Walkabout is Fair Play

One of the greatest mysteries of human life is navigating the foggy mental, emotional, and physical terrain between youth and adulthood.  The parameters of our world and our selves bend and blur; we do and become things we never thought possible, both for better and worse.  Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout (1971) brings this no-man’s-land to feverish life (figuratively and literally) in a joyous, tragic spectacle that burns on the brain long after the credits have rolled.

A father takes his two children on a picnic in the Australian outback.  The daughter, a teenager, and the son, considerably younger, scamper and occupy themselves in the landscape.  From behind a rock pile, the little boy plays with his soldiers and toy guns; in front of it, the daughter spreads out the meal.  And then, a gun shot sounds, ricocheting off the rocks, inches from the boy.  It has been fired by the father.  The son, in gleeful, retaliatory play, holds up his green toy gun and calls out,”Bang!  Bang!”  His sister pulls him behind the protection of the rock pile and they crawl to safety.  Father ignites the car and kills himself; the children are cast in a disturbing production of man versus nature. 

After days of wandering, they meet an adolescent Aboriginal boy on his walkabout, a culturally traditional rite of passage that includes going into the wilderness alone once you reach a certain age to live off the land and connect with one’s ancestral heritage.  So, as it turns out, the young girl also is on a walkabout, cast by her society out into the wilderness to test herself.  This young man, in turn, saves their lives with his resourcefulness but pays a large price for his altruism.

From the point at which we understand the father to be the source of the gun shot, the audience is acutely aware that nothing is as it seems.  The horror in this film comes to us from a negation of most of the fundamental beliefs we hold about differences between the natural and civilized worlds, and the resulting fear produced by this story reaches us through a series of undulations, lulling and entrancing us like a stunning nightmare where waking up does little to erase the effect.  

Once we understand that these appearances are deceptive, we understand, too, that there are consequences.  If we can’t classify or categorize or understand the ever-shifting world around is (including our fellow inhabitants of said world), we struggle to connect with that world.  If we fail to connect with anything outside of ourselves, we face larger questions of purpose and the nature of existence, all while attempting to heave the very heavy weight of loneliness.  These broken connections are what fuel the film and grant its subsequent power and glory.

For example, the father stares from a lofty condominium balcony down onto his children; they look like barely more than raisins floating in a pool.  A disconnect.  He is short with them in the car, and even when they escape his death plan, he is unable to coax them back to him and does not attempt to retrieve them.  Disconnect.  And when brother and sister meet the Aboriginal young man in the desert--the girl, the authority of the pair, cannot communicate her basic need for water.  Her brother, far younger and less conditioned by civilized standards, uses a guttural sound and gestures to his throat; they are immediately gratified with a strategy to draw water from beneath the Earth’s surface with the aid of their desert guide.  Again, the trickery of the natural world not being as it appears and again a communicative disconnect.

The most jarring disconnects in the film center on the young girl’s sexuality, an as yet undiscovered but very present force in this character teetering on the edge of womanhood.  The girl is disconnected from her own sexuality.  She visually appraises the exposed body of the Aborigine, but she does not seem to understand why she does so.  In a scene where the youths swim nude, only juxtaposed shots of the smooth, forked tree trunks reveal (rather startlingly and brilliantly) what percolates deep in their minds, as they seem unable to consciously access these desires.  When the trio reaches an abandoned house on the edge of civilization, the Aborigine offers an elaborate dance in which he peacocks for this female he has protected and delivered to relative safety.  She in no way understands the symbolism of his act, and she shuts herself deep within the house, cutting off all contact and rejecting him.  The result?  A suicide, just like her father.  Of all the obstacles presented in the film, human isolation seems the lone insurmountable handicap.

