The Tingler

Customer Reviews:

LOVE these Vincent Price Movies!.......2007-08-10

This is perhaps one of the silliest of the thriller movies that Vincent Price made. My all time favorite (and it truly scared the bejeebees out of me) was "House of Wax." Anyhoo, the gimmickry and pure schlock of these productions made going to the movies so much fun. You never lost sleep from nightmares either. I'm happy to see them on Turner Classic Movies and released on DVD. Vincent Price plays a doctor and this isn't a Doc you want taking care of you. Vincent Price wants to prove his "Medical Theories" by trying them out on innocent people. Not exactly the nice doctor around the corner. The theory is silly of course because this ain't real science. However, If you're not sure, just make sure you SCREAM while you're watching it. Then The TINGLER won't get you too!! Great fun to have a bunch of these old black and white movies, a bowl of popcorn, and a rainy day.

As a Kid This is the ONLY Horror Movie That Ever Truly Scared Me Totally.......2007-07-28

I was a kid around 8 to 10 years old when I first watched this movie. I had seen House on Haunted Hill the old Vinent Price Version and Tingler not too long after. Now being autistic and disabled I had lots of hospital visits growing up so medicine, doctors and the mysteries of the body was never far from my mind.

Seeing and hearing about the Tingler made my little kid skin crawl. Add that to the human skeleton coming out of that water in House on Haunted Hill and this dude was set! My grandmother left a closet door open that had dry cleaning on it and in the bright moonlight night the plastic reflected the moonlight. From my vantage point it was just enough to put me in mind of the bones and tingler dude had a Nightmare so bad my parents insisted I stay home from school that next day.

Oh I look at Tingler now and laugh a little but, there is always that place inside me where the Tingler made its mark. I have watched thousands of horror movies since first seeing the Tingler and I laugh at most of them no matter how gore filled they are. What made Tingler so good was not the monster. Tingler has a strong psychological horror story sub-plot attached to it. Tingler made me think about the nature of fear and its effects on the body. Another thing that just creeps me out is that Tingler has strong Film Noir elements that just makes even its most outragous moments feel just a bit too real.

Vincemt Price was at the top of his form in Tingler. For an old Movie Tingler still has its bite. This film would have just been another bad B horror movie had it not been for the serially creepy intonations and hard psychotically mad doctor ghoulish features of one Vincent Price.

Scary childhood memories.......2007-07-07

The Tingler was the first "Scary" movie I ever saw! I was very young(11 or 12) when I saw it. I couldn't sleep at all that night! Although it is obviously an older movie, I still love it. Vincent Price was, as always great! I think most anyone in the "Baby Boomer" age would enjoy it. My grown kids even like it! Maybe I'll try it out on my grandkids!

Hokey and schlocky, "The Tingler" delivers!.......2007-02-07

At the writing of this review there were 38 other synopses of this film, "The Tingler". With that in mind, I won't waste the reader's time with another boring plot summary. Instead, let me just say that if the reader of this review is a fan of Vincent Price and especially, Director William Castle, then you will want to go get the "40th Anniversary" copy of this film. The extras, especially the short film on Castle, his films, and the promotional gimmicks that he used to sell them is great. But, back to this film....

"The Tingler" is one of those great old black and white films from the '50s that many Baby Boomers grew up with. Price is terrific as always and is surrounded with a solid cast of method actors. As mentioned by other reviewers, the "Tingler-animal"(?) is certainly hokey (and has it's exposed wires for propulsion in plain view), but that's ok. Castle's gimmick with "The Tingler" is called "Percepto" and unfortunately, viewers of the film won't get the effect that moviegoers got unless they want to hook themselves up to a battery or two. In theaters, "Percepto" was actually the act of hooking up movie seats with old motors that gave the viewer a small charge or vibration everytime someone screamed on the big screen.

The film does have a few actual thrills and chills throughout the movie. In particular, the "blood scene" used to scare one of the actors to death giving Price his chance to discover The Tingler is particularly memorable because the blood is colorized for the scene in brilliant scarlet.

RECOMMENDED FOR VINCENT PRICE AND WILLIAM CASTLE FANS, IN PARTICULAR!

Tingle away.......2006-08-20

William Castle was the king of gimmick horror, juicing up his sometimes-great-sometimes-really-hokey horror flicks with everything flying skeletons to two-tone glasses.

For "The Tingler," it was a buzzer in the seat called Percepto, which would be a shock to anyone watching the movie. The movie itself was a rather uneven but original idea, with Vincent Price playing a borderline doctor who discovers the very roots of human fear. It's entertaining, but has some big flaws.

Dr. Warren Chapin (Price) is performing autopsies at a local prison, where each dead man died in the electric chair -- and something crushed their spines. To further his research, he frightens his nasty wife and X-rays her, and finds something that appears when afraid, and vanishes when the victim screams. He tries taking acid to frighten himself, but the experiment fails.

Then the deaf-mute wife of an acquaintance is frightened to death by some ghastly visions, and Chapin extracts an enormous, centipede-like worm from her spine -- the "Tingler." After Chapin's wife almost kills him with it, he decides that some borders should never be crossed. But before he can return the Tingler to its dead host, it escapes.

All B-movie goodness, complete with a rubber worm and deliciously vitriolic dialogue. While the idea of a spinal parasite fed by fear is a really hokey idea, Castle plays it so straight that the audience doesn't really have an opening for scoffing. Like a good fantasy story, it creates its own reality.

Castle was at his best when he was doing nasty dialogue, and he's in good form here ("There's a word for you." "There's several for you!"). He builds up a sense of rising tension throughout the straightforward plot, which is only broken when the movie ends. And despite tubs of blood and giant worms, Castle also shows his talent for the understatedly creepy when Chapin takes acid.

In fact, "The Tingler" would be a great B-movie if it weren't for two very hokey scenes. One is of a black screen, with Price's voice exhorting, "The Tingler is in the theatre! Scream for your lives!" Very awkward. The other is the final scene, which makes absolutely no sense, and has nothing to do with what comes before it. I guess Castle just needed a shock ending.

It must have been nice for Price to play a non-villain for once -- his Chapin is obsessed and a little twisted, but he isn't insane or nasty, and by the last act he's realized that science isn't the end-all. Patricia Cutts and Philip Coolidge give good performances too, as David's toxic wife and as a sweaty theatre manager who isn't as timid as he seems to be.

"The Tingler" is a fairly entertaining cult horror movie, with good acting and a big rubber worm. If only it weren't for those two scenes.

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