The Tingler **** (1959, Vincent Price, Judith Evelyn, Darryl Hickman) – Classic Movie Review 1146

William Castle: ‘And remember this: A scream at the right time may save your life.’

In producer-director William Castle’s 1959 thoroughly enjoyable chiller chef d’oeuvre The Tingler, Vincent Price stars as Dr Warren Chapin, a pathologist who discovers a parasite evil life form in human beings, called a Tingler that feeds on fear. It thrives on the spines of scared people, makes the spine tingle when the host is frightened and kills them if they don’t scream.

Dr Chapin accidentally sets one of the creatures free in a cinema. As with the 1958 Macabre and 1959 House on Haunted Hill, Castle used gimmicks to sell the film. So this time seats in selected cinemas were wired to give patrons little tingling sensations in a gimmick called Percepto!, vibrating devices in some cinema seats that activated with the on-screen action.

Castle bought military surplus airplane wing de-icers consisting of vibrating motors and had a crew travel from cinema to cinema, attaching them to the underside of some of the seats. In the finale, one of the creatures is supposed to have got loose in the cinema and the buzzers were activated as Vincent Price warns the audience to ‘scream – scream for your lives!’

It is a shame that the seats were not actually wired to give electrical shocks as legend has it, but never mind, the vibrating devices are still a pretty good gimmick.

Percepto! apart, The Tingler a gloriously tacky but highly entertaining horror movie from producer Castle that ensures plenty of giggles and screams. It is now firmly established as an audience favourite and a camp cult classic.

Aside from Price’s pricelessly overwrought performance, the film’s other highlight is a colour sequence in which a deaf-mute woman sees a ghoul and her bathwater turns red. Price’s character also pays the price of taking LSD in what is thought to be the first cinema appearance of the drug.

The Tingler co-stars Judith Evelyn, Darryl Hickman, Philip Coolidge, Patricia Cutts and Pamela Lincoln.

To enhance the climax, Castle hired fake screamers and fainters and planted them in the cinema audience. There were fake nurses stationed in the foyer and an ambulance outside the theatre. The fainters were carried out on a gurney and whisked away in the ambulance, only to return for the film’s next showing. What a showman, Castle was!

Castle addresses the audience at the start of the film: ‘But don’t be alarmed. You could protect yourself. At any time you are conscious of a tingling sensation, you may obtain immediate relief by screaming. Don’t be embarrassed about opening your mouth and letting rip with all you got. Because the person in the seat right next to you will probably be screaming too. And remember this: A scream at the right time may save your life.’

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1146

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