HELLO, I’M BUTCH: A TRIBUTE TO THEATER OF BLOOD

The most defining moment for me in what may well be Vincent Price’s signature film, THEATRE OF BLOOD, comes towards the end of the second act when Coral Browne arrives to get her hair done with a policeman in tow, since half of her Critics Circle has been gruesomely dispatched by a very irate actor named Edward Lionheart, played to perfection by Vincent Price. Coral as ‘Miss Moon” seems to have missed her appointment at first, or so says the rather gay-looking young man (Diana Rigg in drag) complete with a shaggy moustache on duty at the reception booth.

However ‘Butch” is available and it appears to be her lucky day because “Butch is very chic, does Princess Margaret’s hair, and chicks like that.” Miss Moon is persuaded, and at that moment, ascending a spiral staircase is Butch, a rather tall man with a fuzzy Afro hairdo wearing a white blouse emblazoned with very Tom of Finland male nudes. “Hello, I’m Butch. Hey, dishy-dishy hair, can’t wait to get my hands on it.”

The film is overwrought with black humor and gay humor like this.

During her appointment, Miss Moon has her hands tied as Butch remarks, “This is something new from ‘Gay Paree,’” for what will become her final hairdo. “Oh, I wish you would let me do something camp with the color, Darling, I mean, like flame with ash highlights.” Price then proceeds to fry her to oblivion while quoting the Bard’s ‘Henry IV, Part One.’

The real genius of Antony Greville-Bell’s screenplay is how seamlessly he weaves Shakespeare’s most violent moments with clever bits of homage to Vincent Price’s long career onstage and in films. For example, the first time we see Price he is made up to look like a policeman. Vincent’s very first appearance on a stage was that of a policeman in the play CHICAGO. “I won that role by being the only one around at the time in London that really knew how to chew gum.” His reputation as a gourmet cook is exploited in the sequence where he exacts his revenge on another one of the nine critics; this time it’s Robert Morley playing a flamboyantly gay reviewer, in pink suits with two poodles, both wearing bows in their hair. “This is your dish, Meredith Merridew.” Price is faux-French with a goatee. The two actors would later appear on Vincent’s televised cooking show COOKING PRICEWISE, which aired in the UK not long after this film wrapped. Morley is disgustingly done-in by revising the text of Titus Andronicus so that Queen Tamora is now a decidedly different Queen, devouring large portions of poodle pie until he chokes to death on his “babies.”

Antony Greville-Bell only wrote three screenplays (the other two being THE STRANGE VENGENCE OF ROSALIE and PERFECT FRIDAY), both quite different in design from this film, which is without question his best work. At first glance the concept for THEATRE OF BLOOD does indeed look like a cash-in on Price’s former success with THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES and its sequel, DR PHIBES RISES AGAIN, since both films deal with revenge –this time around in exceedingly spectacular ways. But these films, as directed by Robert Fuest, bear little resemblance to what would follow, since Fuest’s visual sense always came first, creating an Art Deco fantasy landscape where little if any blood is actually shed on camera. He perfected this on the hit TV series THE AVENGERS, which never duplicated any real violence or bloodshed during its long and successful run. If Robert Fuest had directed THEATRE OF BLOOD the result would have been visually stunning but it would not have had the Jacobean cruelty Douglas Hickox gave the proceedings.

One of the delights to be found in THEATRE OF BLOOD is of course the elaborate ways in which Lionheart uses Shakespeare’s text to exact his revenge. The only one of the celebrated actors not to be put to death was Jack Hawkins, who is instead made to follow Othello’s lead and strangle his wife played by the much loved Diana Dors,( one of the UK’s reigning sex symbols of the 50′s, she remained a favorite by turning to character acting with great success). There is a six degrees of separation at work here because Hawkins, who was battling throat cancer at the time of filming, had his larynx removed so it was necessary for an actor to dub his voice for film work. The actor chosen for this job was Charles Gray (widely known for his role in the ROCKY HORROR SHOW as the narrator as well as the Bond villain in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER).

Charles was also a close friend of Coral Browne, having appeared with her on stage and screen. Charles Gray was most certainly introduced to Price during the making of this film. The three of them would work together less than two years later when Gray joined Vincent and Coral for what would be their first appearance on stage together in the West End performing Jean Anouilh’s ARDELE at the Queens Theatre. This Production, while lavishly produced with these three respected actors, should have been more successful than it was, especially with the lukewarm reception Price received from the critics. It would take the life of Oscar Wilde to finally place Price back into the,spotlight of the theater world he abandoned so many years ago for Hollywood.

I had an opportunity to question Vincent Price about this film during our time together in San Francisco where he was being honored at the Palace of Fine Arts. He was staying at the Clift Hotel for the duration and invited me up to his suite for one of our many taped interviews regarding his career. A portion of this interview is available on my DVD, VINCENT PRICE: THE SINISTER IMAGE. For many years Price always cited TOMB OF LIGEIA as his personal favorite, however time can alter many a perception so that afternoon he amended that by making THEATRE OF BLOOD his most enjoyable experience in filmmaking.

“I always knew something wonderful would happen to me before I turned 65,” he said. When Price made the film in 1973 he was at a crossroads both professionally and personally as well. His contract with American International had long since soured to the point of no return; MADHOUSE had been a disaster, which was a shame since the concept of a horror version of both ALL ABOUT EVE and SUNSET BLVD. was enticing to be sure. His off-screen hostility to actor Robert Quarry could have been an asset if the powers at AIP had not rushed the production with shoddy production values, not to mention cutting the film during its editing stage until it made little sense.

“I didn’t want to do THEATRE OF BLOOD at first since I had just been offered a summer season at the Rep Theatre in Missouri. They offered me a chance to play Becket in Elliot’s MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL as well as O’Neill’s LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. This always seemed to happen to me when I had a chance to return to the real craft of acting, something to feed the soul.” Price had to decline the engagement in order to make the film. His apprehension melted away when he finally sat down and read the screenplay. “The script was absolutely brilliant with wonderful dialogue. I simply could not wait to play this character of Edward Lionheart. I mean, what actor would not jump at the chance to give back some of his own to the critics?”

The cast of THEATRE OF BLOOD was also a factor in Price’s enthusiasm for the project. Hickox had assembled the crème-de-la-creme of the British stage for extended cameos as the nine critics Edward Lionheart dispatches with the aid of the Bard’s text. Aside from Coral Browne and Robert Morley there were also Jack Hawkins, Arthur Lowe, Dennis Price, Robert Coote, Harry Andrews, and Diana Dors. Vincent’s co-star was Diana Rigg, whom Price adored from the very first meeting. “Diana is one of the best actresses in England as well as being a great deal of fun to know…She worked in drag during portions of our film, during the scene where I murder the lady that was to become my wife, Coral. Diana came on set wearing these tight trousers with a large sock stuffed in her pants. I roared with laughter, as did the crew. They loved her, as do I.”

The father/daughter chemistry between Price and Diana Rigg helps establish his character as more sinned against than sinning even in his most gruesome moments of mayhem. Her death scene towards the end, taken from Lear, is quite moving as she lies in Price’s arms reciting the lines she had played ten years before under the direction of Peter Brook with the great Paul Scofield as Lear.

Price would go on from this project with the support of his new wife to finally return to the stage where he would triumph with his magnificent one-man-show DIVERSIONS AND DELIGHTS, playing Oscar Wilde, the role his late friend Laird Cregar also played back in the forties.

