BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

BA_Harrison I've no evidence to support my theory, but I can picture a young David Cronenberg watching The Tingler on its original release and making careful mental notes: there's more than a touch of body horror about this hokey B-movie horror from cinematic showman William Castle, the titular critter being a parasitic monstrosity that grows in size when the host experiences intense fear. Screaming nullifies the 'tingler'—as pathologist Dr. Warren Chapin (Vincent Price) dubs the creature—but being unable to relieve the tension can cause death, as Chapin discovers when he uses a deaf mute woman as a guinea pig in one of his experiments.Of course, being a (mostly) black and white William Castle flick from the '50s, The Tingler doesn't come close to Cronenberg's films in terms of graphic horror, but it still proves reasonably entertaining thanks to its sheer cheesiness, with another enjoyably hammy performance from Price (his self-administered LSD trip being particularly amusing) and a delightfully daft beast, a not-in-the-least-bit-convincing rubbery centipedal creation that is clearly operated by wires.There's also a surprisingly effective moment that sees sparing use of colour, and a silly scene in which the screen goes pitch black, the moment at which Castle would have used his gimmicky selling point Percepto, buzzers that vibrated random seats in the theatre. Come to think of it, what a shame that Cronenberg didn't try similar gags for his films: I'd love it if he had exploded a few fake heads in the audience during screenings of Scanners.

Hitchcoc In our dumpy old movie theater, we saw the film well after its release date. Unfortunately, they couldn't afford to put all the goofy technology under the seats. They would have gotten compromised by all the gum anyway. This film is a fantastic ride as the producers try to convince us that we all have tingler in us, and the only way to drive it out is to scream, scream like crazy. The plot of the movie is secondary to the marketing. The tingler is a creature that looks like a helgrammite and it makes its way into our spines. There are two issues. One has to do with the research into the "tingler effect" and the other is using this thing to commit the murder of a shrewish wife. No one thought it was Shakespeare, but it certainly is a novel idea. And, of course, Vincent Price is the consummate horror actor.

bkoganbing I have to tell you, though many consider The Tingler to be one of Vincent Price's greatest horror films and certainly the idea is original enough, I find the cruelty in this film just a bit much. But I know I'm a minority opinion.Vincent Price plays a pathologist whose usual patients are the dead as he performs autopsies on executed victims. He has a theory that fear is a result of a creature maybe no bigger than microscopic size can develop within all of us and the act of screaming kills same. But how to prove his hypothesis.Sad to say a perfect subject is found in Judith Evelyn, wife of neighbor Philip Coolidge who runs a movie theater specializing in silent film nostalgia. Evelyn is a deaf mute and without vocal cords, she cannot utter a sound if she could.The Tingler does in fact grow within her. I have to say that Judith Evelyn's performance was something outstanding, how she registered such incredible fear with facial expressions.But the film I find is something gruesome, as gruesome as The Tingler that Price and Coolidge find.

Corpus_Vile I had the distinct pleasure of catching this at the Edinburgh Dead by Dawn festival for the first time and wasn't prepared at just how much fun it was. While essentially a silly cheese laden b horror, it's also a surprisingly layered film in terms of plot development and its main premise- Vincent Price's slightly unethical doctor discovers a parasite who feeds off of our fears- would be right at home in any 70s Cronenberg film. The characters themselves reveal themselves to be wholly unscrupulous whenever it suits them, and it even has Vincent Price tripping on acid! Speaking of which there's a very clever and well made for its time hallucinatory sequence which actually holds up well today still.And that's not even taking into consideration the whole amount of gimmicky fun that goes with it. I've always shamefully had little interest in horror pre '68 (some exceptions like Psycho to the rule and mea culpa) but films like The Tingler have me kicking myself for having such disinterest as for me, this was a campy schlocky but surprisingly clever little gem and I'm delighted I got to see it for the first time in a theater. 8/10, great little film.