Just as the horror in the film is subdued, so is the tragedy of its closing.  We find the young girl in a house dress in a condominium working in the kitchen.  A man returns home from work, presumably her spouse.  He spins her around to kiss her; he asks her what’s wrong.  She can’t provide him a substantial answer with her eyebrows heavily shadowed in blue.  These two people, bonded together in a societal unit, are unable to form really meaningful connections.  After all she’s been through, this young woman has fallen right back in the pre-fabricated patterns of civilized life, even after having lived through its darkest lies.  And what’s worse is does she have any other option?  What else would she do?  What should she do?  As her quasi-blank, quietly unhappy face fades from view, we, too, must go back into the patterns of civilized life, working each second to forge tenuous connections with a vast, ever-evolving world.

Dead Woman Walking

Cinema is, perhaps, the most elaborate trick ever played on the human mind. Movies transport us and elicit emotion because we believe the things we see on the screen to be real, at least on some level.  Movie-makers are the magicians, and those who have some of the toughest acts are those working in the genre of horror.  As the audience gets more and more jaded, the tricks seem to get more and more complicated and, in turn, more expensive.  So, what if the magicians are on a severe budget?  Keep it simple . . . and defy convention.  Never reveal your tricks, right?  Wrong.  Tell the audience exactly what you’re doing and make sure the trick is so primally terrifying that recognizing the emotional puppetry is of little to no consequence.  And so the makers of Carnival of Souls (1962) carry off one of the simplest, heart-jolting horrors of all time.

Our protagonist, Mary Henry, is the sole survivor of a car accident on a bridge.  For three hours, locals search for the car and its three inhabitants, but to no avail . . . until Mary staggers onto land, smeared with mud and looking barely human.  The trauma is too much for her, so she leaves to take a job as an organist in another town, and that’s when the magic begins.  During her twilight drive, she looks through her windows at the passing new landscapes of Utah.  But one glance through the passenger window reveals a ghastly countenance quite unhuman.  Once she catches her breath and focuses back on the road, a white-faced, dark-eyed man stands before the car, looking like the corpse of John Lithgow.  Just simple faces made up look ghoulish and cut to with such sharp unexpectedness that it throws off our conscious mind completely . . . and runs Mary off the road.

She eventually makes it to her new room for rent with a squat landlady of suspicious benevolence and a lecherous drunk warehouse worker living across the hall.  She ends up being fired from the organist job for playing sacrilegious music, and all the while she is haunted by the presence of the ghoul, when she least expects it.  In the end, the (un)dead claim her soul to its rightful place among them.  As it turns out, when they pull the car from the river, the dead Mary is in the passenger seat.  (Booyah, Sixth Sense!)

As I said, there’s no hiding the tricks.  The movie takes multiple opportunities to underscore the power of imagination to warp the simplest of things into nightmarish fantasies . . . and that’s exactly what the movie is doing.  Dr. Samuels, who wants to help the nerve-ridden Mary, very carefully and logically explains to her how the mind defies the truths presented to us in the corporeal world.  The landlady chides Mary for letting her imagination run away with her, and even though we too have been presented the unsettling images, our increased heartbeat is a tell-tale sign of our minds busy at overwork.  Even Mary herself says, “It's funny... the world is so different in the daylight. In the dark, your fantasies get so out of hand. But in the daylight everything falls back into place again.”  And so it is for us in the dark of the cinema; the post-credits daylight can restore reason (with varying efficiency depending on the power of the film).

The budget for the film is estimated at $30,000, so some make-up and all the fear-inspiring qualities of a human face, I suspect, had to be put to maximum use.  And they are so effectively woven into the visual narrative that you dread their inevitable reappearance with a visceral fear.  The scenes of the reanimated dead rising from their underwater slumbers are like macabre fairy tales come to life, and when the corpses dance, there’s a morbid elegance that puts us and Mary in a trance, no matter how much we might like to look away.  Low effects equals high fear.

