The Tingler

“At any time you are conscious of a tingling sensation, you may obtain immediate relief by screaming. Don't be embarrassed about opening your mouth and letting rip with all you've got, because the person in the seat right next to you will probably be screaming too. And remember - a scream at the right time may save your life.”

We’ve all experienced it – that tingling sensation down the spine in moments of terror.  The fear you’re being followed home down a dark street, strange noises heard in the middle of the night, the realisation otherwise sane human beings actually vote for UKIP – that sort of thing.

What if that tingling wasn’t just a mere feeling?  What if it was caused by a living, parasitic creature that exists in all of us, feeding on your fear then growing and crawling up your spine, even potentially killing you in the process?  That’s the idea behind William Castle’s The Tingler, shown last week as part of the Belfast Film Festival.

The Tingler stars Vincent Price as pathologist Dr William Chapin, who discovers the horrible creature’s existence.  He dubs it ‘the Tingler’ due to the sensation it produces in down the spine and because, as his assistant David proclaims: “since we don’t know what it is yet, we can’t give it a Latin name”.

Fortunately, the Tingler isn’t undefeatable.  The creature can be stopped by simply screaming – letting rip with all you’ve got, indeed. 

Dr Chapin gets the chance to examine a real life Tingler after the untimely death of Martha, the deaf-mute co-owner of a silent movie theatre who is literally scared to death due to her inability to scream.  Realising news of the Tingler would cause untold panic among the public, Chapin decides to hush up his discovery and return the creature to Martha’s body, brought back to the apartment above the movie theatre she had shared with her husband.

But of course, things don’t go quite to plan and the Tingler gets loose, wreaking havoc on the unsuspecting film goers below with terrifying (and unintentionally hilarious) consequences.

William Castle loved to break the fourth wall with various movie gimmicks.  When the movie was first released, this was the point his latest gimmick was deployed in the form of ‘Percepto!’ – basically, electrical buzzers attached to the underside of some chairs in the cinema.  On screen, the Tingler gets into the projectionist’s booth, the silent movie being screened breaks down and the creature crawls across the screen.  It was at this point in the real life cinema the lights would get turned off and ‘Percepto!” would get switched on, giving some unsuspecting cinema goers a jolt as Vincent Price warned them not to panic but to “scream! Scream for your lives!”

Obviously, the Film Festival’s beanbag cinema wasn’t quite able to attach electrical buzzers to the underside of the beanbags.  However they did their best with some large speakers on the floor and the bass turned all the way up to eleven, causing the beanbags to shake and the spine to tingle, well, sort of.   During the shorter scenes this technique didn’t really have enough time to work, but it was most effective during two of the longer set pieces where Dr Chapin embarks on a memorable acid trip in the name of Science, and when poor Martha gets scared to death.

Another technique Castle used when The Tingler was first released was to employ screamers and fainters to attend the film screenings and, well, scream and faint in the theatre.  There were no fainters present among the beanbags, though as most people were watching the movie in a horizontal position it would have been hard to tell anyway.  Pleasingly though there was a screamer present, but of course, she could have just been genuinely unable to cope with all the horror onscreen.

And there is plenty of horror onscreen, though most of it unintentional.  The Tingler hasn’t earned itself the title of camp classic for nothing after all.  Some truly terrible dialogue is coupled with some truly terrible acting for full fearful effect.  “Well, everyone can scream!”, Dr Chapin’s sister-in-law exclaims.  “A deaf-mute can’t scream”, David replies ominously.

If you wanted to look deeply enough, you could probably find something interesting in the film’s subplot involving marriages gone wrong – Dr Chapin’s relationship with his wife is full of adulterous behaviour and matching attempts to kill each other, while the unfortunate deaf-mute Martha is also killed off by her ineffectual little husband.  Unfortunately, the characters are all so one-dimensional that this is never really developed.

The film doesn’t exactly advance the portrayal of women on screen either.  Dr Chapin’s wife is a drinking, smoker adulterer who attempts to kill her husband and possibly killed her father, too.  On the other hand, her sister is a virginal, clean living girl who cheerfully rolls her eyes when the men go off to discuss their highly important men’s work.  And let’s not forget Martha, a deaf-mute bundle of OCD and nerves who gets scared to death by things worthy of the ghost train in a particularly low-budget amusement park.

However, critiquing the plot points of a movie like The Tingler feels a little bit pointless.  It’s b-movie fluff, and highly enjoyable for what it is, especially when it’s a Friday night, you’ve had a glass of wine and are watching the movie from a beanbag, for example.  If you’re a fan of Castle, Price or just campy horror in general, watching The Tingler is a fun way to spend an evening – just as long as you don’t panic and remember to scream.  Scream for your lives!

Going Dark

                                       

Spending 75 minutes in a darkened room full of strangers might seem like an odd way to spend an evening, well, for most people anyway.  However Sound & Fury’s Going Dark, performed recently at Belfast's Mac, is a play that asks you to do just that.

The play tells the story of Max, an astronomer who learns he losing his sight, and is performed in very low level lighting, sometimes in complete darkness, in order to fully explore Max’s condition.  Part play, part astronomy lesson, the audience is invited for some of the evening to become one of Max’s students, gazing up at astral projections on the ceiling as he walks us through the Milky Way and the history of our universe.

I loved the astronomy lesson aspect of Going Dark.  Max, played by actor and Sound & Fury co-creator Tom Espiner, walks around the small space of the theatre, directing his laser pointer at various constellations and using some neat tricks to explain the birth of stars.  His love and enthusiasm for the subject is obvious, which makes it all the more heartbreaking when he can no longer see the starry projections that are clearly visible above him.

