The Tingler

The story of "The Tingler" is particularly absurd, even for Castle and his frequent writer Robb White. Coroner Vincent Price is researching the effects of fear on the human body, wondering what causes that tingling we all feel in our spines when we're well and truly terrified. He has concluded that it's a living creature, a cockroach-like segmented bug that rapidly grows, starting to crush the spine. Only a human scream reduces it to its normal near-microscopic size. This ludicrous idea is presented with calm -- well, relatively calm -- authority; it's a wonder how the cast got through the scenes without collapsing in fits of giggles.

Price tries to activate his own Tingler by taking LSD -- the first movie ever to even mention the drug. Castle cheats on the effects (just ripples), but Price becomes impressively terrified, screaming at just the last moment. Rats, no Tingler. But then a greedy, mute woman (Judith Evelyn) whose husband runs her silent movie theater (the word "contrived" may come to mind here) goes through the terror described above, collapsing to the floor while clutching her spine.  The movie's other major gimmick: when she staggers into a bathroom, frightened by bizarre stuff that's been happening elsewhere in the apartment, she's horrified to see the basin faucets running red blood. The bathtub is not only filled with vivid red blood, but a grasping arms rises out of the congealing mess. This was a stunning effect (it's hard to figure out how it was done) in theaters, and it works just as well on DVD.

Her husband (Phillip Coolidge) rushes her body to Price, who removes her Tingler. His wife uses it to try to kill him (and gets away scot-free), but he screams in the nick of time. He then takes it back to the silent movie theater (you're following all this, right?), where it gets loose in the audience. And this is where Percepto came into play.  Percepto is usually mis-described, even by Castle in his autobiography (probably ghost-written). Although most sources claim it electrically shocked the butts of selected customers, actually little war-surplus motors on the underside of some seats whirred, causing unexpected vibrations. Again, this was only in major cities, and, alas, no one has found a way to make Percepto work at home.

The DVD includes a pristine print of this timeless classic, as well as isolating the sequence in which the movie blacked out and Price's voice came from the back of the theater, exhorting us all to scream for our lives, because the Tingler is loose in the theater! Eeek!

It's only an okay movie, but Price is great (although none of the efforts to make him seem like the villain work at all), and the story itself is a kind of glorious, one-of-a-kind absurdity. We could do with more Percepto movies today. (Bill Warren, AVRev)