The 1959 film, The Tingler, opens with a middle-aged man standing on a stage and speaking directly to the audience.

“I am William Castle, the director of the motion picture you are about to see. I feel obligated to warn you that some of the sensations—some of the physical reactions which the actors on the screen will feel—will also be experienced, for the first time in motion picture history, by certain members of this audience. I say ‘certain members’ because some people are more sensitive to these mysterious electronic impulses than others. These unfortunate, sensitive people will at times feel a strange, tingling sensation; other people will feel it less strongly. But don’t be alarmed—you can protect yourself. At any time you are conscious of a tingling sensation, you may obtain immediate relief by screaming. Don’t be embarrassed about opening your mouth and letting rip with all you’ve got, because the person in the seat right next to you will probably be screaming too. And remember this—a scream at the right time may save your life.”

When this film was first released in 1959, William Castle wasn’t lying in this warning.  Certain audience members would feel the tingling sensation of fear because some theaters agreed to wire certain seats with buzzers that, when activated, would give the viewer a tingling sensation.  Castle also arranged for certain theaters to fake an attack by the film’s monster, complete with the houselights coming up, a woman screaming and pretending to faint, and the voice of Vincent Price encouraging everyone in the audience to scream because “the Tingler is loose in the theater!”

Uhmm …. that sounds like fun.  When it comes to William Castle’s gimmicks, there’s a lot of documentation concerning what Castle arranged but there’s not as much documentation about how people reacted to being buzzed while watching a movie.  Hopefully, everyone screamed, played along, and had fun.  Personally, I probably would have left the theater during the chaos and snuck into a showing of Anatomy of a Murder.

As for the film, it stars the great Vincent Price as Warren Chapin, a pathologist who is investigating the source of fear.  As he explains to his colleague, Dave Morris (Dwayne Hickman), he believes that the tingling that people feel at the base of their spine is actually a living creature that is formed by fear.  The only way to kill the creature is to scream.  If you don’t scream, the creature will eventually snap your spine.  Well, I guess you better scream then.

Anyway, Dr. Chapin confronts his wife Isabel (Patricia Cutts) over the fact that she’s cheating on him.  He pulls a gun on her and, as she begs for his life, he fires.  She collapses but fear not!  The gun was loaded with blanks and Dr. Chapin just wanted to scare her so that he could x-ray her back and see if the Tingler was forming on her spine.  Dr. Chapin is overjoyed when the Tingler shows up on x-rays but now, he needs to bring a Tingler into the real world….

(I’m not sure why you would want a Tingler but whatever….)

One of Chapin’s friends is Ollie Higgins (Philip Coolidge) who owns a movie theater with his wife, Martha (Judith Evelyn).  Martha is deaf and mute and therefore cannot scream.  When Ollie deliberately frightens her, the Tingler appears on her spine and snaps it.  At the subsequent autopsy, Chapin is able to remove the Tingler from Martha’s spine.  The Tingler, which is a giant centipede that likes to crawl up people’s legs, gets loose and needless to say, all tingling heck breaks out.

Wow, this is a silly film!  There’s is absolutely nothing frightening about a plastic centipede being pulled across the screen by wires.  But, at the same time, it’s a Vincent Price film and Vincent knew exactly how to play his mad-but-not-evil scientist, delivering his lines with the perfect combination of snark and melodrama.  This film came out the same year as another Castle/Price collaboration, The House on Haunted Hill.  It’s nowhere near as good as The House on Haunted Hill but The Tingler is still a lot of fun in its silly way.  It won’t make you scream from fright but you might laugh really loudly.