Both men were under contract to 20th Century Fox at the time. Vincent did the eulogy at Cregar’s funeral and then replaced his friend in DRAGONWYCK playing the Gothic character he would later perfect in HOUSE OF USHER. Price had enjoyed a resurgence in his career after the success of these eight Corman Poe films, which firmly established him in the film world as the new master of the macabre.

It would however be the unexpected critical success of THEATER OF BLOOD some ten years later to restore his confidence as an icon Vincent remained over the moon during the duration of the filming of THEATRE OF BLOOD, for here he was, at last surrounded by his peers, all respected actors in the theater, being directed by a young and talented man, with brilliant dialogue allowing him the opportunity to speak some of Shakespeare’s most profound lines while basically being Vincent Price as well. His soliloquy from Hamlet, spoken in front of all these wonderful actors while billowing curtains fly around him as he moves outside along the railing of the high-rise offices of the Critics Circle, is a tour-de-force beautifully played by one of America’s most underrated actors. In this moment, both the personal and profession lives of Vincent Price became one, allowing his audience who had remained faithful for five decades to finally see him reach beyond the cardboard castles of Roger Corman’s Poe-scapes into a Brave New World of both Gods and monsters.

“The Oval Portraits of Vincent Price”

Vincent Price in MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH

I have always maintained that one of the more important reasons we still revere Roger Corman’s screen adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe in the 21st Century must surely rest squarely on the shoulders of Vincent Price, who created these unique screen portraits of Poe’s most famous characters in all but one of the films directed by Corman between 1960 and 1964.

The worldwide success of THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN in 1957 and then HORROR OF DRACULA in 1958 firmly established the market for literary adaptations of classic tales of terror. This fact was not lost on Samuel Z. Arkoff and his partner James H. Nicholson who were at the time the undisputed kings of the drive-in, zeroing exclusively on the lucrative teenage audience that flocked to see their monsterific double features during the late fifties and sixties. In calling their company American International Pictures or as it was better known among the fans AIP, Arkoff and Nicholson seemed more than the right choice to take the American literary genius Edgar Allan Poe and recycle his works for the consumption of the more than receptive teenager of the 60′s – the baby boomers. The circumstances of how and why this came about are now part of the urban legend that is AIP.

It is my belief that casting Vincent Price in the HOUSE OF USHER and then following that with PIT AND THE PENDULUM cemented Price as the new King of the Horror film, replacing Boris Karloff as the new master of the macabre. The mantle could have come much sooner, in fact right after another “House” film – the ultra 3-D sensation HOUSE OF WAX and yet it did not. so we now arrive at the year1958 when Price also took a gamble on a then-unknown producer named William Castle, making what else…another “House” picture this time the tongue-in-cheek HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL. This film made Vincent Price a very rich man and still the crown of horror king was just out of reach, however his audience was beginning to identify him as a villain to relish with his unique brand of sinister performances enhanced by years of stage work, giving him style and polish. By the time Roger Corman came along with an offer to take a chance on a dream, Vincent Price was posed for greatness. His intuition to play Usher without facial hair, and with his face and hair bleached white, became a tour de force not seen in the cinema since the days of Conrad Veidt…an idol of Price’s…

Corman told me on several occasions that Vincent Price was his first and only choice to play Roderick Usher. The role established Price as the on screen voice of Edgar Allan Poe for a generation. I was one of those lucky 11-yr-olds who stood in line for that first matinee to see THE HOUSE OF USHER at the Pix theater in Hollywood during the summer of 1960. Not since 1939 had so many great films come out in the same year, not the least of which was Hitchcock’s PSYCHO. The impact of seeing Price for the first time as Roderick Usher, speaking in hushed tones, inspired one critic to refer to him as “decayed plush.”

David Interviews Vincent at Home, 1988

Many years later Vincent allowed me to tape one of his only on-camera interviews regarding his reputation as a “horror star.” The result is the now out of print DVD, “VINCENT PRICE THE SINISTER IMAGE”. During the taping I told him of my plans to do a book someday regarding his work with Roger Corman. As those who knew him well will tell you, his generosity was boundless when it came to the press, and especially to those he came to trust regarding his legacy. Vincent and I would sit down on six separate occasions to tape interviews regarding his career in films.

It is the result of one of those tapings that I am about to share with you now. These are what I like to call, out of deference to the Divine Edgar, the “Oval portraits” of Vincent Price’s Poe period. I asked him to comment on all seven films, which he did with pleasure. He generously commemorated the moment by autographing a still of himself from each film when we were through taping. I brought dozens of photos with me at the time to jog his memory. He enjoyed doing all this with that wicked sense of humor very much intact. So it is in honor of the one-hundredth anniversary of Vincent Price’s birth that we present for the first time his personal observations on his work with Roger Corman.

HOUSE OF USHER

“This film was a gamble for all of us and yet I was prepared to take a gamble because I believed in the works of Edgar Allan Poe. I felt audiences would enjoy seeing them on the screen. When I first read {Richard} Matheson’s screenplay I was a bit taken aback by the altering of relationships from Poe to what became the film HOUSE OF USHER. However, I have been down this road before with another film based on another American master, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES {1940} which I did over at Universal with a wonderful actress, Margaret Lindsey. In the novel they were brother and sister, in the film they were lovers… In both cases the spirit of Hawthorne was retained and I still feel Matheson did much the same thing when he decided to make Madeline Usher cataleptic, as well as in love with the young man who came to take her away. In Poe’s tale the man is his good friend who arrives at the House of Usher in time to witness its collapse, and has no romantic interest in the sister at all.

“The young actress who plays my sister, Myrna Fahey, was very good I thought…it was also very ironic that both she and Mark Damon looked like brother and sister. Their coloring and hair seemed to match in a truly uncanny way. Mark was prettier, of course, and I told him so every chance I got…. {laughs}

HOUSE OF USHER

“I prepared for the character of Roderick Usher by going on a crash diet before we actually started filming, the result was astonishing as I looked in the mirror I saw an albino version of Nicolas Van Ryn. I watch DRAGONWYCK on television no too long ago… I was struck by the similarities in the two characters. That was really no surprise, since Anya Seaton had placed references there in her novel in the first place. Our screenwriter Matheson is a great film buff and must have seen the film–it was obviously a reference he had in mind when he began to put the screenplay together. Roger had pitched the project to AIP as the house being the monster and it really is, especially when you see the matte work for the house itself and that coupled with Les Baxter’s music just invests the house as a living breathing entity of pure evil…looking back, Usher might be the best of all the Poe films we did, although I still think very highly of TOMB OF LIGIEA with those marvelous ruins to work with–as an actor, simply wonderful.”

PIT AND THE PENDULUM

David Del Vallel intro: As with USHER this film made a lasting impression on me as child of 11, I saw this one at the Fox theater in Sacramento. The theater itself was one of the last remaining movie palaces of the day, large and ornate in design. They placed a giant pendulum over the marqee that rolated back and forth much like it did in the film. The dual role played by Price in this film forever cemented his image as the on-screen voice of Poe for my entire generation. This one broke boxoffice records everywhere it played in 1961.

“PIT AND THE PENDULUM was a much bigger production and far more attention was paid to it in the press. I remember countless set visits from every trade paper in Hollywood and a few New York ones as well. The set and costumes were more elaborate than USHER and for once we had a pretty good cast. The young woman playing my wife was especially effective as she had this amazing face and presence that was tailor-made for this type of film. We got on almost at once. Barbara Steele was her name, although we didn’t get to know each other well; we certainly had fun making this one film together. I remember that she was rather shy and dear. She arrived on her first day barefoot…the opposite of what one would expect an Ingénue to be. She was without pretense and head over heels in love with Italy at the time.

