Ah, the good old days of the 50’s cinema going experience. You would pay for your ticket, buy some popcorn, sit down in your seat and recieve an electric shock.

Yes that’s right, you were never quite safe whilst watching a horror movie in the 1950’s, especially if Vincent Price was starring!

B movie director William Castle’s infamous horror flick The Tingler would have tons of theatre gimmicks to excite and scare the audience whilst watching his film. They were very costly to the film’s budget and relied on auditoriums who would “go along with the joke”…..

As the movie was about a killing parasite known as The Tingler, during the climax of the film, the theatre would go dark and a silhouette of the creature would appear on screen before seemingly breaking out and running round the cinema. At this point, you would hear the creepy Vincent Price shouting “The Tingler is loose in THIS theater! Scream! Scream for your lives!” which would cue the projectionist to give an electric shock to those in unlucky seats.  In some theatres they even had paid workers of the cinema to faint during the screening before being rushed out by fake nurses into an awaiting ambulance to add to the movie’s drama!!!

The news has broke today that Neil Mortiz is producing a remake of the “classic” movie for Columbia. Sadly of course, the chance of any gimmicks that appeared in the original resurfacing in the 21st century are very unlikely indeed. The era of lawsuits and miserable bastards running theatre chains would stop anything like that ever happening again.

Castle’s other horror movies such as 13 Ghosts and The House on Haunted Hill used similar gimmicks and in recent years, both have been remade without any of these gimmicks being utilized. Also, they sucked too which unfortunately is likely to be the direction of The Tingler.

Snakes on a Plane was the perfect chance to utilize some of these gimmicks, by having fake snakes in the cinema and paying workers to faint, the word of mouth of the “SOAP” experience would drag loads of people to the theatre. Grindhouse too, could utilize a similar gimmick, but maybe people aren’t as fun as they use to be.

source – aintitcoolnews