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The Tingler

The Tingler

Horror · Science Fiction · 1959

A pathologist experiments with a deaf-mute woman who is unable to scream to prove that humans die of fright due to an organism he names The Tingler that lives within each person on the spinal cord and is suppressed only when people scream when scared.

Movie details

The Tingler

“Ghastly Beyond Belief!”

1959 Horror · Science Fiction 1h 22m

Critical arithmetic

The consensus, allegedly.

IMDb

6.6 / 10

9.8K votes

Rotten Tomatoes

78 %

Tomatometer

TMDB

6.4 / 10

Community rating

External scores via OMDb · CC BY-NC 4.0. Values normalized for display; availability varies by title.

A pathologist experiments with a deaf-mute woman who is unable to scream to prove that humans die of fright due to an organism he names The Tingler that lives within each person on the spinal cord and is suppressed only when people scream when scared.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over The Tingler?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

William Castle

Written by

Robb White

Vincent Price

Vincent Price

Dr. Warren Chapin

Philip Coolidge

Philip Coolidge

Oliver 'Ollie' Higgins

Judith Evelyn

Judith Evelyn

Mrs. Martha Ryerson Higgins

Darryl Hickman

Darryl Hickman

David Morris

Pamela Lincoln

Pamela Lincoln

Lucy Stevens

Patricia Cutts

Patricia Cutts

Isabel Stevens Chapin

William Castle

William Castle

Prologue Host (uncredited)

Court is in session

Put The Tingler on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Arthouse Gremlin

“Its refusal to behave is the point.”

The strange choices create the kind of friction that follows you out of the theatre and into the argument.

The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist

“Oddness is not depth.”

A film can break every rule and still leave nothing behind but the memory of how hard it tried to be singular.