And more than fear, this film has atmosfear.  The Saltair Pavilion in Utah is one of the best uses of location shooting I can think of in horror film, maybe in all of film.  The decadent decay and stark isolation against the horizon highlight its utter abandonment.  A curiosity of manmade achievement, the Pavilion lures us all in, Mary included, to discover what secrets may lurk at its heart.  One of the absolute scariest scenes in the entire film is when Mary enters the abandoned Pavilion to explore the carnival attractions from yesteryear.  While standing at the bottom of a large slide, quite alone and in silence, from nowhere an empty pad for carnival-going patrons of the slide whooshes a foreboding descent of its own accord to rest right beside a waiting Mary.  Such a simple “gag” that it’s not a gag at all (undoubtedly inexpensive)--but it’s horrific.  And it’s possible because of the fantastic locale.

The film is wonderfully identifiable from its era but feels fresh on every viewing.  There’s a quiet bravado in its fright factor.    It says, “Don’t let your mind play tricks on you,” and then repeatedly pranks your conscious mind.  And just when the trick seems trite, it pulls a dead rabbit from the hat, and instead of saying, “Look what I can do,” it challenges, “I dare you to look at what I can do.”  And with gleeful resistance, we look.

Christmas on Cloud Nine

What better place to find Christmas cheer than a crystal castle floating on a cloud way up in the heavens, the home of our beloved Santa.  And as it turns out, Jolly Old St. Nicholas and Liberace may have shared an interior designer, the evidence of which can be found in Santa Claus (1959).  This little creation is the strangest cinematic lift your holiday spirits could ever hope for.

Santa Claus is strangely intoxicating, like the hardest warm apple cider you’ve ever gulped.  In his cloud quarters that would make the Care Bears jealous, Santa plays a pipe organ to his transplanted version of Disney’s “It’s a Small World” attraction.  Stereotyped kiddies spanning the globe violate child labor laws and work like mad to make all the toys that Santa will deliver on Christmas.  (The little African children wear loin cloths, and the kids from the U.S.A. dress like little cowboys and cowgirls as they sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”)  Let us not forget famed wizard Merlin, permanent house guest of Mr. Claus.   The mad apothecary is busy concocting sleeping powders and magical flowers that can make Santa disappear at will.  And there’s a hulking blacksmith on the premises, crafting the key that will open all the doors of the world when Santa takes his toy-tossing flight.  But by far, the best amenity of the Claus estate is a talking telescope that looks like something straight out of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  How else could Santa compose his naughty-or-nice list?

The movie is sensory overload--like someone crammed all of Christmas into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.  Its over-the-top liberties taken with conveying a tale of Christmas are truly childlike in their whimsy.  The longer the film goes, the more the plot sounds like a kid on a very long road trip telling an impromptu story from the back seat . . . there’s humor, charm, and a very specific sort of entertainment inherent in the wild concoction.

And what child tells a story without a bad guy?  Move the n to the end, and Santa spells Satan.  Yep, he’s here, too.  He sends one of his minions, Pitch, to spoil Santa’s global giving and to taint the hearts and actions of children.  His nimble contortions in red tights  and sulfuric stench are no match for Papa Noel, and the three little boys whom he persuades to work against Santa find three lumps of coal for all their efforts.  A demon from hell and an omniscient, aged man who lives in the clouds (albeit with a bad memory) are an interesting take on the archetypes of religion and their ties to the holidays.

Buried under all the trippy trimmings are the truly heartwarming stories of Billy and Lupita.  Billy is the little rich boy who asks Santa only for the love of his parents, a young socialite couple who substitute their presence with materialism so they can go party out on the town.  He’s so desperately seeking affection that he’s granted the ultimate privilege of seeing Santa in a dream.  In the dream, he begs for even the love of Santa, and the jolly man explains that his parents really do love him.  To drive the point home, he even goes and serves a cocktail of remorse to the absentee parents, inspiring them to race home and enfold Billy in their arms in the style of an Olan Mills portrait.  

