Death, Where Is Thy Tingler?

I've calmed down enough to tell about a recent encounter we had with "The Tingler."

While the lights dimmed before the film, I was reminded that back in 1959, as a promotional gimmick, producer-director William Castle famously equipped theatres with "Percepto," meaning he hot-wired seats to give viewers an electrical jolt during the fright sequences when the tingler is on the loose.

The cell phone vibrated in my jeans. I thought I was gonna die.

For the uninitiated, Wikipedia sums up the plot this way:

"A pathologist, Dr. Warren Chapin (played by Vincent Price), discovers that the tingling of the spine in states of extreme fear is due to the growth of a 'tingler' -- a spinal parasite which can kill the host unless it is destroyed by screaming."

At a deadly point in the movie, there's an autopsy of someone who could not scream to save herself. She had a tingler inside her body. The hideous creature was still alive and managed to cleverly escape into *our* dark auditorium 51 years later. Seemed like a stretch, but we screamed for our lives just to be safe.

Saved and finding ourselves to be survivors at the conclusion of the picture -- oh, we laughed and laughed!

I drove home and proceeded up the walk to the house. Something caught my eye, slithering towards the door....