classicsoncall Well it started with a good premise and with Vincent Price in the lead role, this had the makings of a real horror classic but sadly it degenerated into a dopey picture in the second half. That creepy-crawlie that looked like a cross between an over-sized caterpillar and a lobster was just the cheesiest concept; I wouldn't be surprised if the film makers stuffed a kid's slinky inside to get it to move around the way it did.But you know what really blew my mind? Dr. Warren Chapin boned up on the science of fear causing tremendous tension in the body by reading a tract titled "Fright Effects Induced by Lysergic Acid LSD25"! What?!?! Vincent Price experimenting with LSD!!!! And then, in order to experience first hand what the power of the tingler would be all about, he actually injected himself to induce the kind of paranoia and fear that would result from it! However the writing for the rest of the story seemed to be all over the place. Testing out his hypothesis regarding what would happen if a mute couldn't scream from fear, Chapin similarly injects Martha Higgins (Judith Evelyn) with the LSD causing hallucinations and a rigidity in her back that produces the aforementioned tingler creature. But what's with husband Ollie (Philip Coolidge) going Nightmare on Elm Street on her? Same thing with Chapin's wife Isabel (Patricia Cutts) - one minute he's shooting her with blanks to scare the bejeezus out of her and later on she's all cool about it.But hey, neat special effect with the bathtub full of red blood in a black and white movie, as all the while I kept an eye on that skeleton Chapin kept in his lab. If I had to bet, I'd say it was the same one used in another Vincent Price flick made the same year - "House on Haunted Hill".

tomgillespie2002 Eager pathologist Dr. Warren Chapin (Vincent Price) studies the strange effects experiencing terror has on the human body. Operating on a convict recently executed in the electric chair, he notices that the dead man's spine has been almost completely severed in two. A silent movie theatre owner, Ollie Higgins (Philip Coolidge), befriends Chapin and introduces the doctor to his deaf-mute wife Martha (Judith Evelyn), who passes out from fright at the sight of Chapin drawing blood after cutting his finger. Chapin believes that the tingling in our spine when we are frightened is the work of the 'Tingler' a microscopic creature that grows rapidly when its host is scared, only to be neutralised by letting out a powerful scream.Director William Castle, best known for B-movie gems such as House on Haunted Hill (1959) and The Old Dark House (1963), was a man who knew how to sell a ticket. Introducing the film and warning of the horrors to come, we are then treated to various heads screaming in terror at the screen. It's schlocky and camp - two factors that have endeared Castle to a dedicated cult following - but it immediately draws you into its giddy clutches. The premise itself is utterly ludicrous and little more than an excuse for Castle to use his new gimmick Percepto! - where audience members would receive small vibrations through their seat whenever the tingler - a rather cheap- looking rubber giant velvet worm - appeared on screen.It's a time capsule of an era when the cinema was a communal experience rather than somewhere to have your ears damaged by the sound of fighting robots. At the climax, the tingler is on the loose inside a cinema showing silent movie Tol'able David (1924) while Chapin frantically searches for it. The screen goes black while Price's voice warns us not to panic and to scream as loud as we can. Of course, the full effect is lost when watching the movie through your laptop, but you can picture the excitement that must have been buzzing throughout the theatre back in 1959, whether it be with genuine terror or in stitches at the playful goofiness of it all. Although it is far from his best film, Castle knows how to put on a show and The Tingler is a fine example of his campy appeal. As a bonus, it also has Vincent Price on LSD in cinema's first acid trip.

jbrummel 2 stars for good ideas, a few good scenes, great character actors. But what a dud. Rambling, tepid, pointless, wasted ideas. Like a soap opera with a 3 foot centipede. That can barely move.So I wanted to like this, I assumed I never did because of me. Wrong. The problem is the entire B story about price and his wife and niece and who the hell cares. The film just stops dead for me as soon as I see his house.Which is a shame because Ollie is such an appealing character, the A story, silent theater, isolated shrewish wife, well meaning sad sack bad guy all add up to fun, plus the brilliant gimmick of a monster disabled by screaming set loose in a movie theater --- wasted.Another issue is the story just doesn't seem to make sense. Or maybe its there is so little of it. Prices theorizes about the tingler, finds a tingler, the tingler causes a tiny bit of havoc, price kills the tingler. Dull.And I don't see the Tingler loose in the theater as any kind of real threat. There is only on of them, and the thing can barely move. And you can paralyze it by yelling at it. Some monster.HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL integrated soap opera and horror so smoothly. This feels like 2 movies, one I would never watch.

bkoganbing I have to tell you, though many consider The Tingler to be one of Vincent Price's greatest horror films and certainly the idea is original enough, I find the cruelty in this film just a bit much. But I know I'm a minority opinion.Vincent Price plays a pathologist whose usual patients are the dead as he performs autopsies on executed victims. He has a theory that fear is a result of a creature maybe no bigger than microscopic size can develop within all of us and the act of screaming kills same. But how to prove his hypothesis.Sad to say a perfect subject is found in Judith Evelyn, wife of neighbor Philip Coolidge who runs a movie theater specializing in silent film nostalgia. Evelyn is a deaf mute and without vocal cords, she cannot utter a sound if she could.The Tingler does in fact grow within her. I have to say that Judith Evelyn's performance was something outstanding, how she registered such incredible fear with facial expressions.But the film I find is something gruesome, as gruesome as The Tingler that Price and Coolidge find.