A Few Trigger Warnings, Mostly Campy Fun

The Tingler has the wild premise that a disgusting creature attaches itself to the human spine during extreme fear and can only be controlled by screaming. The film depends on the filmmakers’ and actors’ ability of selling this premise to render the audience willing to believe it, at least for the duration of the film. They succeed fairly well in creating a story that is mostly entertaining. Vincent Price’s wonderful performance carries most of it. The special effects are pretty lame and cheesy and don’t help much to sell it.

There wasn’t any smoking in this film that I noticed. There is a little drinking, and the doctor’s wife is running around on him. The doctor who is the main character has his assistant kidnap a cat for the purpose of terrifying it for an experiment they end up not carrying out. They are not particular how they get the cat, just pick it up in an alley, so it could be someone’s pet. There is one murder and one attempted murder. As far as the gross out factor, the Tingler creature is pretty gross. One scene involves gallons of blood, which is somehow red while the rest of the film is in black and white, a tricky feat to achieve in the 1950s.

Be warned that the doctor experiments on himself with LSD. This was in 1959 when not much was known of the effects of this substance. So there is a shooting up acid drug trip scene. He recovers his senses unbelievably quickly for the massive dose he is supposed to have taken so overall it is so unrealistic it should come with a disclaimer.

The film is mostly pretty campy and I would say probably all right for all but particularly sensitive kids. This was one of William Castle’s films involving audience participation and must have been some fun in the theater.