Grade: C+
Synopsis: A pathologist (Vincent Price) discovers a creature that lives in the spine and feeds on fear.
The Tingler is a good movie dragged down by a low budget.
The film opens well, establishing a nice atmosphere. Granted, it’s a little bit talky, but screenwriter Robb White develops a nice undercurrent of black humor that makes the dialog enjoyable, even as the story grows progressively darker.
Vincent Price is great as the lead, as is Patricia Cutts as Price’s character’s cheating wife. Toss in a great sequence where Price’s character tries LSD in an attempt to scare himself, and a surreal nightmare sequence shot from the point of view of a deaf and mute woman and you’ve got the makings of a solid horror film.
That is, until the actual Tingler makes an appearance.
This obviously inanimate rubber toy is so comically fake that it immediately robs the film of its tension. Watching Price wrestle with himself as he attempts to pry the Tingler from his forearm is utterly laughable and from then on, the film quickly descends into cheap camp.
Director William Castle becomes overly infatuated with his gimmick of eliciting screams from the audience to subdue the Tingler and all but abandons any notions of a straight picture, which is fine, but up to that point The Tingler was working as a really good black comedy.
Still, at only 82 minutes it’s all over pretty quick, and provided you take it on face value, shouldn’t leave you feeling too burned.
Bottom Line: A better Tingler (with moving feet!) could have elevated this to something special.
