Coroner Warren Chapin (Vincent Price) has a theory about fear. He postulates that extreme fear causes bodily tension, strong enough to make the spine tingle and, in some cases, even cracking the vertebrae. He also theorizes that it's the ability to scream that relieves this tension. Chapin gets a chance to test his theory when he meets Ollie Higgins (Philip Coolidge) and his deaf-mute wife Martha (Judith Evelyn), who is unable to scream. What Dr Chapin finds, however, is not bodily tension but an actual creature (that he calls 'the Tingler') that grows up the spine and is only killed when the person screams.
The Tingler is based on a script by screenwriter Robb White. It's said that White got the idea for the tingler after seeing a rubber worm that makeup artist Jack Dusick supposedly designed for House on Haunted Hill (1959) (1959), another Castle/White collaboration.
The movie theater is a backlot set from the old Columbia ranch. You can see the exact same theater in Autumn Leaves (1956) as Millicent and Burt exit.
No. Evelyn was neither deaf nor mute in real life, although she did play another unspeaking role as Miss Lonelyhearts in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) (1954).
Although the name "LSD" was not used in the film (it was referred to as "an acid" with hallucinogenic properties), it is generally known that the reference was to Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Scriptwriter Robb White had experimented with LSD at UCLA after hearing about it from Aldous Huxley and decided to work it into the script as well.
No, Chapin didn't give LSD to Martha Higgins. He gave her sleeping medicine. The audience is supposed to think he did this and that her "trip" is from the LSD. However, we later see that Ollie pulled all the stunts and tricks that freaked her out and killed her.
Tol'able David (1921) (1921) is a silent movie that features a young man's attempts to deliver the mail, even when it brings him into deadly contact with the vicious Hatburn brothers.
After he removed the tingler from Martha's spine, he realized how ugly ("created from human fear") and dangerous the creature was. He hoped that putting it back into Martha's dead body, the source of its creation, would cause it to die, too.
The Tingler breaks out of its box and crawls through an airshaft to the theater below. It crawls up the leg of a woman who screams, but Dr Chapin announces that there is no cause for alarm and continues running the movie. Suddenly, the movie stops and the Tingler's shadow crawls across the screen. Chapin then urges the audience to scream for their lives. They obey, and Chapin and Ollie run up to the projection booth, catch the Tingler, and put it in a cage. Taking it home with them, Chapin replaces the Tingler to Martha's back, hoping it will die. Ollie admits that he frightened his wife to death. When Chapin says that he's going to the police, Ollie pulls a gun, but Chapin walks out. In the final scene, the doors and windows suddenly slam closed and Martha rises from the table. Ollie is frightened but can't scream. In a dark screen voiceover, Chapin/Vincent Price says, 'The next time you're frightened in the dark, don't scream.'
Director William Castle was known for his use of gimmicks to draw the audience into the experience of his movies. For The Tingler, he created the Percepto from surplus vibrators that had been installed inside the wings of aircraft during World War II to help de-ice the wings. When installed under some of the seats in the theater, that same vibration would be activated at the point in the movie where the tingler escapes into the theater on the screen, causing the "lucky" patrons sitting in those chairs to scream. The Percepto effect was further enhanced by having the film appear to break as the silhouette of the tingler moves across the projection afterwhich Vincent Price's voice warned the audience that the tingler was loose in this very theater and that they must scream to save their lives. In some theaters, shills were planted in the audience to scream at the appropriate moment, further exciting the audience's reaction. Sometimes a "nurse" was stationed in the lobby to take overcome moviegoers (the shills) to the hospital in an ambulance that was parked outside the theater.
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- How long is The Tingler?1 hour and 22 minutes
- When was The Tingler released?July 29, 1959
- What is the IMDb rating of The Tingler?6.6 out of 10
- Who stars in The Tingler?
- Who wrote The Tingler?
- Who directed The Tingler?
- Who was the composer for The Tingler?
- Who was the producer of The Tingler?
- Who was the cinematographer for The Tingler?
- Who was the editor of The Tingler?
- Who are the characters in The Tingler?Dr. Warren Chapin
- What is the plot of The Tingler?An obsessed pathologist discovers and captures a parasitic creature that grows when fear grips its host.
- What was the budget for The Tingler?$400,000
- What is The Tingler rated?Not Rated
- What genre is The Tingler?Horror and Sci-Fi
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