Best of Vincent Price

Michael is once again joined by award-winning film critic and Shock Cinema magazine contributor Mark Burger to discuss the greatest hits of the one and only Vincent Price. From Poe to Phibes with a little detour into witch hunting and Shakespeare, they detail the career of the man whose filmography spanned five decades, and also put the spooky in one of the biggest pop songs of the 1980s. Can you dig it?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Darkness follows across the land. The midnight hour is close at hand. Creatures crawl in search of blood to terrorize your neighborhood.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Hey everybody, and welcome to Friday Night Frights. I'm Michael Huey, a theater professor, author, actor, and I've been a podcaster for a year. This is the one-year anniversary of Friday Night Frights. I can't believe I'm actually saying that. But after a year, we've been downloaded in 31 countries. When we started this, I would have been happy with 31 listeners, quite frankly. So if you're listening to this or if you've listened to an episode in the past, thank you so much for downloading us and uh and sticking with the show. And uh, I just want to give a real quick shout out to the Wake Forest University Wakerspace and Paul Whitner. Their grace, we use their studio. They're awesome to work with, and the Wakerspace is a very cool thing. So thank you, Wake Forest Wakerspace. Well, we've got a great show for you today, and to uh kick off season two of Friday Night Frights, I've got a recurring guest. This is his third time back. So I'm very happy to have with me today award-winning film critic and uh Shock Cinema magazine contributor, Mark Berker. Mark, welcome back to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Thank you so much, Michael. Good to be back.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

When Mark was here before, we did uh an episode on the best of Peter Cushing, then we did the best of Christopher Lee. So today we are completing the Unholy Trio and doing the best of Vincent Price. Uh and what we're going to do is Mark has a double feature. I have a double feature to recommend to you that sort of exemplifies Price's work in the horror genre. Uh and this episode will be pretty much spoiler-free because I would say the purpose of this podcast, why I started it, is to sort of turn people on to classic and gothic horror, to let you know that these old movies have some of them have a lot of artistry behind them. They're very fun, and they're uh worth a lot more than just unintentional laughs.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Classics for a reason. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Exactly. And uh Price is one of those actors that is uh is quite a legend, really. And as an American, the only American of that unholy trio, uh, I think he's perhaps at the time maybe more well known, certainly in the United States, than Cushing and Lee. But I want to ask you, before we get started, Mark, uh I want to ask you my opinion of the trajectory of Price's career is he's a little bit different than Cushing and Lee, in that he had a pretty good career in the 40s and 50s as a supporting actor in what we now call film noir. Like it's in Laura, Leave her to Heaven, Where the Sidewalk Ends, and then in the 50s, and then certainly in the 60s, he started getting into horror. Do you see his career as a little different than those two?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Well, that's very true. In fact, he he started in the 30s in costume dramas, uh Betty Davis, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The Song of Bernadette with Jennifer Jones, uh, usually as a villain or cad. Then he did settle settle into character actor status in the 40s and 50s, not just Film Noir, but Epics, The Ten Commandments, uh, for one. And then he did uh find a second renewed life as a leading man in horror and science fiction films, mostly horror.

unknown 3:35

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Yeah, yeah, and that's sort of what he's known for. I mean, I would imagine if if you're listening to this, your context for Vincent Price, if you're not a hardcore fan, might be the narration in Michael Jackson's thriller. That's entirely possible. Aaron Powell Yeah, absolutely. Uh especially when it comes time for Halloween. And uh he had the reputation of being an extremely nice guy, from what I've read. Uh-huh. A theater actor? You I found on YouTube uh a version of him doing pose to telltale heart uh on stage. So he was pretty versatile, even though he was.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

He was also uh an expert in art. He was an art dealer, he was a gourmet, he wrote a best-selling cookbook. He really was kind of a Renaissance man all around.