PIT AND THE PENDULUM

“Roger had this one mapped out to perfection as far as what he was going to do with his camera and we rehearsed with the little time we had, knowing full well what was basically expected of us on the floor. Marge Corso found a beautiful dress for my wife while I wore the most uncomfortable collar since the one I had to wear over at Warner Bros years before when I was playing Sir Walter Raleigh with Bette Davis. I loved the cowl that I had to don when I was playing the evil father…that outfit is how I am remembered whenever the Poe films are brought up. I took a lot of flack for that performance with some members of the press at the time of the film’s release and even later on. It was of course my choice to go out like that, I imagine it was to be expected. Roger and I had discussed this at length and since my performance in USHER had been so mannered and fragile, I really needed to try something just the opposite in the next one. The screenplay was filled with all these grand gestures and florid dialogue…it seemed everyone was expecting this kind of performance from me…I simply let go whenever I could, hoping I was in the moment as it were.

“It was not lost on me that our writer, Richard Matheson, had done his homework, at least regarding my career. I now believe he saw LAURA in the fact that you believe my wife is dead only to have her return, and not from the dead mind you… The paintings and the harpsichord are right out of DRAGONWYCK, as is my character’s name – Nicolas. He {Matheson} did tell me during filming that he enjoyed HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, although there was none of that tongue-in-cheek humor present in his scripts during our films together.

“As I told you before regarding casting in the other two films, the real disappointment for me was trying to do period costume pictures with young actors who were simply too modern in their approach to really make these things work. The actress playing my sister {Luana Anders} was far too young in the first place and totally wrong for period films. She is a fine actress—but not in this type of film. I would say the same thing about Jack Nicholson and we all know how his career went! Once, during another interview, I was asked why it was so difficult to make pictures in this genre. I always remember something Boris Karloff used to say about being typed in horror films as he was…he said “I am grateful for the Frankenstein monster since he gave me what success I have achieved in this business, and I make the unbelievable believable. Bogart could not do what I do and neither could Gable.” I am in the same situation, you see. Jack Nicholson cannot do what I do and neither can Robert Redford, so we are all typed as to our different ways of speaking, and especially our looks.”

TALES OF TERROR

David Del Valle intro: This was an experiment on Roger Corman’s part to adapt three of Poe’s tales in one film. The result was uneven, yet it marked the beginning of a fascinating on-screen partnership with Peter Lorre that would last until Lorre’s untimely death in 1964. The wine-tasting scene is a classic moment in the cycle. My dear friend Joyce Jameson shines like a diamond in this one and her reward was to appear with Lorre again in COMEDY OF TERRORS this time with Peter as her lover!

The Morella Segmant - TALES OF TERROR

MORELLA…tale number one

“When Roger and I started to work on TALES I had already suggested earlier that we might try and include “The Tell Tale Heart” since it was the best known of Poe’s short stories and second only to “The Raven” in popularity. Roger felt it was much too violent for the screen and was usually done as a spoken word piece. Peter Lorre used to do it on the radio to great effect. All that remained of that idea, as it turned out, was the beating heart at the film’s beginning, which was a nice touch in the spirit of Poe shall we say {Laughter} I really worked on the character of Locke. Much like Usher he was trapped in his own torment and remained housebound in much the same manner. Marge Corso found me a marvelous robe with a pattern very much in the manner of Aubrey Beardsley. Marge was one of the shining stars of our little ensemble, along with Danny Haller and Floyd Crosby. They really created the atmosphere from which I was allowed to make these characters breathe. With USHER I was bleached white as a man who never saw daylight, so was Locke… I was inspired by the illustrations of Harry Clarke, a wonderful Irish artist who died much too soon and created some of the most stunning stained glass windows I have ever seen. A fan of mine sent me a book after USHER came out and it turned out to be the complete works of Poe all illustrated by Harry Clarke, who worked in both mediums. I was struck by the long shallow faces of the men he drew and I tried to make that the foundation for my character, with a long sullen face blacked out around the eyes just Harry Clarke envisioned them. Danny Haller’s sets were simply magnificent. He told me at the time that the dining room where the wedding party was to have taken place made him think of Miss Havershim in the David Lean film {GREAT EXPECTATIONS} which I also admired so much. We had a laugh at this point since this was our third film and those tarantulas were really worked into overdrive. One of the crew mentioned that we really should show more spiders, since tarantulas do not spin webs {laughs} The script was well done. Although not much of Poe survived, we did remain true to his spirit. The real problems with this particular piece was in the casting of the two ingénues. Now I had actually met Maggie Pierce. I think after USHER came out, as she was dating Mark Damon at the time. Maggie was very attractive but simply was not trained to act. Unfortunately we needed a proper actress in this role as the script was written for the two characters and the daughter needed to be strong. I complained to Roger but it was hopeless. The other woman who played my late wife had less to do, not to mention she was a stunning-looking woman and very funny. The make-up man put long vampire nails on her, turning her into his concept of a ghoul…which made us both burst out laughing. I really liked her as a person but again the role required someone like the girl we had in PIT {Barbara Steele} The segment simply could not hold up without solid performances from all of us, so the life just went out of it.”

THE BLACK CAT {tale number two}

“Peter Lorre was very depressed by the time we made TALES OF TERROR and there was very little I could do to make it otherwise. He had long ago abandoned any kind of respect for acting in films–it just paid the bills. I deliberately played Fortunato as the fop of fops because I knew it would bring out the devil in Peter. And it did. Our wine tasting scene is one of the most popular moments either one of us ever did in films, and this man worked for Fritz Lang, as I did, but years later and under less than stellar circumstances. Roger pretty much let us alone, so the kudos should go to us. Peter perked up when the professional wine taster turned up to train us in the art of wine tasting. We were both drunk by noon and having a ball. It was during this moment that Peter came up with his business of saying “it’s very good” that was an ad lib the way he did it. Personally I like to follow a script but with Peter you have to just go with the flow or lose some simply brilliant improv, as he was a master of the double take and a scene stealer of legendary proportions.”

The Black Cat segment - TALES OF TERROR

THE CASE OF M VALDEMAR

“Valdemar was an intriguing concept and at least here we had one of Poe’s most famous tales to adapt, one I believe was never filmed until ours. The most wonderful aspect of doing this one was working with Basil {Rathbone} again after many, many years. When I was first starting out in Hollywood Basil was one of my idols. His reputation on Broadway was unsurpassed. Basil was a great star on the stage and later on the screen. For this film Basil gave a grand performance in it, really evil as only he could be, I brought up his performance in David Copperfield during what little rehearsal time we had and I think he tried a little of that stony resolve that had become his stock and trade as an actor. I think he steals the scenes he is in. We had a coach on this one, as well a doctor, who was brought on set and taught Basil the art of mesmerizing me …Basil was truly one of a kind.

“One thing I do remember about this film was the make-up as Valdemar begins to rot and literally melt away. Poe wrote some very specific prose describing just how Mr. Valdemar makes his untimely exit and we did our utmost to film it that way. The process involved covering my face with this substance that was very hot so I could only wear it for a short time. I just could not stand it more than a few minutes at a time.

“I am always given photos of myself in that make-up by the fans to autograph. The ones with Debbie Paget recoiling from me are hysterical because we just could not stop laughing at the sight of me with what looked like caramel oozing off my face…it was really too much.”

THE RAVEN

David Del Valle intro: I will always remember being somewhat taken aback the first time I saw this one as audiences had no idea this was a comedy until Vincent kept bumping his head on a telescope. By the time Peter Lorre arrives, as a voice-over on a live Raven, we are very much aware that this was as far from Edgar Allan Poe as AIP dared to get without placing the series at a beach party. Boris Karloff joined the cast, and then signed contracts for more films at AIP for the remainder of his life.

