Screaming in Percepto with schlocky horror classic “The Tingler”

Vincent Price stars as a mad pathologist in William Castle’s 1959 flick, which screens twice during the Wisconsin Film Festival on April 5.

For better or worse, the legacy of The Tingler (1959) is more tied to its promotion than the actual movie itself. As the whopping 42nd project of director William Castle, The Tingler was the third movie he launched with a meta-promotional gimmick to draw people to theaters.

For 1958’s Macabre, Castle issued $1,000 Lloyd’s of London insurance policies to filmgoers in case they died of fright (and staged ambulances and nurses around the theater at select promotional viewings). For House On Haunted Hill (1959), he marketed “Emergo,” a live-action special-effect gimmick where a glow-in-the-dark skeleton hovered over audiences as an on-screen character seemed to manipulate a gadget controlling the floating string of bones.

And then there’s The Tingler and its “Percepto”: select seats in theaters were wired up with vibrating buzzers (which were surplus airplane wing de-icing motors), designed to bring the movie’s terrors to audiences directly during a crucial fourth-wall-breaking moment in the film. Castle also hired actresses to scream and faint in the theater coinciding with a fainting character on screen, once again bringing the movie to life for audiences.

Over the years, The Tingler has grown its cache as a cult classic, and it’s being screened at the 2024 Wisconsin Film Festival on Friday, April 5, at 6 and 8:15 p.m., at UW Cinematheque (4070 Vilas Hall), to celebrate 100 years of Columbia Pictures, its original distributor. (As of the publication date, tickets are still available for both screenings.) Even better—the two showings include the film’s painstaking “Percepto” setup, orchestrated by Jack Theakston of the 3-D Film Archive. But even if the movie’s sensorial gimmick was missing here, The Tingler is still worth a watch. 

The film stars Vincent Price as Dr. Warren Chapin, a pathologist who performs autopsies for the local prison. A local man, Ollie (Philip Coolidge), wanders into his autopsy room (maybe the first, “Wait, what?” moment of the movie). Chapin explains that this executed criminal before them, like others he’s seen before, had his spinal column completely shattered. He theorizes that something must be happening when people feel fear that causes the tension in their spine to grow until, eventually, it can shatter bones. Ollie, who’s the brother-in-law of the executed criminal, suggests that maybe this is the sensation you feel in your spine that tingles when you’re afraid. The two men, now fast friends, decide to dub this phenomenon “The Tingler.” 

If you’ve guessed that half the fun is hearing Vincent Price’s distinct vocal timbre and cadence as he says, “the Tingler…” over and over again, then, well, you’re right. (Another gem of his is: “This silly little gun can put a hole in you the size of a…medium grapefruit.”) “The Tingler” isn’t exactly a name that strikes fear in most moviegoers these days. But as with any movie from the late ’50s and early ’60s—even the B-movies—The Tingler‘s well-orchestrated plot is a blast to follow along with.

Chapin gives Ollie a ride back to Ollie’s place, an apartment above a silent movie theater he owns. This is where Chapin meets Ollie’s deaf-mute wife, Martha (Judith Evelyn). Seeing blood from a cut, she immediately faints. Chapin surmises that her reaction is more than just a normal faint—he wonders if her inability to scream means she’s unable to release the tensions growing in her spine, forcing a full-body shutdown. And then Chapin heads home. Through some vague dialogue, we learn that Chapin’s wife Isabel (Patricia Cutts) won’t share the inheritance she received with her sister Lucy. Since Chapin spends all his time in the lab, Isabel has been going out every night with strange men.

In a visually inventive 30-second sequence, Chapin reads a pamphlet on the fear-inducing effects of Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and sees his wife making out with a man on their front lawn before he calmly walks to the hallway to pull a gun out of a stately wooden bureau. Things have drastically accelerated, and the hidden key to the plot of the film turns on this bonkers fact: The Tingler revolves around Vincent Price playing a cuckold. Once this beat hits, it’s clear to grasp how John Waters was so inspired by this movie and William Castle’s body of work as a whole. 

Recapping the plot further risks spoiling some of the truly outlandish moments; but in case you’re wondering, yes, Chapin does dose himself with LSD in a fascinating scene that plays with some fun special effects of the era. Eventually, Chapin discovers that horrific creatures live on everyone’s spines, and they feed on fear, contracting themselves until they can shatter bone. The only way to paralyze these creatures is to scream. These “Tinglers” at times look like engorged slug-like centipedes crossed with Snickers bars wiggling gently along the floor. 

Robb White’s script might be a tad unhinged, but the performances are top-notch, and the film craft is executed at a fairly high level. The Tingler is a campy, fun romp through schlocky ’50s horror, but it’s surprisingly well-made compared to the genre’s 1980s counterparts. More than anything, though, The Tingler begs to be seen in a fully packed theater to get the complete experience. And with these two screenings’ addition of the original “Percepto” system, who knows—maybe you’ll feel the terror of “the Tingler” yourself.