The film tells the story of a scientist who discovers a parasite in human beings, called a "tingler", which feeds on fear.

Released in the United States on July 19, 1959, The Tingler received mixed reviews, but has since gone through some critical reevaluation and is now considered a camp cult film.

Rose, was published in August 2023 as "a contemporary reimagining that pays homage to the 1959 cinematic masterpiece by William Castle", taking place and continuing the events of the original film fifty years later; an unabridged audiobook recording of the novel was released on October 16, 2023.

Movie theater owner Oliver Higgins, who shows exclusively silent films, is an acquaintance of Dr. Chapin.

As if by supernatural forces, the door slams shut and locks itself, and the window closes, echoing what happened just before Martha was frightened to death.

I feel obligated to warn you that some of the sensations—some of the physical reactions which the actors on the screen will feel—will also be experienced, for the first time in motion picture history, by certain members of this audience.

[7]After the financial success of House on Haunted Hill, Castle moved his independent production unit from Allied Artists to Columbia to produce The Tingler.

The Tingler was Price's second and final film with Castle and the fifth performance that would ultimately brand him as "The Master of Menace".

She also received attention in another prominent "non-speaking role" as the suicidal "Miss Lonelyhearts" in Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954).

White, the story author, was partly inspired by his encounter with a centipede while living in the British Virgin Islands.

For the owners of these small theaters, it was a thankless and poorly paid job, as described in the trade journals of this period.

When Ollie describes at length the work load involved in cleaning the building, he echoes real-life complaints.

While spending so many hours in his laboratory, he has lost contact with living people, leaving her no choice but to seek human affection elsewhere.

Previously, he had offered a $1,000 life insurance policy against "Death by Fright" for Macabre (1958) and sent a skeleton flying above the audiences' heads in the auditorium in House on Haunted Hill (1959).

was a gimmick where Castle attached electrical "buzzers" to the underside of some seats in theaters where The Tingler was screened to provide "tingling" sensations during certain scenes.

[14][8] The buzzers were small surplus airplane wing deicing motors left from World War II.

[8] During the climax of the film, The Tingler was unleashed in the movie theater, while the audience watched a climactic fight scene in Tol'able David (1921).

The film stops and, in some real-life theaters, the house lights came on, a woman screamed and pretended to faint and was then taken away in a stretcher; all part of the show arranged by Castle.

[12][8] From the screen, the voice of Price mentioned the fainted lady and asked the rest of the audience to remain seated.

The image of the film went dark, all lights in the auditorium (except fire exit signs) went off, and Price's voice warned the audience, "Ladies and gentlemen, please do not panic.

Shortly after the film's release, Howard Thompson of The New York Times said, "William Castle has been serving some of the worst, dullest little horror entries ever to snake into movie houses".

[19] In his August 1959 appraisal of the picture, "Ron" of Variety disagreed with Thompson, calling it "highly entertaining" and characterizing "Percepto" as "effective, not so much because of the 'tingle' but because it 'menacingly' moves closer and closer in waves and, coupled with a whirring noise and sound-track heartbeats and screams, puts the filmgoer in the midst of the horror.

[20] Also, while Time Out London in its 2005 review regarded the screenplay as "ingeniously ludicrous",[21] Lyz Kingsley of And You Call Yourself a Scientist!

pointed out in 2006 that "no film made before or after it quite matches it for its mix of the imaginative, the creepy, the funny, and the downright weird".

[22] Classic-Horror.com that same year complimented the horror tale as well, remarking that "the acting is fine, the direction is among Castle's best, and the script is semi-brilliant for the time".

[23] Later, writing on behalf of Slant Magazine in 2009, Chuck Bowen said, "Ludicrousness aside, Tingler is still one of the more confident Castle pictures: a well paced, at times intentionally, funny parody of 1950s domestication, with every couple in the story trying to off one another for a variety of amusingly convoluted reasons.

Think Burn After Reading with dime store production values and a plastic spinal cord at its center.