"THE TINGLER"........SCREAM FOR YOUR LIVES! IT'S IN THE THEATRE!

"The Tingler"  (1959)   Other than Alfred Hitchcock and William Castle, we can't think of any other producer-directors who so gloried in such entertaining self-promotion........

                     The big difference, of course......their films. Hitchcock made real movies. For Castle, the movies themselves were a necessary afterthought......something to slap together that roughly corresponded to whatever hoopla the posters promised.......

                     Which is why, when Castle stunned everyone by obtaining the film rights to "Rosemary's Baby", no one in their right mind would ever let him direct it.......

                     But for now, let's warmly return to the Golden Age Of Castle, the late 50's to early 60's when he perfected the art of coupling his rickety, barely-filmed horrors with riotous promotional stunts that would make P.T.Barnum beam down from heaven and shout "Yessssss!"

                     Once again armed with world-class hambone Vincent Price, Castle's follow-up to "House On Haunted Hill"  boasts an even more primal, ridiculous premise.......

                    Price plays a pathologist who discovers that when in the throes of fear, our bodies internally materialize a gruesome centipede like creature.......the "Tingler".  The Tingler then goes about its business, crushing our spinal column until we scare it off (or dissolve it) by screaming our heads off.

                    So lots of people get to scream their heads off.

                     Even Price has a go at exercising his lungs after he.....we kid you not......drops acid to scare himself silly so he can create his very own spine-huggin' Tingler. Science marches on.

                     More madness abounds, including a pathetic deaf-mute woman frightened to death by a tub of richly red blood in her bathroom....(in the middle of a black-and-white movie, no less).

                    All of this lunacy is merely a warm-up to Castle's grand finale which has the Tingler run rampant through a crowded movie theatre........(and that sequence served as the cue for actual participating theatres to activate electric buzzers that Castle installed under selected seats......thereby making the film the first official shocker to literally shock its audience....)

                     Academics might think of Castle's films as Jurassic-era attempts a interactive cinema......we prefer to think of "The Tingler" as its maker envisioned it.......the movie equivalent of a tub of greasy boardwalk fries.....slathered with ketchup.....(or a surefire carnival attraction to separate the rubes from their cash)...... the pleasure's guilty......but it's all ours. 3 stars (***)......pop it in and don't forget to scream like crazy.......