The Tingler (1959) on Netflix
Dr. Warren Chapin, a pathologist, traces the tingling of the spine in fear to a parasite he names the Tingler. Martha, the deaf-mute wife of theater owner Ollie Higgins, cannot scream.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.6/1010,724 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes78%
Trailer
Plot summary
Dr. Warren Chapin, a pathologist, studies the tingling of the spine that comes with extreme fear. He is convinced a parasite he calls the Tingler lives on the spinal cord, feeds on terror and grips tighter until the host screams. Martha, the deaf-mute wife of movie theater owner Ollie Higgins, cannot scream at all, and the sight of blood sends her into a rigid faint, which makes her a subject for his research. Chapin frightens his wife Isabel with a gun loaded with blanks and x-rays her spine in his lab. His assistant David Morris brings him the drug LSD, and Chapin takes it himself, determined to feel fear at its full strength.
Cast
Show all 18 cast
- Pat Colbyas Member of Silent Movie Audience (uncredited)
- Amy Fieldsas Member of Silent Movie Audience (uncredited)
- Clarence Straightas Member of Silent Movie Audience (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Tingler (1959)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- William Castle wired small surplus World War II airplane wing deicing motors under some theater seats as the "Percepto!" buzzers, triggered during certain scenes to give audiences a tingling jolt. The equipment added $250,000 to the film's budget.
- Writer Robb White experimented with LSD at UCLA after hearing about it from Aldous Huxley and worked it into the script. The Tingler became the first major motion picture to depict LSD use, at a time when the drug was legal.
- The promotional gimmicks for The Tingler more than doubled the film's cost, taking it from $400,000 to $1 million.
- Castle spliced a short color sequence into the black-and-white film, showing bright-red "blood" flowing from a sink's taps and a red hand rising from a bathtub. He shot it by painting the set white, black and gray and putting gray makeup on Judith Evelyn to fake monochrome.
- Darryl Hickman, the real-life fiancé of co-star Pamela Lincoln, first turned down playing her fiancé on screen. Castle persuaded him it would help her career, and Hickman worked for no salary.
- To sell the climax, Castle planted fake "screamers and fainters" in the audience, with fake nurses in the foyer and an ambulance waiting outside. The "fainters" were carried out on a gurney and taken away, then returned for the next showing.
- The "Percepto!" seat-buzzer gimmick was later referenced in two films by director Joe Dante: Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) and Matinee (1993).
- Writer Robb White came up with the story partly because of an encounter with a centipede while he was living in the British Virgin Islands.
