Generally, I like William Castle films, but this one seems to be a Castle gimmick looking for a plot. It's generally pretty weak on that, even with good performances by Price and Judith Evelyn. I will say Castle did a pretty good job making Price the red herring here, and not completely sympathetic. Other than that, it's a weak entry for him of his earlier work in horror, nowhere near the campiness of House on Haunted Hill, or the bizarre, twisted but fun Homicidal.

"The Tingler" features the eponymous monster, which grows in your spinal column in response to fear and that can only be vanquished by screaming. To make a movie out of such a premise requires an extremely contrived plot in which Vincent Price, who suspects that there is such a creature, encounters a man who then decides to kill his deaf mute wife by scaring her to death (thereby causing the creature to manifest without in the absence of screaming). Once that premise is accepted, the movie is pretty good. The 'scare to death' scenes are quite well done for what they are, especially the faucets running with blood (recall that this is pre-CGI – the whole thing was done photographically with makeup and set design). The consistency suffers as the movie progresses, especially the effects of screams on the critter, the movie theatre scene (the gimmick that is the raison d'être for the story) is a bit silly, and the ending of the movie is abrupt and somewhat unsatisfying. Never-the-less, the movie is great schlock from the master, William Castle. I envy those lucky viewers who got tingled when the movie first came out.

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.

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.