Double Feature with Vincent Price

My earliest memory of Vincent Price was watching Hilarious House of Frightenstein when I was a kid in the early 1980s (syndicated in that time, the original series was filmed in 1971). This was a Saturday morning children's variety TV show that aired mostly in Canada. He appears in the opening and closing credits and short vignettes in between the major segments. The program is actually being re-run right now on the Space channel in Canada at 4:00 AM (on a daily basis). Sometimes, if I'm up that early, I'll make sure to catch his closing monologue (recited by Price, in front of the 'Frightenstein' monster while holding a candle) that is played at the end of every episode:

It would not be years later until I got to see an actual Vincent Price movie. I believe that it was the "Tales of Terror" Roger Corman production where three Edgar Allan Poe short stories are presented (Black Cat, Amontillado, M. Valdemar). The circumstances that I got to see this are interesting. It was during my first year of college and I was staying at the dormitory for a few days of the Christmas Holidays because of certain circumstances. Being unable to sleep at 2:00 AM, I crept to the common TV area and there was a VHS tape with "Tales of Terror". It was so quiet that one could hear a pin drop, so the darkness and time of night certainly added to the atmosphere as I watched this movie.

As I watch more and more of Vincent Price (The Bat, House on Haunted Hill, Last Man on Earth, Oblong Box, Wax Museum, etc), I notice that whether the film is good or bad overall, I am thoroughly entertained. Some have said that his performances are hammy and over-acted, but I consider these to be complimentary rather than defective. If film narrative was realistic, then the stories would be boring. Every actor that is considered "great" are hammy in their performances--Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Al Pacino play pretty much the same character in every single one of their films and we can recognize their trademarks from miles away--but that doesn't stop people to pay to see them and be entertained.

I would have liked to have been born earlier so I could have seen his films during their original theatrical runs and other great B-movies as well. I think my favorite era for horror film is definitely the 1950s and 1960s (an honorable mention to the 1970s as well). I also really like Gothic Horror and you don't see too many of these being made today. Even if they started to make these again, I'm not sure they would be as good, even with superior CGI. I like the type of lighting and colors that were used back then--an aesthetic that could probably only be achieved with the film equipment of that era.

And Vincent Price, being the most noteworthy actor of those times, is the definite representative of this 'golden' age of horror movies.

I was very fortunate and grateful to receive the Vincent Price MGM Scream Legends Collection as a gift, recently. I have just finished watching the first two films of the collection:

Tales of Terror (1962)- 10/10
These re-interpretations of 3 classic Edgar Allan Poe stories are simply a delight to watch, and I was very happy to see this movie again 17 years later.

The highlight is The Black Cat co-starring Peter Lorre book-ended with Morella at the beginning and followed by The Case of M. Valdemar (w/Basil Bathbone). As with most theatrical adaptations of Poe, the writers take some creative liberty to enhance the narrative of the story. But most Poe fans will forgive this in this case because the spirit and essence of these stories are preserved. For example, "Cat" is really a composite of The Cask of Amontillado and the title's namesake combined together.

Twice Told Tales (1963) - 9/10
This is quite a lavish and top notch production for an anthology horror film. While I am not familiar with Nathaniel Hawthorne's works (for which this movie uses 3 of his stories), I was highly entertained by these ghost stories.