SPEAKER_00 4:33

Very cool. All right, so we're gonna get this uh this kicked off. So we've got four films, and I gotta say, these four films are absolute winners, no question. And if you're a Price fan, you know, these are not deep cuts. Uh these are kind of, again, this is best events of price, this is the greatest hits. But if you are not familiar with his work, you can't go wrong with these four films, and they are they show him off in in different ways because he could do all kinds of stuff. So, Mark, why don't you kick us off with uh your first.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

First film I have is was released in the United States as The Conqueror Worm, as a belated addition to the Edgar Allen Post series. Uh, but it's a fact-based, historical, uh, epic in a sense, called Witchfinder General.

SPEAKER_04 5:15

With the tranquility of rural England shattered by civil war, evil was spawned at a time of strife in the land.

SPEAKER_06 5:22

Take him, Stan. Look for the devil's marks upon him.

SPEAKER_04 5:25

Right. Help us, you two! Hounding the innocent in violence and terror. This evil man showed no mercy in the pursuit and interrogation of his victims. He was called the Witchfinder General.

SPEAKER_01 5:37

Price plays the notorious Witchfinder General, Matthew Hopkins, a character of history, who goes from town to town, torturing and killing uh those he perceives or accuses of witches. This is a film very much of its time, even though it's set uh during the English Civil War, came out in the late 60s, civil unrest, height of the Vietnam War, sort of the youth movement in full swing. Here is a film where the establishment, represented by Price, totally corrupt, totally evil. The younger people who are essentially being sacrificed in this war, they're the heroes, and they have to fight against the powers that be that are bent on suppressing them. It's not necessarily a horror film, although there are horrific moments in it. It was the third, final, and best film of a remarkable filmmaker named Michael Reeves, who died sadly about six months after the film came out of an accidental drug overdose. Orson Wells made his first film when he was 26. By the times Reeve died at 25, he had made three films, this being uh the best and best known of all of them.

SPEAKER_00 6:50

So I have to make uh a startling admission. I have never seen Witchfinder General. For a long time, it was it was hard to get. A couple years ago, I think it was 88 films released to 4K. The Blu-ray is uh Region B, so for us in the United States, we can't, unless we've got a region free player, can't watch it. I'm just looking at it now, and it is available uh just pop back up on Prime Uh and a few other places that you can watch it uh online. But uh it's my understanding that the Conqueror Worm cut is a little bit different. Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Yes, it was it was shaved down a bit so that AIP, American International, could put it on a double bill here with a particularly tepid giallo called the Young, the evil, and the savage. So the Conqueror Worm, as it was called here, was essentially relegated to the drive-in circuit. Whereas in England, where the book Witchfinder General had been very popular, it was considered, I wouldn't say an art film, but it got a lot of critical attention, some good, some bad, but it aroused a lot of controversy in its native country, which is, I think, one of the reasons its reputation endures. Some of the more, I suppose, English colloquialisms or items that AIP wouldn't have thought were important for American consumption, those were what were trimmed from the American cut. But uh The Witchfinder General, which is also available, I have it as part of a Vincent Price collection on DVD with an audio commentary by the leading man Ian Ogilvy. Really strong film. When I first saw it, I just thought it was another Vincent Price horror film. And then I realized there's nothing supernatural about it. The character he plays is completely irredeemable, totally corrupt. Um he and Michael Reeves did not get along at all on the set. Uh Michael Reeves wanted Donald Pleasance for the role, and he was left with Vincent Price. So that they did not part friends, although Vincent Price did pen a letter after he saw the film praising Michael Reeves' skill as a director. And as I said, sadly, after the film came out, Reeves was kind of at a loss for what to do next. Uh he was being offered horror films, but he wanted to branch out. Very high-strung, very neurotic, and and sadly, I mean, they call him the James Dean of horror. He only made three films.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah. Again, I've not seen this, but the reputation of this movie is Oh, well, first of all, the reputation of Vincent Price sometimes is a bit of a ham. Oh, yes. Whether deserved or not, we can talk about that later. But um in this film, no ham at all. And that's why apparently he did not get along with Reeves, is Reeves was like, no, we gotta play this straight.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

And so Price plays it cold. And he did later consider it one of his best performances. So did Sam Markov, who was the head of AIP. He couldn't believe how vicious Price was in the film. And those expecting kind of a a more lighter price. You're not going to find it here. He's particularly evil, maybe the most irredeemable character he ever played.

