The Tingler
with Vincent Price

By John Alexander

William Castle introduces the gimmick of getting the audience to scream out loud in order to keep the Tingle from attacking the audience. It seems that a new parasitic type worm is found to be growing inside of people as a result of the emotion of "fear."

Vincent Price does an admirable job of convincing the audience that if if they will scream out loud when they feel fear, that the parasite called the Tingler can be killed. But if you remain silent you can actually die of fright. In the story line, Vincint Price manages to extract the tingler from a victim but somewhere mid movie, the tingler escapes into the movie house and the lights in the theatre go out.

What William Castle did not tell the audience was that he had wired selected theatre seats to vibrate and simulate the sensation of the Tingler on your spine. Of course when the lights when out, there were people screaming all over the place as they were "buzzed" by surprise.

The film today is an interesting curio and reasonably well acted, although some parts of the plot nearly work to suspend your belief, other parts were put in purely for shock value. Such as color sequences involving very red blood in an otherwise black and white movie.

I Give the Tingler 7 out of 10 stars for originality. Memories gone by of showman William Castle who always seemed to have a gimmick to shock his audiences.

Read more about Mr. Sardonicus also by William Castle.

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