4/5 Scream For Your Lives!
  by Gary F. Taylor (Biloxi, MS USA)
William Castle was reknowned for his gimmicky films. For THE TINGLER he had "Percepto," and it was a lulu: randomly selected seats in the theatre were wired with a small motor, and at a peak moment in the film these motors came to life and literally gave your bottom a buzz! But unless you happen to have a really warped sense of humor plus some mechanical apptitude, you'll have to forego the "Percepto" effect and settle for one of the most weirdo stories to come down the street.

A doctor (Vincent Price) is studying the effects of fear. In the process, he finds that fear causes a nasty, worm-like creature to grow inside the human body along the spine. Release your fear by screaming, and the creature is destroyed; if for some reason you cannot scream, however, the creature merely grows larger and larger and kills you by crushing your spine. What the good doctor really wants, of course, is to lay his hands on one of these critters--and when a man murders his deaf-mute wife by scaring her to death, Dr. Vince gets his chance. Eventually "The Tingler" escapes into a movie theatre, and the seat-buzzing begins!

Price and company give it their all, and the film is as enjoyable as only schlock horror can be. Fans of the genre will hoot over the murder, Vincent Price's LSD trip, the scenes where the tingler escapes into the theatre--not to mention at the monster itself, which looks like a cross between an overweight centipede and a lobster. And yes, you really can see the wires! The DVD edition also includes lots of fun extras, including a short documentary on the film. Castle fans will get a kick out of it, but all others are warned away!

5/5 This movies is a scream...in more ways than one.
  by Deborah MacGillivray (US & UK)
I admit it! I am a sucker for old Black and White horror films. They are quite tame by today's buckets of bloody special effect big budgets ones, but they hold a fun all their own. Especially when the ringmaster is the oh so talented Vincent Price. He was always the odd mix of silky mannered menace, with that sprinkle of humour that set him apart from so many actors. It was that devilish twinkle in his eye that always told you he enjoyed what he was doing.

The Tingler is another of the Castle low budget treats. Price plays a mild mannered doctor/research scientist married to a rich wife who is a floozy. She runs around on Price, cares little that he knows it, controls her younger sister's life, but Price is not a man you push too far. Obsessed with discovered the results fear has on the body, he finds out there is a critter that increases in our bodies when we are frightened, the more fear the bigger and stronger it grows and the only thing that can destroy it is screaming. Feed up with his wife's wicked ways, he convinces her he is going to kill her so he can X-ray her trying to prove the existence of the Tingler.

Price gets mixed up with Olly, a husband of a theatre owner who is a deaf-mute. She goes bonkers and passes out when she sees blood. Price wonders what would happen in her, if the Tingler is unleashed, but she cannot scream. Later, someone deliberately scares her to death, and Price operates and removed the Tingler. But then, wife tries to use the Tingler to strangle Price...all in good loving fun, mind you. The pesky beastie dashes off and heads to the theatre to menace everyone there.

One note, though the film was shot in Black and White, the sequence where Olly's wife is driven to death was shot in colour emphasize the red of the blood scaring her.

Great fun and it's a bit of a walk down memory lane! A must for any fan of Castle or Price.

3/5 Typical Castle schlocker.
  by Mark Savary (Seattle, WA)
Not bad. Another in William Castle's Ed Wood-like attempts to be the Alfred Hitchcock of Horror (I refer mainly to his cutesy "host" duties).

The story centers around a coronor's attempt to discover why he finds spinal cord injuries in people who are scared to death. Turns out there is a microscopic organism that rapidly grows around the spine when people get scared. Only screaming can prevent the amazingly strong creature from crushing the vertabre. Once you scream, the creature reverts to it's microscopic size. This is what explains the "tingle" in the spine when you're scared, hence the name of the creature, the "Tingler".

In the course of his experiments, Vincent Price removes a Tingler from a victim and it gets loose in a movie theatre. This is the perfect opportunity for Castle to ask movie patrons to scream... literaly.

This movie was the one whereby Castle had movie theatre seats "wired" to a device that would give electric shocks to viewers when the Tingler was on the rampage.

Entertaining '50s camp with Vincent as a hero instead of a villian.

****NOTE: The movie the patrons of the theatre are watching is a silent film called "Tol'able David", a well renowned 1921 film about a young lad who takes up delivery of the mail, and meets up with evil crooks.

5/5 DVD is fantastic
  by Drummer (Fort Myers, FL USA)
The DVD version of _The Tingler_ is the way to go for horror buffs. It includes priceless footage of the legendary William Castle promoting the film, as well as interesting comments by co-star Darryl Hickman. Hickman seems somewhat apologetic for his role in the film. I was thinking, "Are you kidding? This turned out to be one of the biggest cult classics of all time."
Also hilarious is the drive-in scream sequence, which dealt with the problem of the tingler being loose in a drive-in rather than a theater.
Great film, Castle's campy best. Vincent Price is memorable--he goes on the first LSD trip ever on film--in 1959! Judith Evelyn is remarkable as Ollie's deaf-mute wife. The famous bathroom sequence is as good as it gets.
Sharpen up your suspension of disbelief and enjoy!

4/5 Hokey and schlocky, "The Tingler" delivers!
  by coachtim (Indiana, United States)
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!