SPEAKER_00 10:11

Yeah, yeah. Well, uh, it's been on my list for a long time, and now that it's available, I've got to be a little bit more. You won't be disappointed. I'm sure you're not going to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 10:18

You may be shocked, but you will not be disappointed. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

I'm a big fan of the the other folk horror film. It's kind of its um, I don't know, brother, uh spiritual brother, maybe blood on Satan's claw, which I think is they're both Tygon, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

Uh and in fact, uh yeah, The Witchfinder General did spawn a few like-minded imitations. It was Mark of the Devil with Herbert Lahm. There was The Bloody Judge with Christopher Lee. This may be faint praise, but it is the probably the most tolerable film Jess Franco ever directed, which for him makes it a masterpiece. Uh but Blood and Satan's Claw, I think, is on par with Witchfinder General. Patrick Boymark, who played Cromwell in Witchfinder General, his last performances as the judge in Blood on Satan's Claw, the two films differ in the sense that Witchfinder General, no supernatural elements, Blood and Satan's Claw, plenty of supernatural elements. Now, when that film is available here, and I've been waiting a long time for that one, that's a classic that really deserves to be rediscovered, but it came in the shadow of Witchfinder General.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You got it one more time. Give me the name of the uh the film that played uh on the double bill with Witchfinder General the Young, the evil, and the savage. Michael Rennie and Mark Damon.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

It was directed by Antonio Margheriti. Antonio Margheriti. Otherwise known as Anthony M. Dawson. Yes. They always seem to pair AIP just had a real knack for pairing the wrong film with the wrong film. And that was this was one of those cases. But what a title. Oh, yes. What a title.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

All right. So uh my first pick is uh again sort of in line with um the more serious price roles. And we would be remiss if we did not put one of the Roger Corman post-cycle films in there. Uh if you're not familiar with that, uh Roger Corman. Corman, the great schlachmeister from the 50s and 60s, who over the years has earned a great deal of respect as a strong filmmaker, and so many people like Spielberg and others have acknowledged their debt to him.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

And he discovered a phenomenal number of filmmakers, Kopolis, Gorsese, Bogdanovich. The list goes on and on.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Yeah. In the 60s, AIP, which is kind of the American B-movie studio, I would say, decided to do a cycle of films based on Edgar Allan Poe's stories. I would say that this was probably in response to the success that Hammer was having in the U.K. and the U.S. with Gothic horror. So they did The Pit and the Pendulum, The House of Usher, The Tomb of Lygia, uh, The Raven, et cetera, et cetera.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

All in color. All in color.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

And most of them starring Vincent Price. Uh and the one I'm going to talk about is from 1964, and it's the Mask of the Red Death.

SPEAKER_03 13:17

The Mask of the Red Death. Personalized by the motion picture screen's Prince of Horror, Vincent Price. Then shouldn't you be on your knees to give thanks? Lavishly plants his corrupting seeds of sin, spreading living terror that not even the unsullied can escape.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

Each man creates his own heaven, his own hell.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

So I was looking up on Letterboxd the uh summary of what is Mask of the Red Death about, and it says, a European prince terrorizes the local peasantry while using his calf castle as a refuge against the Red Death plague that stalks the land. That's that's pretty accurate, I would say. So Price plays uh Prince Prospero. Uh in the first scene, he comes to the village where he rules, and there are two men who sort of are defiant to him, and he's about to kill them when he sees there is an old woman in one of the houses who has the red death. And so he's like, we're getting out of here. So he takes the two men and the young man's fiance, Francesca, who is played by Jane Asher, more on her in just a minute, and he tells his men, burn the village to the ground. We're going to go to the castle, and everybody in the castle will be safe. That's the first 15 minutes. And for the rest of the other hour and 15 minutes of this movie, you're just sort of living life with Prospero as he gets ready for the mask, the masquerade ball that he's giving while protecting the nobles and whoever else happens to be in his castle from the red death. And this is I think kind of um quintessential role for Price. He's smooth, he's urbane, he's totally amoral. You know, he uh I read that Roger Corman shot this uh at Elstree Studios in the U.K., uh, and he said that he was used to having only three weeks to shoot one of these Poe movies, which kind of boggles the mind, obviously. Uh and he said he had five weeks to shoot this one. So he was able to do some stylistic things because he had that extra time. And I think it shows the movie looks really good.

