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The Tingler

The Tingler

List Price: $9.95
Your Price: $9.95
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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: "Do not panic but scream!! Scream for your lives!!"
Review: THE TINGLER begins with an amusing intro by director William Castle with Castle imploring viewers to scream to control the Tingler. A brilliant concept and gimmick which suprisingly became a pretty good movie.
Price plays coroner William Chapin who discovers that fear causes a parasite to grow on people's spines, which he calls "The Tingler". The creature, which resembles a giant lobster, can only be destroyed by its host's screams, so Price decides a deaf-mute woman who works at his local movie theater is the ideal subject to use for his experiments.
This is the infamous movie in which some seats in theatres were rigged with joy buzzers (Percepto) to give viewers mild electric shocks when the "Tingler" was loose in the theater. One memorable sequence is partially in color. A must see for cult movie buffs and fans of Vincent Price who is his usual wonderful hammy self.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great quality. Sharp and clear.
Review: This is one of my favorite William Castle films. The quality is outstanding and the added features and widescreen are a bonus. A must have for any 50's horror fan.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: best special effects EVER!
Review: This movie is so ridiculous! It is AWESOME! The only reason I didn'tgive it 5 stars is because it isn't quite as much fun as "House onHaunted Hill". William Castle just goes so over the top here: the creature is so obviously pulled along on a string, the wife somehow re-animates, the husband orchestrates a humanly impossible series of stunts to scare his wife, and Vincent does acid! This is just a great movie, and I love those screaming heads at the beginning! What a trip!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Ridiculous AND Sublime
Review: To call William Castle's "The Tingler" cheesy would be an oxymoron. William Castle made cheesy movies that flagrantly thumbed their noses at common sense and believability. They were brazenly ludicrous "B" films that didn't pretend to be anything else (like "The Sixth Sense"). However, "The Tingler" and "House on Haunted Hill" both starred a class act, Vincent Price. Mr. Price took hammy acting and transformed it into performance art. The scene in "The Tingler" where he has a VERY bad acid trip defies description. My friends and I screech with laughter just thinking about it-Vincent was great. The fact that William Castle couldn't possibly explain how his screen villains pulled off all of their "scare tactics" on their hapless victims doesn't matter-they are so SHAMELESSLY UNBELIEVABLE that you have to laugh-and you do! "The Tingler" looks and sounds great in the DVD format-and the documentary about this camp classic is extremely enjoyable-Darryl Hickman, in particular, is quite charming and funny. "The Tingler" and the original "House on Haunted Hill" are must-have DVDs, if you are a fan of silly and enjoyable horror flicks. Hooray!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: CASTLE AND PRICE AT THEIR BEST....
Review: Two horror masters are at work here. William Castle presenting one of his most outlandish and original films and Vincent Price at his least hammy best as a doctor who discovers "the fear factor". The "factor" being a slimy looking centipede-like creature that grows on peoples' spines when they become frightened. If the person doesn't scream (destroying the creature) they will die. The doctor even experiments with LSD in a bizarre sequence to induce fear in himself. The most memorable sequence is still the color one. In a subplot, a theater manager with a mute wife who suffers from OCD plans to kill her for her money by scaring her to death. The wife (a great Judith Evelyn) is alone in the apartment and is assaulted with ghoulish horrors like an axe being hurled at her, her death certificate on the bathroom medicine cabinet, the bathtub filled with blood with a bloody hand and arm reaching out of it for her, the taps running blood, etc. This is done in color for maximum effect and the poor wife dies from fright because she cannot scream---being mute. This is where Price discovers "the tingler". Impulsively, he does an illegal autopsy on the woman and finds the creature attached to her spine and removes it. It later escapes into the theater filled with people and Price gets on the horn and exhorts them to "Scream! Scream for your lives! The tingler is loose in this very theater!" Of course this is where Castles' gimmick of "Percepto" came in. The seats in theaters showing "The Tingler" were wired to produce mild shocks to patrons at key horror moments. How can you top that? "The Tingler" is great fun from start to finish. Pure entertainment and Castle at his morbidly lurid best.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not all that I thought it would be
Review: Vincent price is great in this movie but the movie itself stinks. House on Haunted Hill was much better. The story is ludicrous but what else can you expect from a Castle film.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Have you all gone mad?
Review: Why isn't william castle ranked alongside ed wood in the annals of cinematic nonsense? After all at least some of woods films are amusing, this rubbish is totally mind numbingly boring.
Vincent price made some great films, but when put together with castle garbage is the only thing they ever produced. Even less entertaining than this one is the house on haunted hill.
Only laughs you can get out of this is the hilarious scene where the tingler gets loose in the cinema (or your home), the screen goes blank and we see the tingler moving in front of the projector, vincent price (somehow without laughing) urges you to 'scream, scream with all your might' to vanquish the monster... accompanied by audience voices yelling 'oh my god what is it?' i nearly had a hernia... ends with price saying something along the lines of 'well done, its gone, now let us go back to the rest of the picture'. jaw dropping Grade Z cinema

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Scream For Your Lives!
Review: 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!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Tingler
Review: Wonderful example of the best of early "spooky films". DVD reproduction was great-appreciated the extra features with background on film. Service and product above expectations. Grap the popcorn and get ready to "scream"!


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