And then there’s Lupita, the most adorable little poor girl you’ve ever seen who wants only a doll for Christmas.  Pitch almost talks her into stealing one at the marketplace, but she resists temptation because stealing is evil and she wants more than anything to be a good little girl.  But teetering on the edge of a misstep does not go without punishment; Lupita has a nightmare in which life-size versions of the dolls overtake her in a sinister, choreographed dance, repeating to her from their terrifyingly masked faces that stealing one doll won’t make any difference.  Luckily, Lupita stays strong and wakes up too scared to ever compromise her morals again.  In the end, her mother is tearfully explaining that Santa loves all children, rich and poor, but that she will have to wait until the next year to be rewarded for her goodness.  When she goes out to the patio to find that Santa has miraculously left a a beautiful doll for her, the spirit of making people happy is infectious.

Santa Claus is the perfectly weird and heartfelt antidote to cumbersome holiday traditions, i.e., Johnny Mathis singing carols, fruitcakes, and the serious physical dangers of Black Friday shopping.  It dares to dream an uninhibited version of Christmas fancy, dripping with visual splendor and childlike morality.  Whether stone-sober or hopped up on eggnog, this is a festival of fantasy you won’t soon forget or regret.

Prophet Margin

My generation’s cynicism can, at least in part, be traced back to our grade school lessons in “stranger danger.”  We were taught to trust no one, no matter how seemingly benevolent.  Even today, I’d rather the UPS man just leave the box at my doorstep.  All the prime-time police procedurals I watch have bred a hyper-awareness of surroundings and a tinge of paranoia.  It’s almost impossible to imagine an era in American history when a traveling salesman, a total stranger peddling goods, would be invited into a home to make a pitch.  The idea is absolutely beyond the comprehension of a former latchkey kid who was taught to quake and hide at the ring of a doorbell.  But, I suppose peddling the Good Word lends some credibility to one’s commercial crusade, and thus we arrive at Salesman (1968), a primary source in the history of our American identity.

This Maysles Brothers documentary is a desperate, alternately funny and melancholy look at the enterprise of selling Bibles door-to-door in the late 1960s.  We watch as the focal character, Paul Brennan--more affectionately known as “The Badger,” burns out in a firework of disenchantment as he loses his ability to connect with the customer and make the sale.  As much as examining the personalities and defeats of the salesman, the film depicts the seedy side of ecclesiastical commercialization in such unlikely nooks as the Edgewater Resort conference room, a pre-sale poolside pep talk, and around the poker table.

In a sales meeting, we see a bull-faced bully of a man stand at the front and threaten to fire any man who isn’t meeting his sales quota with a perky attitude.  There are no excuses.  There are no individuals.  There are only numbers.  You can see the creases of panic in The Badger’s face as he looks on: his performance is surely on the chopping block.  But he’s not to be pitied as much as the poor bastards who, like men moved by a sermon walk to the pulpit to be saved, stand up and give a testimony of their investment in their work and how much dough they plan to rake in during the coming year.  And what’s worse--they use their proclamations of projected wealth to publicly challenge and demean one another.  Let us not forget that they plan to claim these thousands by selling leather-bound volumes (available in red or in “antique” white) to believers and non (doesn’t matter).  They’ve managed to suck the sacred out of religion like the world’s most powerful vacuum. 

In addition to the business and the salesmen, let us not forget the final piece of this unholy trinity--the customer.  For the most part, people are receptive to at least the pitch.  But they, too, talk a mean game.  In a smattering of polite deceptions, it’s hard to know the score between seller and buyer.  Who really has the upper hand?  From Boston to Florida, these homes looking to purchase paginated salvation all seem burdened by the myriad defeats of an ordinary life.  Most of these god-fearing citizens come off as though they’ve had the wind knocked out of their sails, in turn knocking the wind out of the sales.  The major selling points?  The leather binding.  The section of glossy paintings in the middle.  The Message?  The message?  It’s all in the packaging, baby.