SPEAKER_01 15:37

I think also of the fact that he was in England and part of the Edie plan uh using British talent, he was able to corral some really well-known British or I should say, good if not well-known British actors, Nigel Green, Patrick McGee, to appear in this film and give it a little bit of class. Jane Asher, terrific as the ingenue, Hazel Court, one of her best performances I think ever in any film. Um Price, again, like Witchfinder General, totally amoral, totally wicked. It's interesting because in the other most of the other Poe films, Pit and the Pendulum, House of Usher, Tomb of Lygia, he's not necessarily an out-and-out villain. He's a tortured soul. He's a victim. This one he's torturing souls, and he's having a high-level time doing it. That's the difference between this and Witchfinder General. He has a lot of wicked charm in this.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

This movie really kind of touches on taboos that surprise me for 1964. Uh I mean, the I guess central dramatic question is um will Prospero be able to win Francesca over to his side? Prospero is an out-and-out worshipper of Satan. Trevor Burrus, Jr. He wants her soul. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, very much so. And so they spend a lot of time it's less about sex than it is about winning her soul, I think, you know, because they spend a lot of time, surprising amount of time, talking about the existence of God and what having a ruler like the devil and a s uh uh a decadent tyrant like Prospero, what good that is, how it keeps things from going into chaos.

SPEAKER_06 17:12

You need no doors to find God. If you believe if you believe, my dear Francesca, you are God. Can you look around this world and believe in the goodness of a God who rules it? Famine, pestilence, war, disease, and death they rule this world. There is also love and life and hope. Very little hope, I assure you. No. If a god of love and life ever did exist, he is long since dead.

SPEAKER_00 17:49

And Hazel Court, you mentioned, who is uh was Elizabeth in The Curse of Frankenstein. She's also in another Hammer film, The Man Who Could Cheat Death. Yeah, something of a scream queen for that time. She wants to become the bride of Satan. I mean, she and she goes through this whole sort of ceremony, and it feels like she wants to just sort of get a leg up on Prospero. So I would say the women are written a little bit better than they are in a movie for a movie in 1964.

SPEAKER_01 18:18

And with Corman directing, you could see that also he was being influenced. There are touches of Bergman in this film. Absolutely, yeah. Even even very early examples of 60 psychedelic cinema. Uh toward the end with the the mask, the the actual event itself, I th I detected a little bit of Marat Sad in that in that bit, which was just, I think, about to go on the British stage or had just come out. So Corman was implementing a lot of influences in his work. And this was actually the film, interestingly enough, he'd gotten begrudging praise or a pass by American critics for the earlier Poe films. This film, particularly in England, very well received. I mean, people were looking at him. He's an artist. He's this great visionary director. And he only the next film he did was Tomb of Lygia. For Cormann that was the end of the Poe cycle for him. He never and I don't think he ever worked with Vincent Price. I don't think there was any difference of opinion between them. Corman was just moving on to different things.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Time was up. Mentioning Francesca, Jane Asher, uh, is an actor who had a pretty decent career. She's in Michael Cain's version of Alfie. At the time, she was probably best known as the girlfriend of Paul McCartney. And I read a story that she um that McCartney and Lennon composed I Wanna Hold Your Hand in her basement. But uh, she's quite good here. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Very assertive for kind of a demure character. She's got a lot of backbone.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

She's not just a screaming meme.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

No, no. And there's some nice suspense in this movie. There's a really nice scene where the two male characters sort of play this Russian roulette with poisoned knives. That's it's quite tense. As you mentioned, it is very stylized. I mean, I think it definitely owes a lot to The Seventh Seal by Berkman. And and at the end of the movie, I think he takes some big swings stylistically, and some of them, from a modern perspective, work, and some of them work less well. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 20:19

But they try. He's drawing for something. Yeah. And and revisiting this film, I had to see it, I think, for the most amount of time in that than any of the others. Boy, I was amazed at how good it really was. And in a lot of ways, I thought this could have been a little longer. He could have gone a little deeper with this. Ninety minutes is perfect, but they they could have expl explored, I guess, I don't know what the parameters of permissiveness were. Back in the day, it suggests a lot. But I was amazed, knocked out really at how accomplished it was. And I'm a Corman devotee. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

Yeah. Yeah. I understand this is also probably one of the more faithful to the source material than some of the others. And it also includes um some of Poe's hoptoad in this as well. Aaron Powell Well, you have to remember some of the The Raven was a poem.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

I mean, you to expand something into feature length.