“THE RAVEN was a highpoint in making these films because it brought all of us together in one film. Boris was one of the most joyful men I ever knew and lived each day to the fullest. I began my career in films with him and was there at the end of his as well. We did a Red Skelton TV show the last year of his life and he was by then in a wheelchair. During rehearsal he sensed the pity from the crew at seeing him this way, so once we were about to do the show live he stood up and walked on to the stage to do his song, and believe me there was not a dry eye in the place. That man was universally loved, especially by me. Boris was in better shape when we did THE RAVEN, walking about even with arthritis, yet he was always a total professional, as we all were on that film.

THE RAVEN

“I remember LOOK magazine sent a reporter out to cover the film and he was planning to make fun of us. After two days on that set he was so impressed with our attitude and humor that he remained for the whole shoot and returned to New York a fan. You cannot make this type of film without a sense of respect, not just for the genre and its fans, but for yourself as an actor. Even Peter Lorre was a professional, he just got away with murder because he was so dammed funny and dear.

“Hazel Court is a close personal friend, as is her husband Don {Taylor} She knows how to do this type of film and has a range that is still untapped by directors, I think she was such a good sport on THE RAVEN since Peter loved his practical jokes and she was usually the object of most of them. I remember watching from the sidelines as she and Boris did their final scene together and it just broke me up to watch Boris stare unto her more than ample cleavage as she did her lines unaware…it was bliss…

“The film was of course a comedy, and we went with that, as it did not start out that way. I think the fact Peter and I had this chemistry, and our previous film for Roger was comic as well. It just seemed to the producers why mess with a good thing, and so we were expected to let history repeat itself. I think it did to a certain extent, although it was different to work with both of them at the same time. As Boris and Peter were like oil and water as actors…very different approach to their craft. By the time Peter and I did these Poe films he had simply given up trying to be a proper actor and just did Peter Lorre for the camera, and believe me nobody could do it better. And yet, he was disenchanted with Hollywood and his career by that point. It was a bit like Orson Welles really gaining all that weight and then lampooning what it was that made you famous in the first place. It is a real tragedy to observe, especially in someone you admire, since you are painfully aware of what they could be doing with that talent, yet they choose to throw it away. I have seen this happen over and over in this business.”

THE HAUNTED PALACE

David Del Valle intro: This film will always be remembered historically as the first adaptation of H.P.Lovecraft for the screen, and it remains one of the best. The thrilling score by Ronald Stein set the mood for one of Price’s best performances in the dual role of Charles Dexter Ward as well as his evil ancestor Joseph Curwin. Price achieved this effect with very little in the way of make-up, using mainly his voice and eye movement to denote which character was in control. Lon Chaney Jr adds so much in a small but effective role as a fellow warlock who remains painted green throughout the film.

THE HAUNTED PALACE (Price as Charles Dexter Ward)

“At the time we were making it, I know Roger felt we were starting to exhaust the catalogue of Edgar Allan Poe stories available to us. I had always admired the short stories of H P. Lovecraft and even included a few in the horror anthologies I used to put together over the years. I know Boris {Karloff} admired them enough to do the same thing when he was asked to put together his collections of terror tales, as he always liked to refer to them. You know Boris was originally to have been in the film but he had a conflict so we were lucky to persuade Lon Chaney Jr. to do it. Chaney proved to be a pro in every sense of the word. I had known Lon for years, yet on that film he was not well and kept to himself quite a bit of the time. I did what I could to bring him out of his depression but it proved hopeless in the end. We had Elisha Cook on that film as well and he had known Lon from the old days when they were both contract players, yet he could not bring him around either. Lon did, however like to cook, as I do, and loved to make his own style of chili, so we did have one or two bright moments watching him make his specialty – which by the way smelled to the high heavens, as he liked it to be as pungent I must tell you. I liked him enormously, a talented actor perhaps at odds with that giant shadow his father cast over his life who was indeed a true genius in our profession…very sad he could not overcome this obstacle emotionally.

“I adored Debbie Paget. She was such a beautiful creature. You have no idea what a great beauty she was at that time…somewhat like Gene Tierney, in that the camera was in love with her. She really should have been an enormous star because that girl could act. We were in the DeMille film {THE TEN COMMANMENTS} although I did not get to know her well at the time. But all the men were simply in love with her and why not? What’s not to love?

“We had a ball making THE HAUNTED PALACE and Roger got very cross with us for breaking up so often. We had a couple of scenes in this giant four-poster bed and every time she got under the covers I would goose her causing her to laugh, as she was insanely ticklish. I really could not resist doing this to her — very wicked of me. This became her last film, you know, She actually did her last two films with me and then left the film business forever marrying Mr. [Louis} Chun King, the successful oil mogul. {King and Paget divorced in 1980}

“Roger had some great people, not to mention talented writers, on these films. Danny Haller was amazing with his designs and with what he did for so little money revamping existing sets on a soundstage…remarkable. Marge Corso made wonderful costumes–even my wife Mary admired her craftsmanship. Our cameraman, Floyd Crosby, was a genius. From day one on USHER he always set the tone, especially with the way that camera moved with each individual set up. Any success we with the Poe films was because of the them.

THE HAUNTED PALACE (Price as Joseph Curwen)

“I really enjoy the acting process; you know — leaving yourself in the make-up chair, and then stepping into these fantasy roles. In playing the warlock {Joseph Curwen} I had some real help from our make-up man, Ted Coodley, who created a green skin tone which also hardened my face a bit especially around the eyes and mouth. This allowed me to develop the character as Curwen, who was ruthless and cruel. I certainly got into character while wearing such a ghoulish make-up. Poor Lon Chaney had to stay in that make-up throughout the filming. I remember the young woman {Cathie Merchant} who played my mistress in the film causing me no end of amusement. She had this great buxom figure to begin with, but the wardrobe heightened her already ample cleavage giving her more room than the Rocky Mountains, and every time that I would glance in her direction my eyes would head down that mountain along with my concentration. She proved to be a great sport. I kidded her once as she remarked that she had no dialogue so I told her with what she had going for her there was very little that needed to be said, which made her laugh. I will always remember these films with great pleasure, even though they were hard work, we all had such a good time making them.”

MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH

David Del Valle intro: We owe a debt of gratitude to Charles
Beaumont for coming up with the concept of Price as a Devil worshipper
in his first draft of MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH. Vincent shines as the evil Prince Prospero whose faith is shaken by a peasant girl whose beliefs rival his. Hazel Court is stunning as his consort whose own pact with the devil creates a fantastic moment in the film due in part to the camerawork of Nicolas Roeg.

My transcript for this film was unavailable for this article yet it will appear in my forthcoming book on the Corman/Poe cycle “SEE TO THE CRYPT” due out in early 2012.

MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (note the goatee on the statues drawn by price)

TOMB OF LIGEIA

David Del Valle intro: Vincent always said this was his personal favorite in the cycle…filming it out of doors gave a breath of freshness to the proceedings. Yet it proved too late in the game for Corman to film another one, ending one of the most successful cycles of Horror films since the golden days of Universal studios. Eliizabeth Shepherd became a close personal friend later on in my life and we had a moment late one evening when she came to see me, allowing me to come to my front door dressed in a black dressing gown. When I opened the door I got to say Vincent’s line to her as Verden Fell would have done: “Never,Never come here unannounced!!” she was taken aback to say the least.

