Well it started with a good premise and with Vincent Price in the lead role, this had the makings of a real horror classic but sadly it degenerated into a dopey picture in the second half. That creepy-crawlie that looked like a cross between an over-sized caterpillar and a lobster was just the cheesiest concept; I wouldn't be surprised if the film makers stuffed a kid's slinky inside to get it to move around the way it did.
But you know what really blew my mind? Dr. Warren Chapin boned up on the science of fear causing tremendous tension in the body by reading a tract titled "Fright Effects Induced by Lysergic Acid LSD25"! What?!?! Vincent Price experimenting with LSD!!!! And then, in order to experience first hand what the power of the tingler would be all about, he actually injected himself to induce the kind of paranoia and fear that would result from it!
However the writing for the rest of the story seemed to be all over the place. Testing out his hypothesis regarding what would happen if a mute couldn't scream from fear, Chapin similarly injects Martha Higgins (Judith Evelyn) with the LSD causing hallucinations and a rigidity in her back that produces the aforementioned tingler creature. But what's with husband Ollie (Philip Coolidge) going Nightmare on Elm Street on her? Same thing with Chapin's wife Isabel (Patricia Cutts) - one minute he's shooting her with blanks to scare the bejeezus out of her and later on she's all cool about it.
But hey, neat special effect with the bathtub full of red blood in a black and white movie, as all the while I kept an eye on that skeleton Chapin kept in his lab. If I had to bet, I'd say it was the same one used in another Vincent Price flick made the same year - "House on Haunted Hill".
But you know what really blew my mind? Dr. Warren Chapin boned up on the science of fear causing tremendous tension in the body by reading a tract titled "Fright Effects Induced by Lysergic Acid LSD25"! What?!?! Vincent Price experimenting with LSD!!!! And then, in order to experience first hand what the power of the tingler would be all about, he actually injected himself to induce the kind of paranoia and fear that would result from it!
However the writing for the rest of the story seemed to be all over the place. Testing out his hypothesis regarding what would happen if a mute couldn't scream from fear, Chapin similarly injects Martha Higgins (Judith Evelyn) with the LSD causing hallucinations and a rigidity in her back that produces the aforementioned tingler creature. But what's with husband Ollie (Philip Coolidge) going Nightmare on Elm Street on her? Same thing with Chapin's wife Isabel (Patricia Cutts) - one minute he's shooting her with blanks to scare the bejeezus out of her and later on she's all cool about it.
But hey, neat special effect with the bathtub full of red blood in a black and white movie, as all the while I kept an eye on that skeleton Chapin kept in his lab. If I had to bet, I'd say it was the same one used in another Vincent Price flick made the same year - "House on Haunted Hill".