The Tingler (1959)

...because the person in the seat next to you will probably be screaming too!

You've got to love this campy cult classic from William Castle. Vincent Price is great as always, but the supporting characters are really good also, which can sometimes be hard to find in this kind of movie.

The opening 'screaming' sequence can be a little annoying, but it's all in keeping with the fun you have watching this classic.

Be ready to laugh!

8 out of 10

Fmovies: William Castle, with the greatest respect, was a poor man's Alfred Hitchcock. He was not concerned with making art, but rather with keeping his audience as entertained as possible, and everything he does with his films is working towards this end. Every plot development, every artistic decision is very deliberately planned and executed – with no amount of subtlety, it must be said – to provide maximum thrills, laughs and screams from his patrons. Even among B-movie directors, Castle found a unique way of distinguishing himself, through the use of unnecessary theatre gimmicks, and his form of showmanship {clearly seen in his introduction to the picture, and his theatrical trailers, in which he can barely contain his jubilation at what the audience is about to experience} was unsurpassed even by the Master of Suspense himself. His enthusiasm is absolutely infectious. In fact, for the entire 80 minutes, you can almost see Castle's grinning face superimposed over the screen. He's absolutely loving it, and I'll be damned if I didn't love it, as well.

Considering the director's association with low-budget schlock, I had expected a film with unquestionably shoddy production values. Instead, 'The Tingler (1959)' is impeccably shot by Wilfred M. Cline and generally well-written (Dr. Chapin referencing both his wife and a stray cat: "Have you two met? In the same alley, perhaps?"). Horror icon Vincent Price is the film's charismatic star, but excellent supporting performances are given by Judith Evelyn as a deaf and dumb cinema owner, Philip Coolidge as her anxious husband, and Patricia Cutts – sexy and acerbic – as Dr. Chapin's unfaithful wife. The story does occasionally descend into silliness, but Price nonetheless manages to deliver even the campiest of lines with unmatched class. The Tingler itself looks glaringly artificial, a rubber contraption that is pulled along the floor with wires, but its initial entrance is still something to behold. I leaned forward, my mouth agape in revulsion and disbelief, as the slimy, pulsating creature – seen only in silhouette – was extracted from its host's body, and deposited, wriggling gruesomely, into a pet cage.

Unlike countless awful 1950s sci-fi/horror films, 'The Tingler' isn't merely in the business of (ostensibly) scaring its audience; it aims to entertain them – to elicit screams, laughs and everything in between. Castle takes you aside with a mischievous wink, lets you in on the joke, and invites you to enjoy the film's effect on the lesser masses. Whether or not his film actually caused any cinema hysterics or fatal heart attacks is difficult to deduce {one of Castle's other tricks was to plant shills in the audience, who would scream on cue}, but there's no doubt that his picture genuinely involved the audience. Every single unsubtle technique utilised by the film – most memorably, the black-and-white suddenly punctuated by blood red, a little trick he learnt from Hitchcock's 'Spellbound (1945)' – is a nod to the participation of its viewers. This makes the film abstract, surreal, almost interactive; when Vincent Price implores the cinema audience to scream, we know he's talking to us, and when the Tingler's stark silhouette creeps slimily across our movie screen… well, don't forget to scream.

"Ollie" was my favorite person in this movie. What a strange dude! He was full of surprises, including reactions to things, comments he makes and, of course, deeds he commits.

Yeah, Vincent Price proves again what a fine actor we was, and is the star of the film, but I really enjoyed Philip Coolidge's (Ollie) performance. As for Price, watching this other day made me scratch my head and wonder how such a good actor could play in so many cheesy films?

Whatever, those two along with Patricia Cutts (the tramp wife), Judith Evelyn (Ollie's deaf-mute wife), Darryl Hickman and Pamela Lincoln all did a pretty nice job, although Price's acting talents stand out among the cast.

It also would have fun to see this in the theater 50 years ago when they rigged the seats to tingle during certain scenes! That really happened! Director William Castle really tried everything to get the audience. He even stopped the film and asked the audience to scream! It must have been hilarious. You have to give it to the man for his effort to promote his "horror" films.

The movie begins slowly so one has to have patience with this story. Once it kicks in though, it's very good with some shocking scenes (including a color scene or two) and some interesting twists. However, to be fair, there are a lot of holes in this story and really, really corny things......but that's part of the fun. It's like Ed Wood films - so bad, you have to laugh.