SPEAKER_00 21:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

But for Mask of the Red Death, yes, they were able to uh especially when you look at there were two remakes in the late 1980s which were uh lamentable. Uh this one really is the one to beat.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Aaron Powell Yeah, yeah. And as I said, to me, a quintessential role for Vincent Price. So I'm going to go ahead and do my second one because it kind of leads into Mark's second one uh in a way. And um this is uh we're moving forward in time a little bit to 1971, and a role where Vincent Price uh that great silky voice of his is barely used, and it's uh the abominable Dr. Fibes.

SPEAKER_06 21:55

What lovely music for a murder or Two or three. Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to meet a dear friend.

SPEAKER_05 22:15

Nothing killed you. Nothing shall die.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

So The Abominable Doctor Fives was directed by Robert Fuse, and Robert Fust did a lot of genre films, but he's quite possibly best known as being the director of I see seven episodes of the Avengers TV series. Now, if you're not familiar with that, this has nothing to do with Marvel's The Avengers. This is a very quirky, very British, very stylish spy show. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And still very popular.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

It is a cult show. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

Absolutely. With Patrick McNee, it introduced, really kind of made Diana Rigg a star. Honor Blackman, she went from that to being a Bond.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

The Avengers is a really it it it's overlooked a little bit and it shouldn't be. It holds up. It's timeless in its own way. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 23:04

But it is about style. Absolutely. The art direction of the Avengers, the quirkiness of it, and so much of that comes out in the abominable Dr. Fibes. This movie is a triumph of style. It's a macabre dark comedy. And I was surprised to see that Time Out London at some point put it in the 100 greatest horror films of all time. Anyway, in this, Price plays Dr. Anton Fibes. And I'm not going to tell you too much about this movie because part of the fun of it is figuring things out. But he plays Fibes, and when we first see him, he's in his Art Deco Lair. This takes place in the 1920s. He is playing his organ like the Phantom of the Opera as the movie opens. He is accompanied by his animatronic band. His only companion is a very fashionable young woman named Bulnavia, who does not speak the entire movie but assists him with his nefarious plans. And she's played by Virginia North, who did quite a few things, including the Bond film on Her Majesty's Secret Service. I think she was a model at one point, but she her the way she dresses is spectacular. This movie looks absolutely spectacular.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

Trevor Burrus, Jr. I should give special mention to Brian Eatwell, who was the uh uh uh designer of the film who had worked with Fused on the on the Avengers. So Brian Eatwell definitely gets a uh a mention here because the film looks terrific. Spectacular. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And like the Avengers, it it takes place in kind of an alternate universe just a few shades away from ours.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Right. So in the first scene, um after that setup, Fibes and Vulnavia get in his uh his Fibes mobile is the only way I can describe it, because it has uh shades that have his profile on either side of the car, uh, and go to uh a man's house where they in the middle of the night release a horde of bats into his bedroom and he's killed. So a series of murders begin to take place. So part of the fun of this movie's uh is the murders that Pibes commits, why he is committing them, and specifically why he is choosing these methods. So after the first one, a Scotland Yard detective begins to try to unravel these, and he has this great line: A brass unicorn has been catapulted across a London street and impaled an eminent surgeon. Words fail me, gentlemen. It's that kind of movie, right? So Price is really physical here. He's playing a man whose skin was completely burned, but he's wearing a Vincent Price mask, which we see him sort of put on. He speaks, when he speaks, he speaks through a a sort of a throat microphone that plays out through a Victrola, an old time. He's a musicologist, so he's familiar with acoustics. Exactly. So it's almost a silent role. And one of the fun things I love about this movie is Price adjusts his mask, his Vincent Price's mask. It's really it's great. I I read a quote he said that he had so much fun making this movie. But in order for it to the comedy to work, he had to play it very seriously. And whenever he would crack up on set, he would ruin his making. The movie looks great. Uh it's a I I think it's a a bit of a departure for Price. Again, very physical. I am not a fan of these movies, but I can't imagine a world where Dr. Fives is not an influence on the Saw films.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 26:33

