There's a “tingler” in all of us--though it only comes to life when we are frightened--and to prove the point, William Castle, the master of screen showmanship, projected The Tingler in thrilling “Percepto...the newest and most startling screen gimmick.” Percepto installed in theaters guaranteed a spine--or rather bottom--tingling experience for all. Vincent Price is Dr. William Chapin, a researcher whose experiments hint that we have nothing to fear but fear itself--fear being a deadly, lobster-like parasite, the tingler, that lives on the spinal column and can be arrested only by the natural outlet of a good, blood-curdling scream. Dr. Chapin's post-mortum on the deaf-mute owner of an all-silents movie theater confirms this notion, but not before her tingler has escaped into the theater and made a screening of Tol'able David intolerable. “The sheer effrontery of this piece of hokum is enjoyable in itself...follow(ing) Castle's usual format of laying down a persuasively horrific exposition and then, at the right moment, parodying it outrageously,” notes Monthly Film Bulletin. “Arguably Mr. Castle's masterpiece” says John Waters (in Film Comment).