The DVD looks good. This is a nice transfer, which is important with all the lights and shadows. You can see some alternate scenes, too, which are interesting.

The Tingler fmovies. The coroner and scientist Dr. Warren Chapin (Vincent Price) is researching the shivering effect of fear with his assistant David Morris (Darryl Hickman). Dr. Warren is introduced to Ollie Higgins (Philip Coolidge), the relative of a criminal sentenced to the electric chair, while making the autopsy of the corpse, and he makes a comment about the tingler-effect to him. Ollie asks for a lift to Dr. Warner, and introduces his deaf-mute wife Martha Higgins (Judith Evelyn), who manages a theater of their own. Dr. Warner returns home, where he lives with his unfaithful and evil wife Isabel Stevens Chapin (Patricia Cutts) and her sweet sister Lucy Stevens (Pamela Lincoln). Dr. Warner, upset with the situation with his wife, threatens and uses her as a subject of his experiment. When Martha dies of fear, Dr. Warner makes her autopsy and finds a creature that lives inside every human being, feeds with fear and is controlled by the scream. Once Martha was not able to scream, the tingler was not rendered harmless and became enormous. When the living being escapes, Dr. Warner and Ollie chase it in a crowded movie theater.

"The Tingler" is very hilarious and cheesy B-movie, but with a great potential of cult-movie. I can imagine the behavior of the real audiences with the instructions of the character of Vincent Price ordering in the dark to scream in the movie theaters to save their lives, while he is looking for the tingler on the screen, and a device installed underneath their seats is vibrating in the scene. The flawed screenplay is silly but also very, very funny indeed. There are two great moments along the story: the ahead-of-time acid trip of Dr. Warren Chapin (in 1959); and the red colored bathtub full of blood, the unique colored scene along the whole black and white film. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Força Diabólica" ("Evil Force")

"The Tingler" (1959 - 82 minutes - B&W), is a classic of horror and science fiction produced and directed by the remarkable master William Castle, who was known for setting tricks in the cinema rooms in fifties and sixties in order to interact the audience with the film. (In "The Tigler", Castle placed an equipment, the "Percepto", inside the cinema armchairs so that, when the audience shouts during the movie, they felt a shock).

In this masterpiece, Vincent Price is Dr. Warren Chapin, an obstinate doctor of legal medicine who discovers that fear causes the "tingler effect" with the growth of a parasitic creature near the vertebral column. Chapin could isolate and remove the creature of a deaf and dumb woman (the actress Judith Evelyn) but the "thing" escapes and runs away to a full cinema. A way to defeat the creature is to shout loud. According to John Waters, of the "Film Comment", the film shows the first citation of LSD of the cinema. The writer Robb White had heard about the lisergic acid from Aldous Huxley, he went to the UCLA to try the drug in himself (before it became illegal) and then he introduced the drug in the story.

Here is a true story that classifies as "Tingler Trivia." At a major studio-named Cinema palace in San Mateo, California, I saw an original exhibition of "The Tingler" back in 1959 with the theatre-Manager's nephew, a high school chum. His uncle related the distribution set-up for the film: army surplus vibration motors were electrically wired under every third seat in the first seven rows of this large theatre in the "orchestra" level, at considerable expense. At key points in the film the motors were clicked on, providing a "tingling" sensation to a viewer's rear end, at which point several plain-clothed ushers would scream out horribly! The implied intention was to cause a stampede in the auditorium, front to rear, toward the main lobby candy counters beyond the thrust-open theatre doors. While we were listening to the story, behind the Manager's back a curious-looking workman, looking very worried and clutching a small hat, was gesturing for the manager to turn around, which we mentioned. "Who's that?" we asked. "Oh, he's the retired electrician I found" was the reply. "Excuse me for a moment, boys." When the Manager returned, he seemed quite bemused, explaining "This idiot I hired to do the work just informed me, minutes before the film rolls, that he forgot to ground his connections. It seems the patrons in those seven rows are due for a REAL shock." Needless to say, my friend and I sat in row 11 and yes, seeing the film that way, in a packed theatre, was a real hoot! About 100 people, jolted and non, stormed the lobby at the given moments, several screaming or wondering out loud in pandemonium. When the film went "black screen" for a moment and the jolts shocked the audience, the scene was not to be believed and has, to this very day, never been forgotten. It was almost as humorous as a showing of "House on Haunted Hill" in the same theatre earlier in the year, but that is a story for another day.