As we meander the snowy sidewalks and sunny shorelines, everything comes back around to The Badger.  Watching Paul Brennan attempt to navigate the unfamiliar terrain of Opa-locka, Florida, we see all the pieces of his life presented in concise clarity.  His inability to communicate and connect with people he doesn’t know.  An ineffectual wandering.  A search for purpose.  And the finale of spinning the disaster into a yarn for the consolation pittance of a few laughs.  Because if they’re laughing (whether at him or with him) he has some value, a contribution to the group . . . a performance to divert from his performance.

In a tag-team sale, The Badger is accompanied by the much younger, much more optimistic Rabbit, formally James Baker.  It’s dark outside, and the two sit in the living room of a couple with a young boy.  It’s late . . . the woman is even in her nightgown.  There’s the suggestion of an intimate trust bestowed upon these salesmen the likes of which are virtually unknown in our society today.  The Badger decides to assert himself into the Rabbit’s seemingly successful sales pitch, and his boldness tinged with negativity sends the whole thing south.  Which is painful enough to watch.  But when The Rabbit, with the impulsive condescension of youth, publicly chides him and berates his earnest tactics in front of the family, it feels like the final straw for The Badger.  It’s as if we’re watching the world formally acknowledge his futility.  Outdated, outmoded, outmanned.  

During one successful sale of a Bible and a Catholic Person’s Encyclopedia, the wife (in curlers) signs her name to the order form while her husband (in his undershirt) puts an instrumental recording of The Beatles’ “Yesterday” on the family record player.  The sound comes out wonky and drunken.  As people sign away money they don’t have in search of gilded meaning, we get the sense that they do believe in yesterday, and not much else.  The present is certainly lackluster, and the future seems tenuous at best . . . especially in the case of The Badger.  In a time of upheaval, change, and unrest, the Maysles have preserved an amusingly bleak saga of man’s search for meaning in the modern era, either by purchasing or peddling.

If Momma Ain’t Happy . . .

One of my favorite character archetypes is the crazy old bitch because she’s a ticking time bomb of vindictive grump that will cloud up and rain all over the most angelic of creatures.  And that’s what makes her so fun to watch.  (I always think Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?.)  But when you make the crazy old bitch a mother with attachment issues, well, hell hath no fury like it.  And in Die! Die! My Darling! (1965), Tallulah Bankhead is a violent little sourpuss driven to cultish worship by her dead son’s questionable purity.  And you’d better bow down with her at the altar or else . . .

Right off the bat, you have to expect melodrama; the title has three exclamation points.  And for all the campy violence the film delivers, ten or fifteen exclamation points wouldn’t be too much.  A worldly young woman (Patricia) traveling with her posh fiance has promised to pay a visit to her dead ex-fiance’s mother.  She makes the visit despite objections from her current fiance and soon regrets the decision.  Upon her arrival, she finds a shrewish curmudgeon and widower running her own over zealous mini-cult in her home (Mrs. Trefoile played by Bankhead) with her motley crew of socially rejected servants.  Upon discovering that Patricia has “betrayed” her beloved dead son Stephen by pledging her love to someone else, something snaps and she takes Patricia hostage in attic bedroom.  Initially her goal is to show Patricia the error of her ways and make her a pure commit to the dead Stephen and thereby closer to the Lord.  But Patricia’s strong will soon pushes Mrs. Trefoile to violence . . . and in the name of religious reform, of course.  Quite a scenario, right?