TOMB OF LIGEIA

“This film was a shared passion between Roger and me. Early on we had fantasized about shooting one of the Poe films in a ruin, an actual location for a change of pace. He found the perfect location in Norfolk, and it was everything I had hoped it would be. I enjoyed making these pictures with Roger because he had a real understanding of the material and was an absolute genius at getting the most out of his actors and crew. In this particular film we were fortunate to find a real actress to play both Ligeia and the Lady Rowena, Her name is Elizabeth Shepherd, a classic English beauty but more importantly a very fine actress with a solid background in theater, which is something that I can appreciate so well. In Hollywood there is a stigma against theater by film actors because they don’t really understand that it is all part of the same craft. However I do understand the difference in learning a part for the stage as opposed to doing a film, acting out of continuity in bits and pieces with long breaks between. The concept of creating a part and acting it on your own in front of a live audience can scare an actor to death, and yet it can also take that same actor to paradise if the magic is there for you, and then nothing can take the place of that applause.

“The Poe films we did in Hollywood were small casts, and sadly the younger actresses were just not up to it. Of course I am not referring to our friend Hazel or your pal Barbara, both of whom we know did beautiful work in those films. I still remember what a performance Elizabeth gave during the scene where I mesmerize her in front of the fire. In rehearsal she was as always spot on so when we came to shooting that sequence she did the whole thing in one take, playing both personalities. She was absolutely wonderful to work along side. Now our Elizabeth was saddled in the film with a dual role, and if I could show you my shooting script you would see a riot of notes as to who was playing who at any given point. We could not keep track.

“Now of course script confusion is one thing, but almost catching fire is another. Roger had this notion to simply burn the set at the conclusion of LIGEIA, and even through I have been through many on-camera fires in my career, and most of them with Roger {laughs} Elisabeth and I barely escaped with our lives in that one. Not to mention that poor black cat. We went though at least a dozen cats before it was over. The poor thing would just disappear never to return, so the animal wrangler we had would have to locate another one.

TOMB OF LIGEIA (with top hat)

“As far as LIGEIA being the last Poe film with Roger, well I could see it coming even after we did THE RED DEATH. Roger was still young enough to want to do more and was getting offers left and right. It was for him the right thing to do, of course, and he certainly deserves his success. I felt remorseful at the time when we came to the last one since no one could do these films quite like Roger. I did a few more after LIGEIA…all of them in England as a matter of fact. I found myself regretting making more than a few of them to be sure. Even the English locations cannot prevail against bad scripts. By the last days of filming LIGEIA the light was about to leave the tower signaling the end of one period and the beginning of another for us both. I shall always consider the films I made with Roger to be among the highlights of my career in film.”

Vincent Price 1911-2011….shall be lifted nevermore…..POE.

It was like stepping into a time machine…only better.

The Film Forum on Houston Street in Manhattan was presenting a William Castle retrospective from August 27th through September 6th. All of the showman’s famous gimmick films were in the lineup, as well as some of his earlier, noirish work and 3D films.

I started off by catching two of his three “Whistler” films from the mid 40s. All three starred Richard Dix, however in different roles. The ‘Whistler’ of the title was not Dix, but a shadowy figure that set us up for the ill-fated stories to come, appearing again midway through the film to keep us on track. This unidentified phantom got his moniker by whistling some melody that was too abstract ever to have become popular with viewers.

Even with the Whistler’s dire warnings about the forlorn trajectories of the films’ protagonists, I wasn’t prepared for how downbeat MYSTERIOUS INTRUDER would end up. Pretty wild. To quote the Forum catalogue “Crooked private eye Richard Dix, hired to find the mysterious ‘Elora’ to receive a mysterious bequest, hires a fake one to grab it for himself and then the double crosses and murders start coming.” That barely hints at the darkly nuanced touches, but it was mostly the ‘B’s in those days that were allowed to get away with such unrepentantly villainous protagonists, as well as the sort of bleak finale the film delivers.

MACABRE was a motion picture I had missed in 1958. The first of Castle’s ‘gimmick’ films, patrons were refused entrée to the theater unless they filled out an insurance policy with Lloyds of London for ten grand in case they croaked of heart failure during the screening. Sure enough, the policy was still in force at the Forum, fifty-two years later, only the payoff had been updated to a million dollars for this playdate. The print was splicey, making the convoluted narrative even more difficult to follow, but it was a deliciously noir-ish little exercise nonetheless. Very satisfying for me, after all these years, to finally catch up with it.

13 GHOSTS (1960), in Illusion-O, beckoned you to put on the red-blue 3D glasses when a title appeared on the bottom of the screen, and if you weren’t up to witnessing the dreaded thirteen spectres, you could look through the left lens and see nothing but the set. However, using the right (red) eye filter, you were privy to a lion chewing on the neck of a tamer who’d lost his head in the cat’s jaws long ago, an ax-wielder striking anew, etc. The effect was cheesy in the extreme, but the Forum audience was primed for it. They laughed and had a great time. The lead actor, Donald Woods – a cross between Dana Andrews and Hugh Marlowe – was just the right milquetoast casting choice for the father who endures the manifestations in bewilderment. And it was wonderful to see Margaret Hamilton in the ‘in’ role of the witchy housekeeper who the hapless family inherits along with the haunted mansion. I particularly liked the Ouija Board sequence, when the clueless family members keep ratcheting the stakes higher with each absurd question (“Will one of us be killed?”). The print was excellent, and the glasses were dutifully passed out to each and every patron – unlike in the DVD collection release where, if you start having heart palpitations, you don’t have a choice concerning the ghosts.

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959) came with ‘Emergo’ – the living manifestation of a skeleton floating over the heads of the delighted audience. Vincent Price is the master of ceremonies in this Ten Little Indians tale, nicely shot, with a solid scare or two.

MR. SARDONICUS (1961), my favorite Castle film, found the ushers handing out ‘Punishment Poll’ cards, to be held up near the film’s conclusion, either with the imprinted thumb up, or down. Castle then appears on screen and counts the votes from his vantage point, and of course Sardonicus is to be punished for all the atrocities he’s committed. According to Castle, at the studio’s insistence, a happy ending was filmed, just in case, but never used. However, scavenger hunts in the Columbia vaults have produced no trace of the alternate ending.

Which brings us to THE TINGLER (1959). Back then, fourteen years old and very into horror films, only I – in the rural town of Harrison, NY – knew about the two rows of seats that had been wired to deliver electric shocks at the critical moment when the Tingler would escape from the screen into the audience. I had a crush on a local girl named Linda Elin, and I brought her to the theater, keeping her in the dark about what was to come. Nothing like a good electric shock, I figured, to have her jump into my lap.

An ancient ticket-taker was standing at the entrance to the lobby as we arrived, and I surreptitiously whispered to him, “Where are the ‘tingle’ seats?” He looked confused. “Where are the tingle seats” I repeated. Then he seemed to understand, and led us…to the bathrooms! How mortifying.

I never did get anywhere with Linda.

The Film Forum did not wire up the theater seats for the show I attended, yet they managed to out-do Castle nonetheless. When Vincent Price drops acid – a hilarious scene all on its own – suddenly a swirling, hallucinatory color mélange was superimposed on Price’s terrified face. When he stared in horror at the skeleton in his office, the HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL skeleton was yanked out over the audience for an unexpected encore. And when the Tingler escaped into the theater…suddenly a man stood up three rows in front of me, grasping a Tingler to his throat, choking and screaming, while ushers shined a flashlight on him and carried him up the aisle. During each of these delightful intrusions into our placid theater-going experience, the packed house roared with laughter and screamed their heads off. It was like ROCKY HORROR SHOW for adults. I’ve had my occasional problem with Film Forum audiences not being generous with older films, laughing too easily and breaking the spell. But we were all in synch that night. With me was Mark Talling, FIR reviewer, and he had a terrific time. A few days later, FIR’s webmaster Oren Shai caught the flick, and this time there were scattered electroshocks going off under select seats.

