The Tingler is campy, creepy and scary in spots

Review by Doug Gibson

I love "The Tingler," and it's a staple of mine, and family, to watch every Halloween season. It's campy to the max. Vincent Price has that tongue firmly in his cheek but nevertheless it has a couple of genuinely scary moments. That's not easy to accomplish in deliberately campy films, and director William Castle deserves kudos.

The plot involves Price as a doctor who also serves as a coroner. He's researching how fear can causes changes in the body, particularly a severe arching in the spine. His research leads to the discovery of an organism created by fear, which is dubbed The Tingler. It sort of resembles a very large earwig. It's a credit to Castle's film that the Tingler is both campy and creepy. The Tingler can cause a lot of mayhem to a frightened person, but it can also be neutralized by screaming.

It's designed to stay in the body. When Price's doctor takes it out of a dead woman, a new form of mayhem and thrills develop.

Although there is an entertaining scene where The Tingler gets loose in a movie theater, the film revolves around six characters, two of which are superfluous; with another character less significant than three core characters: Price the doctor, and an unhappily married couple, a kept man (Philip Coolidge) and his deaf and mute wife, very creepily performed by Judith Evelyn. Price's character is married to an adulterous woman scheming to kill him. Other cast members include Price's assistant doctor and Price's sister in law. Those two are dating and in love.

I don't want to give much of the plot so viewers can enjoy the film. However, there are two very scary scenes. The first is one where Evelyn's deaf and mute wife is scared and is overwhelmed by the Tingler because she cannot scream. In this scene Castle adds color to the black and white film by making the blood very red. Later in the film there is another very scary scene involving the corpse of Evelyn's deaf and mute woman ... or is she dead?

As mentioned, the film is very campy. Price, trying to better understand fear, takes LSD and analyzes his reaction to it. (I wonder if this is the first mainstream release film with an LSD scene)? Price deliberately underplays his role; he almost seems bored at times and too conversational for all the bizarre-ness. That provides an over the top change with his LSD journey. Another early scene with Price and Coolidge casually, calmly conversing when Price is doing an autopsy on a recently executed man (in the prison, moments after the execution!) is delicious low-key camp. 

When the Tingler escapes and invades a theater, it allows director Castle to make the audience a part of the film. The screen goes dark and Price solemnly warns the audience that the Tingler is loose in their theater. He urges people to scream. Sixty years ago, Castle had some theater seats wired to provide a small shock or "tingling" to audience members. Others, perhaps theater staff, were asked to scream. It must have been a wild show for many. 

You can watch The Tingler at Amazon Prime or YouTube (for a fee). It's a really fun film to watch, perfect for a good-natured thrill and scare during Halloween season. It's just a great, witty, chilling little tale; the kind that made William Castle famous and the type of film that Vincent Price excelled in.