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Home , House on Haunted Hill, Ian Hendry, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Peter Lorre, The Comedy of Terrors, Vincent Price

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959) HOUSE OF WAX (1953) was a stepping stone in ’s career path towards being a horror star. A second step along the way was THE FLY (1958), although he played the “straight” role, the brother of the man who got his head switched with a fly. Producer/director made a coup when he cast Vincent in (1959). was probably at this point that Vincent became a commodity in the horror genre. His character in HAUNTED HILL crystallizes the whole “Vincent Price Persona” – urbane, sophisticated, utilizing his smooth-as-velvet voice to convey menace, and tossing out sly comments on the macabre goings-on as they occur. The plot has Vincent playing an eccentric millionaire (really, is there any other kind?) who rents a haunted house for an evening so he and his wife can have a party. If the guests survive the night, which given the house’s history, is questionable, they will each be given a reward of $10,000, which was mega-bucks in 1959. Just to boost the odds against their survival, all of the guests are given a gun as a party favour, which of course increases the chances of someone in a panic shooting another guest. Sounds like fun, right?

Price exchanges barbed quips with his wife. It’s clear they both hate each other. The movie takes a pretty dim view of marriage, like a low-rent version of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, if George and Martha lived in a haunted house. The guests sit around drinking alcohol, waiting for something scary to happen, and Castle manages to deliver a few pretty good shocks and creepy moments. Looking at the film a second time, a lot of what happens makes little sense, but no one really cares. William Castle’s specialty was scaring the crap out of little kids. The visuals and the soundtrack are pretty aggressive at times. The scary ghost noises (diabolical laughter and clanking chains) wouldn’t be out of place in a fairground spook ride, or one of those sound eects records for children’s Halloween parties.

Castle’s brilliant idea for selling the film was to have a big plastic skeleton on a wire which was hand- cranked over the heads of the audience at a crucial point of the film. He advertised this as “EMERG-O!” to make it sound like some huge technological advance. What Castle didn’t foresee was a theater full of rambunctious kids pelting the poor skeleton with popcorn boxes and whatever there was at hand. Castle’s had notions of making the movie-going experience akin to a carnival ride. He was something of a visionary, since in the 70’s we had things like “SENSURROUND” and now we have carnival rides being turned into movies (I’m looking at you, Pirates of the Caribbean).

Once dicult to see (TV screenings were actually rare when I was growing up – I had to wait until the mid-70’s to see it), the film has fallen into the public domain, which means it’s become available in countless VHS and DVD releases from various companies over the years, often in those 20 movies in a set packages that you see at Wal-Mart. (THE FALL OF THE) HOUSE OF USHER (1960)

American-International Pictures (or AIP) made their name with low-budget movies like I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN, I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF, INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN, THE SHE CREATURE, and many others, which would be sent out to theatres and drive-ins in pairs to make double-features. Director proposed an experiment to the heads of American-International: Instead of making 2 cheap black and white movies, why not combine the budgets and make one expensive movie in colour?

HOUSE OF USHER was chosen as the story because Poe’s work was in the public domain. One of the conditions of the project being approved is that the movie had to have a monster. “The House is the Monster,” Roger replied. That seemed to satisfy his bosses, but in fact the true monster is played by Vincent Price. Vincent Price was signed on to play Roderick Usher, who lives in a decaying mansion with his sister Madeline and a servant. Roderick is obsessed with the Usher family history, which is rampant with insanity and evil behaviour. (“The House itself is evil!” he declares at one point, putting across the original idea of the House as monster.) He is determined that the Usher family die out when he and his sister pass away. A monkey wrench is thrown into his plans when a young man shows up at the door intending to marry Madeline and take her away to start a family. What’s a brother to do? Why, bury his sister alive, of course! Vincent Price really seemed in his element here, gripping the audience by sheer force of personality. No one knew it at the time, but USHER would kick o a whole series of Poe films starring Price, which would last for a full decade, petering out with in 1970. Since so many of the Poe films ended with a house burning down, Corman would frequently re-use footage from USHER’s house-burning scene. This would become something of an in-joke with fans, who would recognize the images.

All advertising materials call the film “HOUSE OF USHER” but when you watch the film itself, the title card reads “THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER”. I suppose this was a mouthful for people talking about the film, so they would just call it HOUSE OF USHER for short.

