City Screen, York, presents an appropriately late-night celebration of Vincent Price at 11pm tonight to mark what would have been the 100th birthday of the King of Horror.

The Picturehouse cinema will be showing William Castle’s cult thriller The Tingler, his 1959 exploration of the nature of horror, wherein Vincent Price plays Dr Warren Chapin, a pathologist who aims to isolate a parasite that feeds on fear but is suppressed when its host screams.

Chapin captures a specimen for study and experiments on the deaf-mute wife of a cinema-owner who shows only silent movies, but all hell breaks loose when the Tingler creature escapes into the crowded movie theatre. Famously, on the film’s original release in America, Castle wired cinema seats with electrical buzzers to give his audiences extra shock value.

Panic not, no such gadgets will be in operation at City Screen.

“Nevertheless, beware!” says marketing manager Dave Taylor. “If the Tingler were to get loose in the City Screen auditorium, anything could happen, so why not join us from 9pm for a more relaxing Stinger cocktail or two in the riverside café-bar before we get down to a feast of fear.”

Tickets for the Vincent Price: Undead night can be booked on 0871 902 5726.

• THE City Screen Kids’ Club screening of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (U) next Saturday in York will be preceded by inventor activities at 10.45am. At this workshop, you can create your own invention and have the chance to design and make your own badge to take away.

The family favourite musical, made by veteran British filmmaker Ken Hughes in 1968, will be shown at 11.15am. Adapted for the silver screen by Roald Dahl from Ian Fleming’s story, it follows the journey of eccentric inventor Caractacus Potts, his children and Truly Scrumptious, the daughter of a confectionary tycoon.

Travelling to a far-off land in the only successful invention Potts has ever created – a flying car – they end up in Vulgaria, a land where children are banned and the ruler wants to steal their car. In order to escape, they must evade the evil Child Catcher, the Baron and his wife.

Tickets cost £1 each for Kids’ Club members and their accompanying adults and £3 per person for everyone else. Kids’ Club membership for the year is £4 per child.

Bookings can be made on 0871 902 5726 or online at picturehouses.co.uk/york or in person at the Coney Street cinema.