However the real emotional punch of Going Dark is how Max’s worsening condition affects his relationship with his son, Leo.  A single father, Max is determined that he and his son can cope with his blindness together and panics when it is suggested that social services might need to become involved. In one scene, Max even blindfolds himself in an attempt to see if he can still prepare his son’s school lunch and is delighted to find that he can – even if he does almost send Leo off to school with a can of beer.

We never actually see Leo – he appears as an unseen voice – but thanks to some excellent sound direction you find yourself genuinely believing Leo is in the room, even craning your head towards where the sound is coming from to get a better look at the boy who isn’t actually there.  Leo is voiced by Espiner's own son, who was recorded asking questions and chatting away about the subject matter.  The recordings were then edited into individual cues, with Hattie Naylor’s script partly written around these.  This improvisation creates a very natural feel to Max’s interactions with Leo – you believe you are listening to a father talking to his son, rather than an actor reading lines with a stage school brat.

The sound direction is excellent elsewhere, too.  During the scenes where the audience is plunged into complete darkness the sound itself almost becomes a character in the play.  In one scene, for example, you appear to be have been thrown into the middle of deafening traffic that seems to coming at you from everywhere, genuinely making you feel like you’re about to bit hit by a car despite sitting in the middle of a theatre.

The complete darkness is startling at first - and Going Dark's very first 'scene' is in pitch black, as the theatre turns into the great outdoors with crashing thunder, falling rain and birdsong surrounding the audience.  It all does a better job of portraying Max's sight loss than words ever could, as it makes the audience actually experience it rather than just watch a performance.

Tom Espiner is excellent as Max.  Even for a professional actor, performing a one man show in such an intimate venue takes a lot of nerve, and Espiner never loses the audience’s attention for a second.   He perfectly captures Max’s enthusiasm for the stars, the love for his son and the sheer panic his worsening condition causes him – from his confusion during a peripheral vision test, fear caused by the hallucinations he suffers as a side effect and the realisation his very career might be under threat.

The script's attempt at marrying together the various aspects of the play, through Max's assertion that "the universe itself is going blind", is perhaps a little bit forced.  However, Going Dark is ultimately a beautifully realised piece of experimental theatre that fully immerses the audience in a deeply affecting story.

The Borderlands

There’s a certain snobbishness to found regarding found footage horror movies – unsurprising perhaps, considering the glut of uninspired Blair Witch wannabes that have occupied the market in recent years.  Director Elliot Goldner, however, has proved there are still frights to be had with the genre in his debut film, The Borderlands.

It possibly sounds like the beginning of a very bad joke – an Englishman, a Scotsman and an Irishman walk into a haunted church – but that’s the premise at work here.  Gordon Kennedy, who British viewers will recognise from his roles in, well, everything really plays Deacon, a world wearied priest who has been sent by the Vatican to investigate a supposed miracle in a small country church.  He’s accompanied by fellow priest and Vatican investigator Mark (Aidan McArdle), and technical expert Gray (Robin Hill) who kits the team out with the headcams that capture their footage.

And for once there is at least a reason for team’s use of headcams – although the reasoning behind their entire base camp being fitted with cameras is perhaps a little muddier.  Still, the in-house cameras capture some distinctly creepy scenes early on in the film, such as the untimely church bells chiming in the dead of night and the agonised screams of a sheep that gets set alight by local teenagers, all of which sets the tone for the rest of the film.

The Borderlands does stick to some familiar horror movies tropes – characters going off alone into dark buildings, crucifixes crashing off walls, unwelcoming local villagers who may as well have burning pitchforks – but for the most part it works well here.  The scene where Deacon runs off to the church on in his own in the middle of the night might tick every cliché in the “Horror By Numbers” guide to film-making, but it does also provide some of the movie’s most scary moments.  And once again, this time round there is a genuine reason for it.  Deacon is a man who has a lot to prove after other investigations of his have had terrible consequences.  As he desperately tries to unravel exactly what is happening in the church you at least understand why he heads off into dark crevices on his own – even if you do still wonder if he’s ever watched a horror movie before.

If anything, what makes The Borderlands work so well compared to other found footage movies of recent years is its very MR James-style Britishness.  There are plenty of beautiful – and vaguely ominous – shots of the English countryside setting the mood, for a start.  And instead of nubile young Americans screaming down a camera, here we’re watching a couple of middle aged British men discussing fantastical paranormal happenings over a couple of pints in the local boozer, which seems to make the film’s events all the more believable.  It’s the central double act of Deacon and Gray that serves The Borderlands so well – a sort of Peep Show meets Paranormal Activity style relationship providing laughs amid the ghost hunting.

Notable mention has to go to Robin Hill as Gray, the agnostic techie who is more amazed and eager to believe in the supernatural goings on he witness than the two priests, particularly Mark, who is keen to find a scientific explanation for everything and not drag the church back into the “dark ages”.

Gordon Kennedy and Aidan McArdle both deliver strong performances too, although I did feel the film suffered a little from casting actors who aren’t exactly strangers to mainstream TV shows.  Surely it’s more believable to think you’re watching the found footage of a doomed investigation if you don’t recognise the men on screen from Sherlock or Mr Selfridge?  That’s a minor complaint though, and is possibly a reflection of me watching too much television as opposed to what a general movie going audience might think.

The Borderlands does somewhat lose its way in the final act, after the arrival of elderly priest Father Calvino (Patrick Godfrey) and the plot goes, for want of a better phrase, completely mad.  However the final scenes, which do owe more than a passing nod to The Blair Witch Project, are still thrillingly claustrophobic and deeply unsettling.