This movie could so easily have lapsed into horror comedy kitsch, and there are moments of ridiculousness, no doubt.  But at her core, Bankhead’s Mrs. Trefoile is terrifying and complex, and the careening sensibilities of her austere and maudlin matriarch carry this movie into the cultish divine.  There’s her absolute control over the rag-tag band of outsiders in her service.  Even the libidinous Harry, the most competent male servant on staff, can be snapped from the ravages of passion with one stern word from the diminutive dame.  She holds fast to her past secrets and confesses her complexities with utter stinginess.  She was an actress in her past life, a grand lady of the stage and probably some other environments, until Mr. Trefoile plucked her from that existence into a wholesome family life.  She offers this clue to her psychosis only in hopes of convincing Patricia to repent her sinful ways.  And in a moment of weakness, free from any prying eyes save those of the audience, Mrs. Trefoile breaks from her devotion to smear passion-red lipstick across her mouth and let her tresses snake around her uninhibited.  There is an unapologetic sexuality fighting beneath that religious suppression, and in killing that spirit in Patricia, Mrs. Trefiole, too, can keep it all but dead deep within herself.

And then there’s her disturbing, mournful worship of her son.  She keeps sporadic vigil at the locked, untouched room of her deceased Stephen.  Her constant fretting and connection to him makes him as mysteriously present as many of the characters we see in the flesh.  And while she laments the departure of Stephen’s earthly self, the circumstances could not be more perfect: his spirit will forever be virginal, at least in her mind.  In sending Patricia to the grave in the same state, Stephen’s purity and reputation are forever, irrevocably untarnished.  And she’ll do whatever it takes to make this happen.  Starvation. Beatings at the hand of the very masculine female servant, Anne.  Solitary confinement.  And in the end, the climax comes, appropriately, in the basement of the house--where the basest of Mrs. Trefoile’s deceptions and manipulations come back to ultimately defeat her.  And looking on is Stephen’s portrait, looming over the action like The Picture of Dorian Gray.

In the end, Patricia walks away in the arms of her fiance, but it is Bankhead’s Trefoile who is victorious.  She’s larger than the picture, filling the story with an ominous presence even when she’s off screen.  And every time poor Patricia delights in the worldly pleasures, no matter how small--a coat of lipstick, a bright red sweater, even an act of sexual love--Mrs. Trefoile will loom large in her mind’s eye, a deviant deity ever-present in her moral barometer.  

Slapstick Criminal Minds with a Side of Kevorkian

Serial killer senior citizen aunts have never been so delightful and inviting as in Arsenic and Old Lace (1944).  Two altruistic spinsters use the ruse of a room for rent to offer mercy killings for the lonely.  An excommunicated black sheep of the family returns home a more evil brand of killer with a Boris Karloff face transplant.  And let us not forget Teddy who is laboring under the delusion that he’s Teddy Roosevelt, burying yellow fever victims in the cellar where he’s also digging the Panama Canal.  All in one little movie.  Insanity, right?

I doubt that anyone today would have the creative bravura to combine these elements in a film, but if they did, it would be littered with cheap tricks like sidelong psychotic glances and writhing victims; the aunts would surely possess the grating, archetypal cackle.  And given this stewpot of a situation, that would be way too much--a fear-infested farce.  (I’m less than impressed with the genre of horror as it currently stands.)  Arsenic and Old Lace is completely successful in presenting itself as a comedy, a morbid curiosity that is completely unpredictable.  The fact that I never see the corpses never deters my enjoyment (but I never doubt their presence or power within the scope of the film).  The characters and the backdrop of situation override the need for gruesome evidence of crimes committed.  The first shot of Jonathan Brewster’s still-healing face transplant is terrifying enough . . . and then also fodder for some of the best comic remarks in the movie.  The shot of Jonathan’s case of torture tools inspires a visceral wave of fear, but only for a moment.  A bumbling beat cop who wants to be a playwright interrupts the impending dismemberment and once again comic mayhem rules the day.

This really is one of the strangest combinations of plot elements and characterizations I’ve encountered in American film, and it’s a bubbling cauldron of charm.  Who says crime is for young hoodlums?  I encourage you to sit down with the Aunts Brewster for a cup of tea and a ginger snap-of-the-neck!

