8 Classic Horror Films That Hollywood Might As Well Remake

The Tingler

The Tingler is one of spectacle director William Castle’s most notorious films. A mad scientist discovers a little organism that lives on our spines and grows bigger when we’re frightened, only to shrink again after the relief of a scream. Once our crazy scientist has isolated the little fear monster and removed it from the spine, it keeps growing, scootching along the floor like a weird parasitic worm and terrorizing everyone in its path.

Castle’s film is weird to begin with, made weirder by the gimmick he used of wiring theater seats with electric wires to shock the audience at climactic moments in the film. Despite the gimmicks, the underlying premise of The Tingler is bizarrely clever. Wiring up theater seats might get you sued nowadays, but it’s not a necessary part of the movie – and in all honesty, the original film has so many problems anyways that you might as well take the basic story and do your own thing with it.