No question. This it feels exactly like that. Uh it's got Joseph Cotton, who of course is in Citizen Kane and the magnificent Amberson.

SPEAKER_01 26:41

I think he brought a lot there was talk of Peter Cushing playing the role, which would have been fine. But for Joseph Cotton to play, especially in this country, here's a big name. Uh Citizen Kane, Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte, only a few years before. This is a big name, uh kind of up the profile of the film, and it was a big hit uh both here and uh abroad.

SPEAKER_00 27:03

Dr. Fibes, uh uh his wife is played by Carolyn Monroe, who is the queen of sixties and seventies British horror. And Mark, you interviewed her at one point, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:17

I did, and and uh I have to give this away because Mrs. Fibes really doesn't have a whole lot to do except lay in her glass coffin looking gorgeous, which Carolyn Monroe could do in her sleep, which is and she laughed when I asked her about it. She said it was the easiest role she ever played. Um She was under contract to hammer, so she could not take billing. I don't know if they would have billed her or not, because she has nothing to say. But she loved to work at with Vincent Price and told me that one morning, as they were laying her in the coffin, he comes out with a tray of homemade pate for a little snack and all this, and she thought it was just delightful as she collected a salary laying in a glass coffin with her eyes closed. And she did that in the sequel as well.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Yes. Um there is a sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again. And this film, this is hard to get right now. It's not streaming anywhere. There is a copy on YouTube, but there is a nice Blu-ray. I think it's from uh is it from Shout Factory or Kino Lorber, I'm not sure. It has both films. Uh so that's really probably the best way to see it.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

It's not played for seriously at all, nor was the sequel. It's played for yucks. It's a tribute to Vincent Price as a horror story.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Yeah. It's not over the top, though. I mean it's not over the top in the way they acted. I don't think everybody is so. But certainly the dead murders are are kind of um extreme and funny. Yeah. Wildly funny. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

But not not they're inventive and very Avengers was kind of inventive like that. Yeah. That's a really good thing. Or the Bond films later became Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:01

The Abominable Dr. Vibes is like 180 degrees from Witchfinder General. Yes. And sort of leads into uh Mark's second film. Do you want to go ahead and start with that one? Aaron Ross Powell Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

I have turned a lot of people onto a lot of movies in my lifetime, including It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Twilight's Last Gleaming, Theater of Blood may be the one I've turned the most people on to the most times. I have spread the gospel of this film since the first time I saw it.

SPEAKER_06 29:30

Now is the winter of our discontent.

SPEAKER_02 29:37

Critics are likely to make animations, but are you saying that some lunatic in the theater might be trying to kill us all?

SPEAKER_03 29:45

Play fails. Career is ruined. Plenty of motivation there, shooting. We therefore commit his body to the ground. At last the headline.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

His head.