Credit for the series, and for the lengths to which the staff went to give us an ultimate viewing experience, goes to Film Forum Programmer Bruce Goldstein. I can’t say enough about how much fun, and what an event, the Castle retrospective was for everyone, and for me. My two favorite movie-going memories this year took place at the Film Forum. This was one, and the other was their screening of NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH, with Producer Richard Gordon and actor Richard Nielson in attendance.

DRAGONWYCK: THE GENESIS OF RODERICK USHER

Vincent Price is remembered as more of an icon of the Horror genre than ever in his lifetime. One of the reasons for this rests firmly with the seven films he created with director Roger Corman. When Tim Burton put together his very first film project it was of course called VINCENT, where he furthered the Price mythology by making Price and Edgar Allan Poe the same voice for a generation raised on these films.

All of this began long before Vincent Price ever met Roger Corman or Richard Matheson in 1960. It began while the actor was under contract to 20th Century Fox where he learned that Ernest Lubtisch was to direct a film from the novel DRAGONWYCK.

This film, and Price’s performance, would solidify the persona that Price would take to his grave. The following is an essay from the forthcoming book Prof Samuel Umland and I are working on for Tomahawk Press entitled BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE: The Poe films of Roger Corman.

In 1946 20th Century Fox would produce a film that would resonate well into the next two decades due entirely to the presence of an actor who had never held a film together before this one. The film in question is DRAGONWYCK, and the actor was Vincent Price. At the time I am quite sure that studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck assumed the film was a Gene Tierney vehicle since the actress was a top Fox star at the time, not to mention stunning to look at and compelling when given the right material. What Zanuck was oblivious to was the degree that Vincent Price would dominate the film and how much the character of Nicolas Van Ryn would ultimately affect all the genre roles that would follow, making Vincent Price the heir apparent to Boris Karloff by 1960.

DRAGONWYCK was supposed to be directed by the stylish Ernst Lubitsch, who had Gregory Peck in mind for the role of Nicolas Van Ryn. Ironically both Price and Peck had already worked together at Fox in THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM two years before, and were quite different in their approach to acting. Lubitsch fell ill during preproduction and the film was given to a producer and screenwriter who had yet to direct a film – Joseph L Mankiewicz.

Vincent Price and Gene Tierney had already made three films together when they were cast in DRAGONWCYK and adored each other as actors. Price recalled “Gene was so stunning to behold in the flesh, with those gorgeous blue eyes of hers, I used to kid her that if all the men in America could see her as I did they would fall hopelessly in love with her. While we were filming DRAGONWYCK her marriage to Oleg Cassini was beginning to come apart. We had a visitor onset who caught Gene’s eye almost at once, a handsome young politician named John F. Kennedy, and this chemistry soon made it apparent to me that a romance was about to begin, which it did.”

The replacement of directors while filming was a situation particularly familiar to both of them. It had already happened while they were filming LAURA. In that film they had shot half of the picture with Rouben Mamoulian directing when Zanuck pulled the film away from Mamoulian for creating a gay subtext out of the relationship between Dana Andrews and Clifton Webb. Otto Preminger took over, reshooting some of the offending material, yet nothing Otto could do really hid the fact that Waldo Leydecker was a homosexual, infatuated with the glamour of LAURA rather than the romance between a man and a woman in the conventional sense.

Zanuck was a well known homophobe in Hollywood and made it known that he did not want homosexuals like Clifton Webb and Laird Cregar working on the Fox lot. He was, however, made to see the light: while he may not have liked it, these actors and quite a few more gay men in every dept at Fox made money for the studio and were far too talented to let sexual preference stand in the way. Nevertheless, Mamoulian was replaced by Preminger, who really understood the perversity of these self-serving characters and wound up making a classic in the process.

We will never know what kind of a film Lubitsch would have made out of DRAGONWYCK’s Gothic romance. What we now had with Mankiewicz in the director’s chair was a brilliant screenwriter who knew next to nothing about directing films but was blessed with a first rate cameraman in Arthur C. Miller. Price would work with Miller a total of four times in his career, the first time in SONG OF BERNADETTE, followed by KEYS TO THE KINGDOM produced by Mankiewicz, then A ROYAL SCANDAL starring Price’s friend Tallulah Bankhead with the original director of DRAGONWYCK, Ernst Lubitsch. This production would be taken over as well by Otto Preminger as Lubitsch’s health began to fail.

I asked Price about working with a first time director in an interview done in the actor’s home in 1985. “Joe was a superb writer as well as being a top producer in Hollywood. I remember how much I wanted to play this character Van Ryn and I must tell you I had my work cut out for me convincing Joe. He had me typed as the somewhat portly priest character I played in KEYS TO THE KINGDOM, so I went on a crash diet, slimming down considerably so that, by the time I auditioned for Joe, I was Nicolas Van Ryn at least in appearance. I knew I could play this part because it was very similar to the character Jack Manningham that I had played on Broadway in ANGEL STREET. That role was really the genesis of what I like to call my Aristotelian villains, and from that day forward I used it whenever I was called upon to play a villain like Nicolas Van Ryn, or Roderick Usher for that matter.”

Vincent could not have realized at the time of filming DRAGONWYCK how much of his later career would depend on the works of Poe, yet he understood the connection between Nicolas Van Ryn and Poe almost at once by reading the preface to Anya Seaton’s book which contained Poe’s poem ‘Alone’. This unlocked the secret to Van Ryn’s philosophy and especially his sense of “that demon in my view” that Poe refers to about his own inner turmoil as a writer. “When I began to create the character of Jack Manningham, who was a psychotic personality if ever there was one, I read Kraft Ebbing’s PSCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS, which was of great help for me as an actor in attempting to understand this kind of behavior. I read Seaton’s book cover to cover to try and discover what made Van Ryn such an egotist and found the basis for my characterization in Poe’s magnificent poem which I believe to be one of his best. In the book, Nicolas takes Miranda to New York where they actually meet Edgar Allan Poe. It is a shame that in adapting a novel like DRAGONWCYK to film, so much must be sacrificed. We also lost my real death scene as well. In the book I drown saving Miranda from doing the same during a boat race on the Hudson river, which redeems Nicolas as a man whose principals were always above the pack, yet the evil that resided in him was also measured in the good that was beneath the surface.”

It is interesting now to compare just how similar the great house in DRAGONWYCK is to the HOUSE OF USHER, both being haunted by ancestral misdeeds. One might even consider DRAGONWYCK to be the unofficial prequel to USHER. There is a moment in Corman’s film where Roderick Usher surveys the landscape around the house of Usher from his terrace, lamenting the decay and especially the family heritage which will die out with him. Seeing Price slimmed down once again to play Usher, he resembles what Nicolas Van Ryn might have become if he had remained locked in his tower chamber at Dragonwyck, watching the outside world drift away as the house around him decayed into the void.

Anya Seaton’s novel of DRAGONWYCK, like most of her work, is well researched and vivid in its depiction of the Dutch influence that dominated New York in the 1840’s, where a family like the Van Ryn’s could live like feudal lords of the 19th century, creating the role of “patroon” to allow men to farm land they could never own. In the film, Mankiewicz makes a point of depicting the ludicrous attempt by Van Ryn and his followers to recreate the culture of the European court life on the Hudson River, as if America was somewhere else out of reach.