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1961)

After HOUSE OF USHER became a surprise hit, a sequel was in order. This meant filming a second Poe story. Roger Corman settled on . Screenwriter had to fabricate an entire story, since the original short story isn’t very long on plot. It isn’t very long, period. In some ways it’s a replay of USHER, using the plot device of a young man visiting a sinister old dark house (or castle, in this case) presided over by a mentally unstable Vincent Price. The young man starts unearthing secrets, eventually having his life placed in danger (as depicted on the stunning poster). Still, they’re two very dierent stories.

In the climax, Vincent goes mad and takes on the personality of his dead father, who was an expert on torture with the Spanish Inquisition. Like the motion of the pendulum itself, Price’s character swings from one extreme to the other, from anguished and tortured to gleeful torturer. The dialogue he is given for both states of mind is extremely stylized, with Matheson breaking out the thesaurus to find dierent ways for Price to say “Hades” just before he sets the pendulum in motion.

Even though it’s not a faithful adaptation of Poe, it manages to capture the spirit of Poe, with the Price character mooning over a lost (deceased) love, premature burials, victims being walled up alive, and just the general air of unhealthy obsession. Like HOUSE OF USHER, It was extremely popular on first release, and even surpassed that film in terms of box oce.

FUN FACT: B arbara Steele, fresh o the movie BLACK SUNDAY, plays Price’s wife, but because of her British accent (which wouldn’t have fit in with everyone else’s American voices) she ended up being dubbed.

THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH (1964)

One of the most attractive-looking of the Poe films, it benefitted from being filmed in on expensive, left-over sets from BECKET. This was a definite step-up from the working conditions at American-International.

After the silliness of THE RAVEN (1963), MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH was a much more serious film, with Price playing one of his most villainous roles, Prince Prospero, who believes that God is dead, has chosen to worship Satan, and tests the Christian beliefs of his prisoner, the young Francesca. In the end, though, the film seems to reject the idea that either Deity has any influence on the world, leaning instead toward a view that life and death are completely random. Praying to either God or Satan will not alter your fate. These are some pretty heady ideas being expressed at a time when horror films (and Price’s films especially) were considered kiddie matinee material. This might have been to the film’s detriment, since audiences didn’t want Vincent to pontificate on the existence or non-existence of God, they just wanted him to go “Boo!”

What makes Price’s character dierent from the usual villains that he played is that Prospero has weighed the pros and cons of good and evil, and has chosen evil. At times he seems to be experimenting with the concept just to see how far he can take it. By the end of the film, something about him has softened, and he asks The Red Death to spare Francesca. (and by kissing Prospero, does this mean Francesca in her turn has been slightly corrupted?).

If Vincent Price had ever appeared in a Bergman film, THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH would likely have been the result, and it even received some criticism for being “plagiarism of Bergman”. On the other hand, MASQUE, like many of the Poe films, uses colour sumptuously, while Bergman in this time period filmed in austere black and white. The poster art is extremely clever, showing various acts of torture and decadence playing over and intermingling with Price’s distinctive features. THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES (1971) and DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN (1972) Horror stars were frequently associated with a particular monster, usually calling for a heavy make-up to transform their appearance. For example, Boris Karlo was famous for FRANKENSTEIN, Lon Chaney Jr. for THE WOLF MAN, and in the 80’s for Freddy Krueger in the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movies. DR. PHIBES provided Price with one of his few opportunities to wear an elaborate monster make-up. As in HOUSE OF WAX, his normal features are just a mask which conceals his true face, which has been mutilated in some way, with the big reveal being saved until late in the film. (Not unlike the various film versions of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, and the opening scene showing Dr. Phibes dramatically playing the organ definitely evokes PHANTOM.) DR. PHIBES was influential in that it was an early instance of a “body count” film. The story is constructed around a series of murder scenes, the more outre, the better. Dr. Phibes is seeking revenge on a team of doctors who failed to save his wife after a car crash. His revenge is patterned on the 10 Curses/Plagues of Egypt as described in the Bible as part of the story of Moses. And so, we see death by bats, rats, locusts, and other bizarre means. This kind of thing you would see happening in comic books, or perhaps THE AVENGERS TV show. (Screenwriter just happened to write for THE AVENGERS.)

