There was a time – and bear with me now – when horror movies weren’t so unpleasant. The horror genre used to take audiences by the hand, luring them into a world of morbid fascination and moral corruption. The supernatural was undeniably appealing, for all its monstrousness, and it spoke with a sharp crackling voice emerging from a mouth framed by an oh-so-devilish goatee. That voice came from one Vincent Leonard Price, Jr., a prolific character actor who rose to cultural dominance in the 1960s after finally submitting his career to one classy, blockbuster frightfest after another. Vincent Price’s spooky legacy is now thoroughly cemented. I suspect young, burgeoning fans of the macabre are intimately familiar with his bemused theatrical persona whether they’ve seen a single one of his features or not, thanks to his delicious imitability and caricatures in one cartoon after another.
Now, six of Vincent Price’s most notable – although not necessarily best – horror films are in a single, beautifully remastered Blu-ray set. The Vincent Price Collection comes courtesy of Scream Factory, who are currently doing wonderful work restoring and giving the five-star special feature treatment to one cult and/or genre classic after another. Although hardly comprehensive – you won’t find The Tingler or Theater of Blood here, unfortunately – The Vincent Price Collection provides a broad overview of Price’s many gothic horror films under Roger Corman, a prolific but usually slipshod director who did much of his best work with the actor. Their first Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, The Fall of the House of Usher, was a big success that spurned many joint efforts adapting the work of the first “master of horror,” and on one occasion his successor H.P. Lovecraft, although his contributions were minimalized in favor of the more marketable name of Poe.
The films included in The Vincent Price Collection are as follows: The Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Haunted Palace, The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Witchfinder General. The first four features come two-to-a-disc (The Pit and the Pendulum and The Masque of the Red Death, and The Fall of the House of Usher and The Haunted Palace). Neither The Abominable Dr. Phibes nor Witchfinder General were directed by Corman, and each of them represent a later, more violent evolution of the horror genre. They each get their own discs, but every film comes with a broad and comprehensive complement of special features, all highly recommended.
But the best part of this set – besides the films, which look incredible in high-definition – is that, with the exception of Dr. Phibes, each film comes with an introduction as well as final thoughts from Vincent Price himself, recorded for Iowa public television in 1982. Although clearly recorded on video, and hardly restored for this set, Price seems ecstatic to share his films with viewers, offering readings of Poe, behind the scenes memories and a curious little smirk as he teases the nightmares you’re about to watch as he rests comfortably in front of a fireplace. If the films in The Vincent Price Collection weren’t going to make you fall in love with the persona of Vincent Price, then Price seems almost guaranteed to do so himself.
As for the films themselves, they’re mostly exceptional, or at least spooky, with the one disappointing entry being – perhaps – the most historically significant. So its inclusion can hardly be said to bring the whole set down. A brief look at the terrors that await you:
For horror fans of all ages, The Vincent Price Collection offers a loving salute to one of the most memorable characters from the genre, as well as all the characters that character played.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
The Vincent Price Collection Blu-Ray
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The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
The best film in Roger Corman’s Poe series stars Vincent Price as Nicholas Medina, whose wife dies under mysterious circumstances after falling under the spell of Medina’s castle, which was used by his father (also Price) as a torture chamber during The Spanish Inquisition.
Corman needed to pad out a pretty thin story to turn “The Pit and the Pendulum” into a movie, but screenwriter Richard Matheson saves the source material for a spectacular climax to a genuinely creepy mystery that would have probably made Poe proud.
Strong performances, disturbing sets and a real corker of a story make The Pit and the Pendulum the best film Roger Corman and Vincent Price ever made together, and one of the best films on either artist’s individual resume.
CraveOnline Rating: 9/10
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The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
Roger Corman had his job cut out for him in padding Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” into a feature length film, but did an admirable job by incorporating seduction, witchcraft and another Poe story, “Hop-Frog,” just for the hell of it.
Price plays Prince Prospero, a Satan-worshipping aristocrat hiding his rich friends from the plague and tempting the virginal Jane Asher to a life of hedonism and sin.
The Masque of the Red Death is sprawling and unfocused, but never boring, and director of photography Nicholas Roeg (himself the future director of Don't Look Now and The Witches) transforms it into Corman’s best-looking film by far.
CraveOnline Rating: 7.5/10
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The Haunted Palace (1963)
Inaccurately promoted as an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation (it’s actually based on “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” by H.P. Lovecraft), The Haunted Palace finds Vincent Price inheriting a family castle and falling prey to the ghost of his alchemist ancestor.
Spooky sets and emotional performances from the whole the cast make The Haunted Palace a fun, sometimes even scary entry in Price’s horror canon, and the finale boasts an impressive set piece. Watch out for Lon Chaney Jr. as the villain’s accomplice, and a disturbing blink-and-you’ll-miss-it Lovecraftian monster at the very end.
CraveOnline Rating: 7/10
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The Fall of the House of Usher (1960)
The first of the hit Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe adaptations is also, sadly, the worst, with Vincent Price playing the melancholy Roderick Usher, who will seemingly stop at nothing to keep his sister Madeline (Myrna Fahey) from marrying the dashing Philip Winthrop (Mark Damon) and carrying on the cursed Usher family bloodline.
The plot is thin, and even the dialogue seems padded with portentous pauses just to get the film up to its scant 79 minute running time. Price is just fine, but the rest of the cast makes no impression whatsoever in this tedious, fusty period piece with only its historical significance to recommend it.
CraveOnline Rating: 4/10
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The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
The 1970s brought a more gauche theatricality and violence to Vincent Price’s horror films, and The Abominable Dr. Phibes may be the finest example.
Price plays the title villain, a professional organist and super-scientist who exacts methodical, biblical revenge on the doctors who let his wife die on the operating table. Joseph Cotton plays one of the potential victims, Price only speaks through a primitive voice box, and director Robert Fuest luxuriates over every clockwork musical number, and every grim detail of Dr. Phibes’ death traps. So what if the film completely rewrites The Old Testament to suit its needs?
The Abominable Dr. Phibes plays like the biography of a classic Batman villain, set in a world with no worthy opponent. There's no sympathy for the victims, only a playful, demonic urge to see this proto-Jigaw's ghoulish design come to fruition.
CraveOnline Rating: 7.5/10
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Witchfinder General (1968)
Also released as The Conqueror Worm (to falsely make it look like an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, much like The Haunted Palace), Witchfinder General stars Price as real-life witchhunter Matthew Hopkins, who traveled the English countryside torturing and killing witches, knowing full well that all his victims were innocent.
The arch theatricality is absent here; director Michael Reeves revels instead in realistic human cruelty in a sparse, far-from-gothic setting. That makes the (mostly) true story seem all the more plausible, and all the more tragic and unsettling.
Vincent Price said his performance in Witchfinder General was the best of any of his horror movies; the film itself follows suit. It’s as if you can see the horror genre evolve from spook stories to grim portrayals of man’s inhumanity to man over the course of a single feature. Witchfinder General is an underappreciated horror classic.
CraveOnline Rating: 9/10