SPEAKER_06 30:00

He's out for you all.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

And the plot line, spoiler or not, it's very simple. Vincent Price plays Edward Lionheart, a Shakespearean actor, thought dead, who is now exacting revenge upon the critics. And doing so through the various ways depicted or suggested by the plays of William Shakespeare. As a horror fan, a Vincent Price fan, later to become a film critic and a Shakespeare devotee, this film is Mana from Heaven for me. It is very much a black comedy. If The Abominable Dr. Fibes was a tribute to Vincent Price as a horror star, Theatre of Blood is a tribute to him as a horror star and as an actor. It goes the extra mile, and not just an actor, a Shakespearean actor. Now, I don't think I have to tell you, Michael, playing Shakespeare, directing Shakespeare, no mean feat. You've got to know what you're doing. The way Price plays this, he's a bad Shakespearean actor. That's the brilliance of it. And the way that he knocks off his critics, who are sometimes played flamboyantly or quirkily. I've met critics in my life, and I am a critic. Some of us are quirky. It just hits all of the right notes. It is R-rated. Uh the death scenes may surprise some people in their graphic gore. But then again, Shakespeare, his plays were known to be pretty bloody uh then and now. This film also has one of the most amazing casts, many of them veterans of Shakespearean theater and film. You've got Diana Rigg, never better. This was one of her favorite performances. Coral Brown, who later married Vincent Price. He used to joke, they met in a graveyard. Indeed, they did in a scene in this film. Harry Andrews, Dennis Price, Milo O'Shea, Robert Morley, Robert Coote, Eric Sykes, Madeline Smith, Ian Hendry, Michael Hordern, an amazing cast. The Shakespearean references are so fast and furious that every time I watch this movie, a different one will suddenly jump out. There's a scene where a critic is reading a paper. It's March 15th. It's the eyes of March. As the camera pans down the newspaper, there's a smaller headline that says, Initiative on Ulster Nears. Gee, what play would that be from? So it is I I just think it's a phenomenal picture. I uh I quote this film left and right. When I worked at Piedmont Books, the gal that worked there, her name's Amber, she was a Vincent Price fan, loved, and she loves contemporary horror films, loves Shakespeare. I said, You've got to watch this movie. And she she just flipped forward. Everybody I've ever shown it to, they were like, Where has this movie been all my life? And I'm like, I've got it. Price considered it probably the best performance he ever gave. It gave him his wife. You know, they were married after this. There's really the only problem, like I said, there's a couple of continuity errors. And the director Douglas Hickox, who was the father of Anthony Hickox, whom you and Richard Claybaugh discussed, uh Anthony Hickox having made the waxwork film, Douglas Hickox, good director, but he kind of almost a little too mod. So this film a little updated in its touches, kind of a little grittier than it needs to be, could have had a little more elegance to it. But I think it's it's just a a marvelous uh film. And and my friend Kevin Thomas, the longtime critic for the LA Times, he wrote, and he's completely right at the time, if the Academy took this kind of movie seriously, Vincent Price could well be eyeballing an Oscar nomination. He thought it was this was the career capper for Vincent Price, and I don't disagree at all.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

Well, this is kind of the perfect movie for me and you since I'm an actor who's done Shakespeare and you're a critic, and I would never kill you, though, Mark. No. But if I did kill you, I would kill you in one of these kind of ways. Yes. Truly horrible. You've read my reviews.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

You've you've never taken them to heart, I'm sure, back in the good old days.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

Maybe I would cook somebody in a pie and serve it to you. I don't know. Or maybe cook you in a pie. Serve it to somebody.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

I have to actually point something out of all the deaths in this film, and they are graphic and they are grisly. The uh Titus Andronicus bit is the one that seems to appall people the most. And I go, with all you've seen, and I won't give away the the joke on this, that's the most disturbing thing.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Titus Andronicus is a gore fest. Oh, yeah. Absolutely, no question. Uh it's uh Yeah, I'm not sure that there's stuff in Titus Andronicus that maybe doesn't quite play as well as it used to, and it's not a great play in terms of poetry, but it's number one. It's a blood bass in gore. Uh no question about that. Yeah, Theater Blood is is a blast. Dinah Rigg is really great in everything, but she's really, really good here. And I do you think I mean, since uh his name is Edward Lionheart, that's the character's name that Price plays, who is a ham. It's almost a little bit of a parody of Vincent Price himself, you know?

