The Tingler (1959), worth watching?

Definitely! This is my favorite William Castle film, with everything you can expect from a "chiller-theatre" B-movie: campy dialogue and acting, a silly-yet-scary title monster, and Vincent Price at his hammy-horror-film best. He even goes on an acid trip, years before that became a cliche in Hollywood exploitation flicks. There's a creepy color sequence, and the scene in the movie theater is a classic (fun to scream along with at home, too, which I used to do when watching this as a kid). This movie also introduced me to the classic silent film Tol'able David, of which a brief clip is shown. A fun watch for Halloween.

It’s a fine movie. Honestly the idea in the theater sounded cooler and probably was really freaky at the time.

This is William Castle's magnum opus (even more so than House on Haunted Hill).

The rubber Tingler is one of the goofiest monsters in the horror genre. In the scene where it is pulled across the carpet with a string, the fibers of the rug catch its legs and make it look as if the creature is actually walking. 

I saw this in 1959 (without the wired chairs) and it really scared the popcorn out of us, especially when Judith Evelyn was confronted by a series of grisly shocks that included a sudden color insert of a tub of blood. During the sequence in which The Tingler invades a small movie theatre, the screen went dark (which also plunged us into pitch black) and Vincent Price's voice called out, "The Tingler is loose in the theatre! Scream! Scream for your lives!" three hundred kids shredded their vocal chords in one continuous roar.

Preposterous as hell, and unforgettably entertaining, it was Castle's last great kid-friendly film. His next, 13 Ghosts, was a distinct letdown. After Hitchcock released Psycho, Castle changed course, jettison the hokum for serious thrills (Homicidal, The Night Walker) and finally Rosemary's Baby (as producer).

Is is worth watching? Yes! It's worth owning.


  

Depends on the person. I hear John Spartan can't enjoy anything without a vibrating device.

Saw it for the first time earlier this evening. The special effects are hokey and it does get campy, but it's fairly enjoyable. It does have eerie moments, some nice plot twists, and a couple of surprisingly graphic scenes for a 1950s movie. That red blood scene within black and white film in particular was quite remarkable.

It's also an example of an early "body horror" movie, the kind of horror movie that David Cronenberg used to make.

Vincent Price said he used to like to visit a movie theater when it was playing one of his movies and sneak up behind audience members, "preferably two young girls" and when a scare happened he would thrust his head between them and say "wasn't that scary?"
I cant imagine being on the receiving end of that.