Product Details

• Actors: Vincent Price, Judith Evelyn, Darryl Hickman, Patricia Cutts, Pamela Lincoln
• Directors: William Castle
• Writers: Robb White
• Producers: William Castle
• Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono), Spanish (Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Georgian, Chinese, Thai
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
• DVD Release Date: September 7, 1999
• Run Time: 82 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00000K3U3
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,050 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "The Tingler" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Vincent Price stars as an obsessed doctor who discovers that fear manifests itself as a parasitic creature which grows on the spinal cords of terrified people. If they scream, the Tingler can be destroyed. If they don't, it will sever the spinal column and kill them. He successfully isolates and removes the Tingler from a deaf mute (Judith Evelyn) who has been scared to death by her devious husband. Once captured, the Tingler escapes and runs amok in a crowded movie theater. Terror is loose, but can it be stopped? The Tingler is legendary horror director William Castle's magnum opus. After the success of The House on Haunted Hill, Castle devised a new gimmick called "Percepto" for The Tingler. Participating theaters would wire seats so that random moviegoers would get a tangible electric shock during climactic moments in the film. Another novelty used to maximum effect is the short color sequence depicting blood pouring from a faucet and filling a bathtub. Castle went on to direct more cult classics like Homicidal and 13 Ghosts and gained some mainstream credibility by producing Rosemary's Baby.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

56 of 58 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Scream For Your Lives! March 27, 2002

By Gary F. Taylor HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase

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!

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This movies is a scream...in more ways than one. October 29, 2003

By Deborah MacGillivray HALL OF FAMEVINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

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. Read more ›

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars DVD is fantastic February 13, 2004

By Professor

Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase

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!

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Typical Castle schlocker. May 2, 1999

By Mark Savary

Format:VHS Tape

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.