Price’s performance here is mostly pantomime, since Phibes cannot speak due to his injuries unless he plugs a speaker cord into his neck. When he does speak, it’s in a halting, semi-mechanical manner, and his lips do not move, meaning he was performing silently on set and his dialogue was dubbed in later. This caused some frustration for his co-stars. Joseph Cotton complained that he had to know his lines, while Vincent could get away with not knowing his. Vincent replied, “I know the lines, Joe.”

The first PHIBES film was so successful (to the point where the Mayor of declared a Vincent Price Day) that the inevitable sequel was made, although many found it less satisfying. There doesn’t appear to be a central theme to the murders in DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN. It seems more a matter of expediency that Phibes gets rid of various characters. Not that there aren’t some memorable scenes, like the one where some poor guy gets stung to death by scorpions, and one scorpion crawls down inside his pants. I bet that made all the men in the audience squirm.

Plans for a third PHIBES film sadly never came to pass, although some ideas were kicked around, one of them being “THE BRIDES OF DR. PHIBES”. The revenge theme of the PHIBES films would provide inspiration for Vincent’s next film, which would be one of his all-time bests: THEATRE OF BLOOD.

FUN FACT: For the American release, the tag-line for the poster read “Love Means Never Having to Say You’re Ugly,” which parodied the tag-line for the hit movie and novel LOVE STORY, which was “Love Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry”. LOVE STORY was something of a cultural touchstone of the 70’s, but has fallen into irrelevance today (like Pet Rocks, if anyone remembers those). F UN FACT 2: T he second PHIBES films ends with Vincent Price singing “Over the Rainbow” as he sails down the River of Eternal Life. THEATRE OF BLOOD (1973)

THEATRE OF BLOOD seems tailor-made for Vincent Price. Price plays a Shakespearean actor, Edward Lionheart, whose work has been constantly panned by ’s critics. After being denied an acting award by the Critic’s Circle, Lionheart attempts suicide, but survives and returns to get his revenge on the critics (taking a cue from the PHIBES films), murdering each one in ways inspired by scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. Price must have felt some kinship with the Lionheart character, since he had never been taken seriously by critics during his lifetime, and had often been dismissed as “hammy”. And of course, working in the disreputable horror genre did not win Price much praise from critics, or any awards from Hollywood. So this must have felt like living out a fantasy. And he got to perform bits from Shakespeare, which is something he seldom had the opportunity to do. Price himself stated that this was one of his favourite films.

The Lionheart character, like Phibes and some of Vincent’s other characters, manages to generate a certain amount of audience sympathy because he is depicted as being grievously wronged by others before he strikes back against them. The critics, on the other hand, are depicted as snooty and unlikeable. Even the critic who is intended to be the film’s “good guy” (played by ) shows an arrogant side at the end. Did he not learn anything from this experience?

I saw this at the age of twelve, and I knew next to nothing about Shakespeare. I ended up learning a great deal just from seeing this movie.

The murder scenes were violent enough to make this the only Vincent Price movie to be given a “R” rating.

FUN FACT: P rice would meet his future wife, , while making this movie. Coral dies in one of the most outrageous scenes in the movie, where Price/Lionheart disguises himself as a gay hairdresser and kills her with electrified hair curlers. (this is actually in keeping with today’s penchant for modernizing Shakespeare) They became attracted to each other, married, and stayed together til death did them part. HOUSE OF WAX (1953)

HOUSE OF WAX did a lot for Vincent Price’s reputation. Although he had touched the fringes of the genre before (playing a victim role in TOWER OF LONDON with Boris Karlo, and playing the Invisible Man in THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS) HOUSE OF WAX put Vincent front and center as a horror star. Vincent plays Henry Jarrod, a sculptor who runs a wax museum that shows figures from history. Business is not great, so his partner decides to set the museum on fire to collect the insurance money, and Jarrod is left for dead in the burning building. Some months later, Jarrod returns and sets up a new wax museum, this time depicting famous murder scenes, which is a more commercial prospect. But the wax figures look just a little too life-like….

HOUSE OF WAX was not the first film to be released in 3-D, but it was one of the best and one of the most successful. The director (Andre de Toth) seemed to have a very good handle on how to show o the new technology (even though he had only one eye and could not experience the 3-D eect himself). Apart from being able to have objects pop out at the audience, and show depth in the image, one of the most impressive bits is a man with ping-pong paddles, batting the rubber ball into the audience’s faces. If you can see it in 3-D. it remains impressive to this day. It was also noteworthy for being an early film appearance by (as Igor!) billed under his real name, Charles Buchinsky.

