged across the floor by "invisible" wires.
Interestingly enough, with all the interest in retro horror and sci-fi films (the good, the bad, and the just plain schlocky), a replica of the original tingler prop is currently being marketed:
Yessir, just the thing to find flopping around under the tree when you wake up on Xmas morning!
It's available through Amazon, but when I saw the price tag of $59.95, it immediately became apparent why The Tingler would have people screaming for their lives.
Signor V.
