Craig D. Lindsey
Welcome to Harvey’s Hellhole, a monthly column devoted to spotlighting the movies that were poorly marketed, mishandled, reshaped, neglected or just straight-up destroyed by Harvey Weinstein during his reign as one of the most powerful studio chiefs in Hollywood. With original Scream screenwriter Kevin Williamson co-writing and directing the upcoming Scream 7, let’s take it back to his botched debut as a director – produced and distributed by you-know-who.
The Weinstein brothers were responsible for one of the most successful teen films of 1999. They were also responsible for the year’s least successful – and the worst. We’ll get to the successful movie later this month (check back during Bad Romances Week), but let’s focus on the other one: the allegedly black-comic clusterfuck Teaching Mrs. Tingle.
Released through little bro Bob’s Dimension Films wing, Tingle marked the directorial debut of screenwriter Kevin Williamson, one of the Weinsteins’ prized golden boys ever since he and horror great Wes Craven reignited the teen-slasher craze with Scream in 1996. That movie’s monster success led to more Weinstein-backed projects for the scary-movie scribe, including penning the eventual Scream sequel in 1997 and the Robert Rodriguez sci-fi thriller The Faculty a year later, as well as script-doctoring the Halloween H20 legacyquel that dropped in-between. Keep in mind this was all happening while he was showrunning his beloved, semi-autobiographical teen soap Dawson’s Creek, introducing audiences to future stars Michelle Williams (an Oscar nominee!), Katie Holmes (Tom Cruise’s ex!), and, as Dawson – James Van Der Beek (that crying meme!).
He somehow squeezed in time for Tingle, which would have Williamson going light on the gore and amping up the macabre stuff. Williamson teams up again with Holmes, who takes the lead role as Leigh Ann, a teen overachiever angling to become class valedictorian. There’s just one thing standing in her way: hating-ass history teacher Mrs. Tingle (Helen Mirren), aka the most despised educator in her otherwise upbeat high school. (I forgot how much hackysack and SoCal post-grunge music were played outside of high schools during these Clinton-era teen flicks.)
Along with giving her a bad grade on a book project that’s literally a book she wrote, Tingle also unfortunately catches Leigh Ann in possession of test answers given to her by resident bad boy Luke (7th Heaven heartthrob Barry Watson). Jo Lynn (Marisa Coughlan), Leigh Ann’s aspiring-actress bestie, comes up with quite the problematic solution: Go over to Tingle’s house later on that night and convince her that she’s wrong. At some convoluted point, a scuffle ensues (which features an antique crossbow Tingle confiscated from a student) and Tingle gets accidentally knocked out.
So, they obviously call 911 and – nah, I’m fucking with ya. They take her to her bedroom where they tie her up to her bedpost and take turns watching her, as they come up with a plan that’ll keep her from squealing to the authorities. Apparently, getting BDSM-ed by teenagers sends Tingle into gaslighting mode. Mirren, a queen in every gotdamn sense of the word, pulls out the devilish, deceitful charm as the Machiavellian Tingle, quietly manipulating these foolish teens into turning on each other. (It’s not that much of a challenge since BFFs Leigh Ann and Jo Lynn are, of course, both attracted to that strapping dirtbag Luke.) Mirren definitely makes a couple of our three leads bring their A-game whenever they’re alone with her in a scene. (I won’t say who doesn’t, but I think you know.)
So, where the hell did this movie go wrong? Let’s start with Columbine. Back in the good ol’ days when school shootings were rare as hell, the country was up in arms after the unsettling massacre that happened at the Colorado high school that year. Instead of stricter gun laws, a public outcry ensued over violence in the media. As The Matrix and Marilyn Manson were being blamed for encouraging teen violence, Harvey and them realized they needed to make changes to their summer movie where three teens kidnap an adult.
It started with the title, which was originally Killing Mrs. Tingle. It was changed to the more appropriate Teaching Mrs. Tingle. And let’s not forget the post-production hell. Harvey certainly went a-scissoring on this one, as scenes were excised and reshot (always look for Coughlan’s obvious-ass wig) in order to make it less dark-hearted and more corpse-free. Judging by their barely-there performances, Lesley Ann Warren (as Holmes’s waitress mom), Michael McKean (as the recovering-alcoholic principal), Vivica A. Fox (who shows up to give Holmes words of encouragement and vanishes), and Molly Ringwald (in a cheeky bit role as the school receptionist) most likely had their screen time whittled down. The only other adult who gets more to do is Jeffrey Tambor’s gym teacher, who’s having a fling with Tingle and pays a farcical visit to her home while the teens are there.
Williamson played along during Tingle’s theatrical rollout, saying in interviews how it was always supposed to be “a fantasy comedy” and not the nasty nailbiter you can easily tell it was at one point. In recent years, Williamson did admit he and the Weinsteins “tried to vanilla it a little bit, and we sort of took the edges off of it, and we PG-13’d it.” They also softened up Holmes’ character, who was originally written as an ambitious type who isn’t afraid to let some bodies drop. This does explain Holmes’s shifts in attitude throughout this thing, often bouncing back and forth from concerned and overwhelmed to bossy and calculating.
Tingle was a box-office dud, grossing $8.9 million against a $14 million budget. Critics predictably dragged it for being a poorly-stitched-together attempt at salacious, self-referential suspense. In his one-and-a-half-star pan, Roger Ebert praised Mirren (“… she creates a character so hateful and venomous that the same energy, more usefully directed, could have generated a great Lady Macbeth”) – and that’s it.
Williamson’s hot streak cooled considerably after Tingle. He worked with the Weinsteins on more horror movies, including writing a couple more Scream sequels and reuniting with Craven for the aptly-titled werewolf wreck Cursed. He was more successful as a TV auteur, creating such shows as The Vampire Diaries, The Following, and the recently-cancelled Netflix crime drama The Waterfront.
Williamson claims Tingle was the first script he ever wrote, inspired by interactions he had with a mean English teacher. But I can’t help thinking this movie is a petty fuck-you to YA author Lois Duncan, who voiced her displeasure over Williamson’s sensationalized script for the smash, 1997 movie version of her novel I Know What You Did Last Summer. Tingle’s plot is similar to Griffin’s 1978 thriller Killing Mr. Griffin, where some New Mexico high-schoolers kidnap their hard-ass English teacher. (A TV-movie adaptation — starring Mario Lopez! — aired in 1997.)
If Williamson decided to be messy and make a contemporary, morbid-but-comical, hit-movie version of her award-winning book, it backfired miserably on him. And, whether she knows it or not, Duncan inadvertently got the last laugh.
Teaching Mrs. Tingle is available to stream on Hoopla.