Vincent would make another 3-D film, THE MAD MAGICIAN, but that film remains not as well known as HOUSE OF WAX.

COMEDY OF TERRORS (1964)

Vincent Price was not above spoofing his public image as a horror star. He made frequent appearances on comedy TV shows of the time, like The Red Skelton Show, , and even Here’s Lucy! COMEDY OF TERRORS was something of a follow-up to AIP’s spoof Poe movie, THE RAVEN, which starred Price, Boris Karlo and . COMEDY OF TERRORS re-united the three, and added as well. The story had Price playing a drunken undertaker whose business is failing, so he hits on the idea of creating a demand for his services by going out and murdering people, utilizing the housebreaking skills of his assistant Felix (played by Lorre). Karlo is Price’s senile father-in-law who mishears everything he’s told, and Basil Rathbone is Price’s landlord who’s threatening eviction for non-payment of rent. This puts Rathbone at the top of Price’s list of prospective customers/victims, but every time they think they’ve killed him, it turns out he’s still alive. Wackiness ensues.

Price makes the most of his role as an overly educated man (no one understands the big words he uses in conversation) stuck in a profession he hates, married to a woman he despises, and who prefers to stay drunk for as much time as possible, slinging insults everyone’s way. He’s a lot like a silent-movie villain, who would kick the dog and make small children cry, in other words, larger than life. The music score underlines this, sometimes sounding like the backing to a silent movie, especially during the more slapstick portions. The theme of murder as a economic necessity goes back to SWEENEY TODD (which is also a part of silent movie history).

TOWER OF LONDON (1962)

TOWER OF LONDON is a kind of mash-up of the stories of Richard III and MacBeth. Price loses his trademark mustache and puts on a long black wig and a hunchback to play Richard, who murders his way to the throne of England, but with the nasty side eect of being haunted by the ghosts of his numerous victims (or maybe this is just a symptom of a guilty conscience. This is what reminds you of MacBeth). Price plays Richard as a total sadist, who doesn’t even attempt to hide his pleasure as he tortures various characters. On top of that, he gets to play Richard going completely insane. Not that this was new territory for Price, since many of his characters were mentally unbalanced.

Roger Corman thought he was shooting a colour film but was only informed at the last minute that they would be shooting in black and white for budgetary reasons, much to his chagrin. At times, the low budget makes itself apparent, as in the scene where Richard is crowned and declares “The people wish to see their King!” He steps out on the balcony, and we hear the sound of a cheering crowd, but see no one, not even a small group of extras, or stock footage of a crowd. The black and white film, and the use of American actors playing British characters (without accents) gives it the feel of something shot for TV at that time (before colour television). And the model used to represent the Tower of London itself looks especially fake.

Price had appeared in the 1939 version of the Tower of London, where Basil Rathbone played Richard, and Price played the unlucky Duke of Clarence, who was drowned in a vat of wine. Price would play Richard again, briefly, in a scene in THEATRE OF BLOOD, but this time he would actually get to speak some of Shakespeare’s lines.

MADHOUSE (1974)

MADHOUSE marked the end of Vincent Price’s association with American International Pictures, with whom he had been working steadily since 1960’s HOUSE OF USHER. It also marked an end to traditional Gothic horror and star power in the horror genre. By 1974, the genre was changing and becoming more graphically violent and explicit, with the release of such films as THE EXORCIST and THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and JAWS was just around the corner. Sinister actors reading dialogue in cobwebby mansions while lightning storms raged outside were now old hat. By all accounts, the production of MADHOUSE was a huge mess, with filming being called to begin before the script was in satisfactory shape, unhappy actors, an inexperienced director, and according to one source, no re-takes! This should have resulted in a bad, unwatchable film, but even though it’s not one of Price’s best, it’s entertaining enough.