The influences that hover over Seaton’s novel don’t end with Poe; the character of Nicolas Van Ryn owes something to the legend of Bluebeard, with its forbidden tower room and dead wives. Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca is almost a role model for Gene Tierney’s character of Miranda, although Max De Winter Van Ryn is decidedly not. I remarked to Price that this must have been the beginning of what I referred to as Vincent’s “late wife films.” This made him laugh. ” Absolutely, it was when I realize that my wife in the film is a bit too fond of food and drink as a result of my lack of interest in her altogether, I decide to help matters along by poisoning her with Oleander leaves ground into her desserts. After that, if my wife wasn’t dead by reel two, then she certainly was by the end of the film.”

DRAGONWYCK is by turns a bit of Poe and Tocqueville with a soupsan of Perrault’s COUTES added to the mix. The film as seen today is a tour de force for Vincent Price, which was not the intention of the studio or the director. I asked Price about this situation during one of our interviews in 1985. “Gene and I used to speculate what DRAGONWYCK might have been like if Otto had been the director when we worked on LAURA which, as you know, started out with Mamoulain, who did not really understand the kind of people these perverse New York socialites were or the world they lived in. I mean, there was not one redeemable character in LAURA, and when Otto came on the film he got it at once. He knew these people from his own experience. I believe Otto would have brought out more of the perversity of the faux nobility that Nicolas felt was his right as a patron. Also he would have paced the film with more clarity than Joe was capable of at the time. I think looking back that Joe did the best he could in trying to cope with a production like DRAGONWYCK. The set alone was intimidating; I mean you could actually live in it. Lyle Wheeler was a genius as he unitized an entire soundstage at Fox to create the great house of Dragonwyck. It is ironic to realize that even a major studio like Fox still tore down the whole thing in the same manner we did years later with the Poe films that I did with Roger {Corman}, THE RAVEN, which was a huge set, was taken down in three days, but not until Roger shot an entire other feature at the same time. As you pointed out, DRAGONWYCK may well have been my “first Poe film,” even though it would take my career another fourteen years to bring Edgar Allan Poe full circle with HOUSE OF USHER.”

In DRAGONWYCK, Vincent Price discovered his talent for the macabre, which began on the stage playing the murderer Jack Manningham in ANGEL STREET. From that moment until he was cast as Nicolas Van Ryn, the elements were already taking shape. Vincent clearly witnessed the same “demon in my view” that Poe had seen in his writing. Watching Price as he “hears” the ghostly music of the harpsichord played by a dead ancestor, or watching his descent down the stairs of the Tower room as he explains to his current wife that he is “what is vulgarly referred to as a drug addict, is to see the genesis of his future interpretations of Poe’s characters under the direction of Roger Corman.

VINCENT PRICE
FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM

David Del Valle with Director Jeff Burr

“It’s as though the very foundation of the place was human suffering” Vincent price as Julian White

Towards the end of the 1980’s Vincent Price was hosting the PBS series MYSTERY, touring the nation as Oscar Wilde, and occasionally acting in motion pictures. After the lack of distribution for THE MONSTER CLUB and MADHOUSE it seemed that his last real horror film would be HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS, however he would make at least one more before his official swan song in Tim Burton’s masterful EDWARD SCISSORHANDS.

I had been planning to write about my experiences on one of Vincent’s lesser-known films of this period and just never seemed to find the time. I wish to rectify that now with my recollections of being the casting director and unit publicist on FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM (1986), one of the last films he made before his health began to fail, resulting in his death a few years later from lung cancer.

Let’s begin by first explaining how Vincent Price came to be involved with this project, which was the brainchild of four young film buffs with no connections to speak of in Hollywood, and not a lot of development money either, yet they all shared a unique vision and a childhood passion for the Horror genre.

Dan Golden, script girl, David del Valle and Alan White

At just 24 years of age, Jeff Burr, a then-recent-graduate of USC Film School, directed all four segments, working in concert with his brother William and Darin Scott as writer/producers. Super-film-buff and screenwriter Courtney Joyner, also from USC, completed the ensemble, putting together the wraparound material which would feature Price as librarian Julian White.

These guys had been sharing a house in Tujunga, struggling as a team in breakout mode with the four episodes already in the can. Their primary goal for months – looking for more backing, sending out screeners to most of the usual film companies, but even with veteran actors like Cameron Mitchell and Clu Gulager in the cast they still could not find a distributor to release their anthology project.

David del Valle sitting in Vincent Price's chair on set.

Jeff had raised most of the money so far by returning to his hometown of Dalton, Georgia. Dalton, not too far from Atlanta, is known locally as the Carpet Capital of Georgia. Jeff had the movie bug bad enough to hit up the local residents for money to help finance the screenplay. This included asking girls he went to high school with, his dentist and his other friends. From all of this humble pie came the independent film company known as Conquest Entertainment.

I think it was my friend, film maker Dan Golden, who first put Jeff Burr in touch with me regarding getting Vincent to look at one of the segments and chat him up about appearing in the film as a kind of avenging host, lending his legendary reputation to, yet again, get another horror film off the ground which otherwise might wind up unseen and forgotten in some straight-to-video release.

At the time I had an impromptu house guest in the person of British director Michael Armstrong who, as fate would have it, actually wrote the screenplay for another one of Vincent’s 80’s Horror films, HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS. This is discussed in greater detail in one of the other essays in the Camp David collection. The reason Mike is of interest to this situation is that every time Jeff and Bill Burr would come over to discuss the project, Mike was there gloriously unemployed and preparing endless cocktails to fuel things up a bit. Needless to say, the end result was the two of us drunk out of our skulls, chatting the night away about Hollywood, and now and then touching on how to convince Price to do the film.

Execution Scene: Martine Beswicke strapped in chair. Lawrence Tierney as the warden in black suit. Right to left; Tony Clay in suit, Susan Tyrrell, David del Valle and Alan White

Now since these novice producers were dyed in the wool Horror fans, the notion of having the director of MARK OF THE DEVIL on tap for advice seemed like a no-brainer. However the advice of a boozy veteran whose own anemic career was in dire need of a transfusion was not always prudent, to say the least.

I mentioned Michael to Vincent at one point during all this and he recalled one incident in particular: “I remember waiting in London for the rewrites for LONG SHADOWS to turn up one afternoon. They arrived hand-delivered in the person of Mr. Armstrong. The script’s front cover and some of the pages were somewhat soaked in booze.” I had been wondering all along why Michael had never sought Vincent out while he was struggling in Hollywood. Vincent’s comments kind of explained why, and it made me sad because Michael Armstrong should have had more of a career than he did with all the talent he possessed (to learn more, read the installment “Marked by the Devil”).

“ONCE IT WAS HUMAN EVEN AS YOU AND I”

Among the handful of those unforgettable utterly surreal moments to be found in modern cinema, one particular sequence has been absorbed instantly into Pop Culture. This film was produced at the height of the science fiction craze of the 1950’s, and the sequence I am referring to occurs during those final screen moments in the life of scientist Andre Delambre, whose head and left arm are fantastically reduced and attached to a common house fly. The mutant insect is fatally caught in a spider’s web while elsewhere his human body is saddled with the head and arm of said house fly enlarged to human size, creating a tragic half-human creature trapped in the lab where this horror was accidentally created in Kurt Neumann’s production of the 1958 sci-fi horror thriller THE FLY. Now for this scenario to work one must simply suspend all logic as to why the heads of the fly and the scientist change size so drastically on each other’s torsos, not to mention why the scientist is still thinking with a human brain while the human head on the fly can still find the will to speak those terrifying last words “Help Me…!”