More Than a Slight Sensation

I have yet to see a William Castle film that does not fascinate and entertain me.  His movies are macabre joyrides through humanity and the darkness (both human and otherworldly) that plagues it.  The Tingler (1959) has all the makings of a great scary flick: creepy creature, a man maddened by scientific quest, machete-wielding figment (or is it?), bathtub of scarlet blood juxtaposed to the stark black and white of the rest of the film, and, above all, Vincent Price.  Need I say more?

Actually, the answer to that question is yes; I do need to say more because there is so much else that needs unpacking or at the very least acknowledgment.  The external “gimmicks” in the film (I think Castle would heartily approve of that term) work because of the internal darkness that underlies them.  The Tingler looks like a slimy, mutated lobster that could easily bore through human flesh--think Red Lobster platter that’s been exposed to radiation.  Sure, that’s a frightening thought.  But this very tangible creature already lives in all of us . . . a parasite feasting on our darkest fears.  That’s an even more frightening thought.  The age-old adage, “It’s all in your mind,” is no longer sufficient.  The fears in our thoughts have bred a real threat to our existence.  Thank God a scream, a physical release of said fears, can allay the callous crustacean.  Unless you’re mute like poor Martha Ryerson Higginson . . .

But even beyond The Tingler as the easily-identified evil target are the blackened human relationships that parade before us like a sadistic soap opera.  There’s Dr. Warren Chapin (played by Price), a cuckold who watches his wife, Isabel (Patricia Cutts), flaunt her unfaithfulness out of the boredom and jealousy her husband’s work inspires.  Their hateful words and his founded accusations flicker like burning snakes’ tongues, searing one another’s psyche with the forked impression of pure hate.  He shoots her with a blank to get X-rays of her spine as part of his experiment and the joy of inflicting a faux death on his despised mate.  Once The Tingler has been identified and caged, Isabel doesn’t think twice about drugging her husband and then unleashing the beast so that it may devour him.  Isabel doesn’t need freedom--she has it.  She wants revenge, the deadliest form, and the delight from knowing that she has single-handedly been responsible for Warren’s complete demise.

Could there be a darker portrait of marriage?  Sure.  Ollie and Martha Higgins (Philip Coolidge and Judith Evelyn)--the owner of a theater showing silent films and his deaf wife who is incapable of hearing or making a sound.  When Dr. Chapin cuts his hand while visiting the Higgins, Martha faints at the sight of blood, her normal reaction.  Dr. Chapin finds this to be her psychosomatic escape from fear since she cannot scream, and when she fails to recover from her unease after several days, Dr. Chapin prescribes barbiturates and plenty of rest.  He gives Martha a shot to help her sleep, but she wakens to a series of elaborate, terrifying hoaxes that literally scare her to death.  Ollie is the orchestrator of her untimely death, and very unapologetically so.  Why?  It’s never really clear.  A great deal of attention is paid to a safe that holds the money from the theater box office that Martha tends.  If she’s out of the way, Ollie is a rich man.  But, he also whines that “You don’t know how it was with her.”  How was it?  In the scene of Chapin’s visit, Ollie condescends and talks to her and about her like any object in their apartment.  There’s much more fondness in his voice when he speaks of his theater.  It’s a strange relationship, devoid of love and certainly trust, and Ollie’s intricate maliciousness is underscored by his claim that it isn’t like he shot her or stabbed her.  He wants to pin his sin on The Tingler . . . only The Tingler is part of him, living on the deepest, darkest part of him.

For all of its B-movie packaging (which is another one of the things I thoroughly enjoy about the film), there’s a terrifying mass at, well, the spine of the film.  And it’s even darker and deeper than the fears we all harbor.  It’s the capacity for pure, black hatred toward fellow man that’s truly disturbing.  Or even worse, toward those we “love,” or at least loved at one time but have come to loathe after years of circumstance.  That we could possess at our core an urge so strong to steal the life of someone we’ve known so closely for years or to be the unsuspecting victim of that urge is enough to produce more than a tingle.