We saw the 1959 movie “The Tingler” starring Vincent Price on the Svengoolie show last Saturday. Price plays a prison pathologist, Dr. Warren Chapin, who’s trying to scientifically study a parasitic creature called the tingler (tingles up and down your spine means you’re scared right out of your mind!).
It sits on your spine and feeds on fear by clamping down on it, eventually breaking it unless you scream. Then it’ll just let go. However, if you’re mute, scared speechless, or it grabs you by the throat—you’re done. So, the tingler lives on fear, although if you express fear vocally by screaming, you escape it.
OK, so I’m going to spoil the opening scene, which shows a prisoner being dragged to the electric chair, screaming all the way until the executioner throws the switch. When Dr. Chapin does an autopsy, he finds the prisoner’s spine is cracked. He says it wasn’t caused by the electrocution, but by the tingler.
Huh? But the prisoner screamed bloody murder (murder was why he got the death penalty by the way) hardly stopping to take a breath. Shouldn’t that have weakened or killed the tingler? You can find examples of inconsistencies like this in any cheesy movie, but where’s the fun in that?
One web article says the tingler creature was modeled after the velvet worm, which looks pretty creepy. In reality, the velvet worm is harmless to humans, but is a predator of many invertebrates. Just keep telling yourself, “I’m a vertebrate.”
You can watch the full movie on the Internet Archive. The most interesting part of it for me was the use of what was called “acid,” (meaning the hallucinogen LSD) by Dr. Chapin. He wanted to experience and record the actual experience of being scared by the tingler, just to see what it’s like apparently. He mainlines himself with a fairly stiff dose of LSD although I can’t remember how much.
Incidentally, an article in JAMA notes, “Doses of 20μg/kg of body weight are known to have been taken without a lethal outcome.” (Materson BJ, Barrett-Connor E. LSD “Mainlining”: A New Hazard to Health. JAMA. 1967;200(12):1126–1127. doi:10.1001/jama.1967.03120250160025). I don’t know how much Dr. Chapin weighs.
This was about the same time as a lot of people in the U.S. were experimenting with the hallucinogen in various ways, including mainlining it. There are web references to psychiatrists using LSD recreationally (this was when it was legal). Bad trips were and still are common, although there is a growing body of clinical studies that involve using the psychedelics as adjuncts in psychotherapy. It’s not for everybody, although tinglers might have a different opinion.
Anyway, Dr. Chapin has a bad trip, gets really scared of hallucinations and screams. Web articles say that killed his tingler, but I didn’t see it flop out of his mouth.
There you have it. Another really cheesy and fun Svengoolie movie. I’m a vertebrate.
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