This now justly infamous “spider web” sequence where Andre’s head and arm rest on the body of a tiny house fly enduring the unbearable agony of entrapment, screaming for its life in a voice so small it almost cannot be heard by the human ear, all the while a very large spider advances closer to its prey. Anyone who has seen this film can never forget this moment and, regardless of how silly the premise, the sheer nightmare quality of this situation will haunt your dreams forever.

20th Century Fox has decided to release for Halloween this year a boxed set of the three films that make up the saga of the Delambre family and their obsessive quest for scientific knowledge in the “wild Country” of teleportation of matter. The first two films feature Vincent Price, while the third replaces him with Brian Donlevy. THE FLY, RETURN OF THE FLY and CURSE OF THE FLY are all in Cinemascope with only the first film being in color, with a decent budget and production values the others must do without. Having said that, all three films possess their own unique charms, and a large host of admirers in this ever unpredictable genre of cult cinema, so this forthcoming release should please those people out there in the dark who just cannot get those two words out of their minds.

My involvement with this project came about early last month when a gentleman named Roger De Siva asked for a copy of my DVD “VINCENT PRICE – THE SINISTER IMAGE” to screen over at Fox as a possible supplement for the boxed set. While this was going on, I was asked to participate in their documentary regarding the three films and, later, on a very different one regarding Vincent Price for another boxed set of just Price films from the MGM/UA library. After nearly a month of trading emails and phone calls, the powers that be in development informed me that Fox could not include my interview because Price and I discuss too many films that are not made by 20th Century Fox. Well all I can say is it that is their loss, as well as that of the fans who might have enjoyed hearing about the career and films of Vincent Price from the master himself.

The good news from all this is that while I was waiting to see what was going to be included in this project, I was invited to conduct the audio commentary with the “fly” himself, actor David Hedison, for the newly remastered DVD of THE FLY.

I had met him a few years before at an autograph show in Beverly Garland’s wonderful hideaway hotel in the valley. Mr. Hedison is still a distinguished looking man with a finely cropped beard. He appears tanned and silver haired, the very picture of health.

We recorded our conversation on a Friday afternoon at a lively audio house in Hollywood known as MARGARITA MIX, aptly named for they indeed do mix a fine libation after the fact, in an atmosphere of relaxation with great show-biz vibes in abundance. We even ran into David Duchovny in the next booth, obviously doing an audio commentary himself.

David Hedison was in fine form for the duration of the taping which took us nearly three hours. He had not seen the film for years so it was a fresh approach for him and he had fun with it. It was interesting to watch him look at himself as he appeared on film half a century ago.

Most of the cast and crew long gone, he still regretted the fact that the producers would not allow him to do a progressive make-up, gradually turning into a fly, which would have been even more horrific, not to mention a real acting challenge. To this day he still cannot forgive the producers for speeding up his voice on the soundtrack during the web sequence, making him sound more like a chipmunk than a man. He played his part in and out of make-up, even when his head was covered in a black cloth.

I especially loved the moment where David cried out “That is not my hand typing that letter; it is the director, Kurt Neumann” The commentary is never dull and we had a ball watching this underrated sci fi classic of the fifties unwind in front of us. All we needed to make it totally wild would have been those little robots from the Mystery Science 2000 series on hand to add their ad libs as well.

A few days later a package arrived at my office with a signed photo of David in full make-up, which had an inscription that of course ended with the essential “help me” after the signature. So, in this writer’s humble opinion, whether David Hedison is at the bottom of the sea or trapped in a spiders web, this guy is ALWAYS tops in his field in my book.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (MGM) 1971
1 hour 35 minutes, Color, 1.85:1 aspect ratio, enhanced for 16:9 widescreen Tvs. Original.
PASSABLE

Dr. Phibes Rises Again! (MGM) 1972
1 hour 29 minutes, Color, 1.85:1 ratio, enhanced for 16:9 screens. Original Theatrical trailer.
RECOMMENDED

The “Phibes” films are Art Deco uniquities, and if you have room for some stylish black-comedy-horror in your collection, they belong. Witty, eccentric Brit director Robert Fuest had a mercilessly curtailed motion picture career, of which Phibes Part the 2nd was the height, even though it is a patchwork quilt and not terribly pretty as a result. On a professional high after the Phibes films, he came over here and did The Devil’s Rain, on which I hear the studio system drove him to despair. He hasn’t done a feature since, to my knowledge, though I’ve seen his name crop up occasionally on British tv.

The first Phibes is the more polished, and also the more staid. It set the darkly comedic tone that Fuest was to take to its limits in the second film, and there were others planned, and the gauntlet was even picked up by other genre directors like George Romero, but nothing more ever came of the series. In it, the titular character (Price at his most inimitably expressive, despite the fact that his character doesn’t speak through his mouth) is a former concert musician, now a cadaverous remnant of his former self out to avenge the death of his wife, and further to bring her back to life by occult means. His vengeance is exacted in biblical proportion – literally – as each of the guilty parties meets their demise in ways mandated by old testament prophecy. Locusts…rats… you name it, Phibes arranges it.

And in Rises Again!, he’s once more up to his old tricks, this time on a race to Egypt to find the underground river of eternal life, with the reliable Robert Quarry (Count Yorga) as his (not quite well-matched) adversary. This second installment leads to a eurphoric ending, wild and cathartic in the tradition of City Lights, Ride the High Country, The Informer, White Heat, 2001, all those daring films that send us back into our own worlds on a tremendous high. But disaster was to befall every incarnation of the second Phibes after its theatrical release, you see… wait a minute! I want to tell you, but I’m committing a cinematic sin. I’m verging on revealing a STORY SPOILER. Why I should be so worried about this, I don’t know. Half the coming attractions shown in theaters today ruin the film for everyone, so why shouldn’t I? But I won’t, at least not without warning you first. If you haven’t seen the film yet, you might read this part afterwards:

When Dr. Phibes Rises Again was originally released, the ending involved Quarry’s character being forced to make a fatal decision in order to save his wife, which caused him to age a hundred years in a matter of seconds. Clinging onto a barred gate submerged in four feet of water, his life ebbing away, he stares forlornly out at Phibes, who is blissfully paddling his ‘beloved’ into the darkness of eternal life while singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. It was, I can assure you, one of the inspired endings of film history. But alas, all the necessary music clearances hadn’t been obtained, so subsequent video releases, and laserdisc releases (US and Japan) were forced to replace the MGM musical crescendo with an ethereal choral piece which, admittedly, was effective, if completely lacking in irony. On the DVD box for the film, in a red rectangle marked “Fun Facts!”, someone has noted “Vincent Price recorded the song “Over the Rainbow” which was supposed to run under the credits, but was cut from the final version.” Grimly I ran the film, and to my overwhelming surprise, there was the original soundtrack back where it belonged. A mistake? A mistake that soon may be corrected? Buy your copy while you can! Remember what happened with The Little Shop of Horrors!

The double bill I recommend is the first Phibes followed by dessert, followed by Phibes # 2. Sip some colorful liquor during the screening. The good Doctor would have appreciated that touch.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (MGM) 1971
theatrical trailer.
Director Robert Fuest.
Written by James Whiton and William Goldstein.
O riginal Music by Basil Kirchin.
With Vincent Price, Joseph Cotten, Hugh Griffith, Terry-Thomas and Virginia North as Vulnavia.

Dr. Phibes Rises Again! (MGM) 1972
Directed by Robert Fuest.
Written by Fuest and Robert Blees.
Original Music by John Gale.
With Vincent Price, Robert Quarry, Peter Cushing, Beryl Reid, Terry-Thomas, and Valli Kemp as Vulnavia.