SPEAKER_01 35:29

But it also shows his versatility. There is something about him wearing the guise of a gay London hairdresser with an enormous afro, quoting is it Richard the Richard the uh what is it? Henry VI, the dunking scene. Shakespeare shows up in the most amazing places in this in this film, and and it really is a tribute to, as Price would call him, the immortal bard. Indeed. Wherever he is, I think Shakespeare would have appreciated this.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

No question. Uh if I'm not mistaken, uh this was turned into a play, uh, which I mean is perfect for the theater uh in terms of just I mean uh ideal for a theater audience. And the great news about Theater of Blood is it is available uh uh pretty much wherever you want to stream it. Uh there's also uh a nice Blu-ray, I think, as well, from I believe from Keno Lorber. High recommendations for Theater of Blood. And I happened to come across an interview, uh a British interview that Price did while he was filming Theater of Blood. Uh and Fibes had just come out. Uh and th those two movies do share uh some similarities in that they are a series of murders, uh creative murders, right? And they're both sort of black comedies. Oh, yeah. Very much so. But in this interview, he said the one thing that horror films have to have is logic. Uh that he felt that the audience has to know why the characters are doing what they're doing, and something that he was he said he was a bit of a stickler for. But he also said that horror movies of that period he felt were more send-ups and parody, that the horror had to be exciting, but there also had to be comic relief. And so one thing I was doing, I was thinking about the Mask of the Red Death and that character, and I was thinking, okay, well, what would that character be like if you put Peter Cushing in that role, or if you put Christopher Lee in that role? They would both be great, of course. Christopher Lee would probably skew even darker, I think, as Prospero. Cushing, who had that sort of innate charm. I'm not sure he would have been as convincing. Trevor Burrus, Jr. I think you're right. I think you're right. But Price, even though Prospero is so evil, there's something, a charm about him, uh again, a smoothness.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

Well Price had played so many heavies up until then, even the Ten Commandments, uh, where Cushing usually played nice guys until he played Baron Frankenstein.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

Uh but Price was well versed in the art of villainy.

unknown 38:00

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Yeah. What do you think is the difference between those three actors if you had uh say one thing?

SPEAKER_01 38:06

Um Price was probably the most theatrical, but then again he had the most stage experience. Cushing probably the most physical, simply because props Peter and all of that. He had a he had that energy to him. And also something of a an intensity. Uh and Lee was told dark and gruesome. I mean presence alone. They were different in a lot of ways. They complemented each other very well. The the one film they share a lot of scenes in, it's not the world's greatest film, House of the Long Shadows. It is nice to see them bounce off each other. There's a clear respect and affection for each other. And it's interesting to see that chemistry, even though the the film is rather indifferent.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

I know that Lee and Price were friends. I'm assuming they were friends with uh Cushing as well. Since everybody was born in May. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Since uh everybody was a friend with uh with Peter Cushing. So uh you cannot go wrong uh with one of these films. Mark, you want to just talk about your uh your two picks one more time?

SPEAKER_01 39:07

Uh my two picks, Vincent Price, Witch Finder General, directed by Michael Reeves, and most particularly Theater of Blood, the All-Star, Bloodspattered Shakespearean send-up, which is an absolute gem.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

And my two were uh The Mask of the Red Death, which is from the uh Corman Poe cycle from 1964, and 1971's The Abominable Dr. Fibes, uh, which, as we mentioned, has a sequel, Dr. Fibes Rises Again, where the comedy is kind of pushed up a little bit, but you do get Peter Cushing as in Dr. Fives Rises Again.

SPEAKER_01 39:47

The second one isn't quite as good, but it's well worth seeing simply because of Vincent Price. And actually, Robert Quari as his antagonist gives one of his best performances. Yeah, I was just gonna say that. The sequel is is the first film you can't beat, but the second one, Robert Fused again at the helm. Worth watching.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Mark, thank you once again for joining us. A Glutton for Punishment. Uh, I appreciate you being on here so much. And folks, we would love it if you would follow us on our social media. We're most active on Instagram at Friday Night Frights Podcast. We post a lot of different stuff that's uh different to the podcast. Uh recently just ranked my top nine hammer draculas. Do you want to guess what was number one, Mark? Horror of Dracula. Oh my God, how did you get it? And with second brides of Dracula? Very good. You'll not get number three, though. Taste the blood. Oh my god, you got it. You nailed it. Amazing. Anyway, thanks again for being on the show, Mark. And let me just say, folks, if you are a critic, be careful what you say about actors, because it could come back to bite you. See you next time.

SPEAKER_05 40:52

And though you fight to stay alive, your body starts to shiver. For no mere mortal can resist the evil of the can you dig into the