The story has some self-reflexive aspects to it: Vincent plays a famous horror film actor (like Boris Karlo did in TARGETS), and clips from Vincent’s Poe films are used to stand in for moments from the fictional actor’s past career. Price plays “Paul Toombs”, famous for playing a character called “Dr. Death” in a successful series of films (much like Price’s “Dr. Phibes”). The scandal resulting from a murder accusation puts an end to his career, but some years later he’s primed to make a comeback, reviving the Dr. Death character. But then a new series of murders starts, making him the prime suspect. Described briefly here, the plot is basically Murder Mystery 101 (Jessica Fletcher would have solved it in 10 minutes), but at least Price gets to share screen time with fellow horror actor/icon . Robert Quarry, who achieved some success playing modern-day vampire Count Yorga, was being groomed by AIP to replace Vincent Price as a horror star, but somehow it didn’t pan out. Quarry re-wrote his dialogue, and much of the dialogue of the other actors, because the original script was so poor.

TOMB OF LIGEIA (1965)

This was the final Poe film directed by Roger Corman (more would be made, but the quality would definitely drop o), and it reaches a pinnacle in the series. It’s one of my personal favourites out of all of Vincent Price’s films. A Gothic Romance, with a supernatural element which intrudes into the story. Price plays the recently widowed Verden Fell, haunted by his former wife, Ligeia, with whom he had an intense relationship, to say the least. Ligeia, who resisted Death to the last, has seemingly returned from the dead, possessing first a black cat, and ultimately taking possession of Verden’s second bride, Rowena. Rowena, like the heroine of Rebecca, is made more and more aware of the presence of the first wife. Hypnosis plays a large part of the story, and watching the film is akin to being hypnotized. In one dream sequence, we’re not entirely sure whether we’re watching a scene filmed in slow-motion, or whether the actors are pantomiming slow motion. The eect is unsettling, as is a further scene where it appears as if the events of Rowena’s nightmare are about to replay themselves now that she’s awake. The story takes a very adult turn when necrophilia is added to the mix. This would have went over the heads of any kids in the audience.

Vincent Price plays Verden as a dark, brooding romantic hero out of Jane Austen, but since this is a Poe story he’s also morbid and obsessed, possibly a drug addict (his sensitivity to light may be a symptom), and harbouring a secret darker than anything Austen might have dreamed up. The wraparound dark glasses that he wears for most of the film could be a symbol of him hiding his true self from the world, or of how he himself doesn’t see “the whole picture”. His performance is very reined in compared to TOWER OF LONDON.

The recycled footage of the House of Usher burning down makes its final appearance here, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t an actual fire on set. Price and his co-star were almost killed when a member of the crew accidentally ignited the chemicals used to burn the set before the camera was ready to roll.

CONQUEROR WORM (aka WITCHFINDER GENERAL) (1968)

There is a general consensus that this is Vincent Price’s greatest performance. It’s definitely one of his most naturalistic and intense ones, but the movie itself may be a bit hard to enjoy. Price plays a real-life historical figure, Matthew Hopkins, who went about England in Cromwell’s day seeking out and executing suspected witches, all for a fee, of course. Hopkins is depicted as being quite corrupt and unfeeling of how he destroys innocent lives. He has no belief that he’s actually doing God’s work, and any claims he makes that he is doing so is simply selling snake oil. He’s an opportunist, only in the game for any financial gain or sexual favours he can obtain. The movie is very instructive about how suspected witches were “tested” and usually found guilty.

Price’s performance may have been aected by the tension between him and his director, . Reeves did not want Price in his movie (he would have preferred Donald Pleasance), and made this plain to Price himself, to the point of insulting him to his face. By this time in his career, Price had something of a reputation as being a “campy” actor. Appearing in spoofs like THE RAVEN or and especially the goofball DR. GOLDFOOT movies would not have helped his case. But Price was hired by the studio and there was nothing Reeves could do about it. However, Price was totally professional about his commitment to the movie. Any feelings of coldness or suppressed anger he may have felt could have found their way into the character he played, but that’s just speculation.

The final result was a film that was as grim and bleak as its subject matter. AIP changed the film’s title from WITCHFINDER GENERAL to CONQUEROR WORM (taken from a poem by Poe) so they could justify advertising it as another Vincent Price/Poe movie. It was successful enough that it started it’s own mini-sub-genre about witch hunters, with imitators like MARK OF THE DEVIL, THRONE OF FIRE/NIGHT OF THE BLOOD MONSTER, TWINS OF EVIL, CRY OF THE BANSHEE (also starring Price) and so on.