i call it the tingler!

in celebration of halloween, i decided to watch my favorite B-horror film ever, THE TINGLER. made into 1959 and starring vincent price with direction from the legendary b movie director william castle, this is about fear and how it manifests itself. not in the figurative sense, but in the literal way; as in, fear is an organism that builds on the spine of a human and is released through screaming. if a person is not allowed to scream, the creature on the spine builds and kills the person.

make no mistake, this is one of the silliest movies ive ever seen and without a doubt, one of hte most entertaining. and there are fantastic moments of well filmed terror. there is a great sequence that combines B&W with color, a rich red color representing blood which is first seen dripping out of a faucet and then the camera pans to a bathtub FULL of blood. awesome.

and then there is the amaing "science [very fictional]" in the movie. for example, deaf people die of fear. they dont have a chance if theyre scared really badly.

there is something so fun in the massive absurdity of it and the presence of vincent price makes everything better.

i love that this could be a parody of 50s sci fi films in the vein of LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA or THE TRAIL OF THE SCREAMING FOREHEAD.

im not really sure where im going with this...aside from saying that THE TINGLER IS AWESOME!!!!!!!!1

unnecessary sequel time!

as a huge fan of the original, i was shocked and dismayed when i discovered that there was not only a sequel being made to donnie darko but without the core of the original and without richard kelly. and to show my dismay and anger, i rented s darko: a donnie darko tale with no expectations whatsoever. what resulted suprised me quite a bit...it wasnt that bad.

dont get me wrong, when compared to the original, it is an abonmination of film but i would say that s darko is vastly superior to just about every mainstream horror/sci fi film to be released in theaters in the last year. this is most a statement on the sorry state of the genre than the superiority of s darko.

this film reminded me a bit of the man from earth, another sort of well written and entertaining though horrifically acted piece of sci fi. s darko was definetely not as good though. briana evigan deserves the megan fox award for pretty bad actress (oooh second megan fox cant act reference today! awesome!)

the film wasnt nearly as thought provoking, intelligent, emotive, provocative, or genre bending as donnie dark but we all knew that but it was a decent piece of sci fi fluff. it is another time travel/change the future and past thing. meh, i was entertained.

there was no way this movie was going to please people and i think if you compare to donnie darko, you will cry your insides but if you go into it thinking of it as a tribute to donnie darko and a side story on a similar idea it will be easier to watch and you may even enjoy it a bit.

2.5/5