The Tingler

[Rick]

I saw this in a theater when I was about eight. I doubt our theater was rigged with electricity, but sometime into the film my leg fell asleep because I was on the edge of my seat (literally). When I noticed that 'tingling' sensation I started screaming like there was no tomorrow. I freaked out all my friends. It was a riot. I'll never forget it, this was the most scared I've ever been in a movie, bar none. I rate it 10 thumbs up, just because of the fantastic memory of that experience. Rick

[T Diemer]

   The tingler is obviously a velvet worm, or periapetus, a phylum of invertibrates that live in Central and South America. The missing link between annelis and arthopods.

[Phil]

You are right. You were born 25 years too late to enjoy the terrific movies I grew up with. Why not try THEM or the Creature from the black lagoon. That was real entertainment, not the crap they sell to us today. Yes, you were born too late!

[Omar Lopez]

I saw this low budget movie in my country Mexico when I was a kid, in my country (Juarez, Mexico).

I was sleepless for weeks.  Great Castle & Price´s work.

A personal favorite.

A pity no "perceptos" that time in the theater of Ciudad Juarez.

[Stunttodd]

I love this movie.  LOVE it.  I saw it on TV when I was a kid and it scared the hell out of me.  The TV station even went so far as to broadcast a stern parental warning beforehand - a cheap trick, no doubt, but it worked on me.
Once the Tingler is on-the-loose, has anybody else noticed that it kills no one?  My favorite is the projectionist in the movie theatre; this huge, slimy worm grabs him by the throat and he screams bloody murder.  It falls to the floor and Price puts it back in its cage, and he (the projectionist) goes back to his job as if nothing has happened.  I'd be out of that room like a shot.

[Charlu]

My Dad always let me and my brother stay up and watch the scarey monster movies when he and my mom went out(we were home alone alot!, and it was cool!) He had to write" a monster go away note" for me and post it on my wall!. The Vincent Price movies were very cool but my fave was always Boris Karloff!My brother, Chuck was very easy for me to scare and The Tingler really got Him!

[Dan]

Great review! I saw this as a kid, to this day the extraction behind the creen stands out as my only real memory of the film, and the nightmares I had after. WOW! I've told my wife about the movie and want to try to rent it, is it available??

[Lynn]

I don't remember when I first saw "The Tingler", but it had to be in the '60's. It is my most absolute favorite movie. I LOVE Vincent Price, but "The Tingler" was the BEST. I haven't seen it for so long, I am going to have to find a DVD of it--I hope they made one by now!!!

[IT]

This movie gave me many sleepless nights as a kid.This movie had me jumping at every little thing I saw moving in the dark.I wish I could of seen it at the theater instead of TV.One of the best and original horror movies ever made.Can you imagine being tied up and having your mouth covered while someone tries to make a tingler come out of you

[Mike]

Corny, yes.  Chessey, absolutely.  

But imagine being five years old, and never have been in a movie theater before.  Imagine being terrified by the image of Jason battling Ray Harryhausen-animated skeletons in a darkened room(it was a double feature, so you know how long ago this was!)

Now imagine this five year old being exposed to the first horror movie he has ever seen in his life, and being in one of those rigged seats (actually, I think it was a vibrating device attached to the chair - an electric current - too expensive).  I didn't go back to the movies until I was well into my teens!

That movie was so powerful for me, that I don't remember walking home and sitting in front of the TV, where the first image I rememeber was a Clariol commercial.  For the longest time, I couldn't watch a Clariol commercial without getting a 'Tingler flashback'.  And God forbid I need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

I guess my point is, that in the proper situation, the right circumstances, even a laughable B-movie like 'The Tingler' can be as traumatic as the best horro movies out today.

The moral:  When you take your kids to see their first movie, MAKE IT THE SMURFS!!!!!!!

[Eric Christiansen]

I saw this at least 4 times when it first came out...I wanted to see the reaction of the patrons when the tingler gets down into the theatre.  It appears critics of this movie seem to miss that the whole movie was shot in black and white EXCEPT FOR:  the part when her husband ran the bath - the water was BLOOD RED! That would scare anyone!
In general horror flicks back in this era never gave away or kept you in suspense almost to the end i.e. we never actually saw the tingler till three quarters through the movie...I would like to see Ron Howard create such a movie where it leaves the patrons in SUSPENCE!

[Robert]

This movie did scare me when I was a kid, just the thought of some fat parasite living on your spine and all - but it was in the mid-1960's.  What I always found funny since adolescence, was the scene when the screen goes black and Price tells everyone to "Scream for [their] lives" in the theater.  After about twenty seconds of screaming, Price somehow manages to have his voice heard over the din to proclaim:  "The Tingler has been paralyzed by your screaming; there is no more danger.  We will now resume the showing of the movie."
  Now that scene was obviously to enhance the electrical events in the theaters, but it remains hilarious for 3 reasons to me:
  1) It was still dark, how did he know there was 'no more danger'? (there was obvious danger to come for the projectionist)
  2) Vincent didn't own the theater; it wasn't really his decision to 'resume the showing of the movie'; especially since the projectionist was about to get "tingled".
  3) Who the hell would stay in the theater after that for anything, especially to watch a silent movie?

[Michael O.]

Yesterday I had the great luck to see the Tingler in all its Glory in Munichs Movie Museum, with "Percepto" and other Gimmicks on Overdrive. Not only had the Guys the vibration devices installed (one of them under my own seat as I was to find out). During the first LSD scene where Vincent experiences his Nightmare sequence, they used colored lights on the screen and had a plastic skeleton swooning under the ceiling - which propmtly fell off and landed in the midst of the audience for added, if involuntary, fun. And of course there was the highlight, the scene in the movie theatre, with staffers screeming in the pitch-black theatre, fooloing around with flashlights and being attacked by a rubber Tingler - hillarious. Kudos to the Guys at the Festival for going through all this effort to present this outragious flick in all its intended glory.

On a plot related note: The "good" doctor indeed caused Ollies wifes death, since he gave her a huge overdose of LSD, hoping from the beginning this would kill her and this enabling him to harvest a Tingler specimen for his experiments. Ollie doing his spook routine just helped that along. Watching him acting all righteous and morally superior to the poor fool later on, just underlines his questionable morals (and making him a darn complex character for a B-Movie).

[Flu-Bird]

That thing looks like a king sized centipide  all those legs