Here is the cover art for the 20 October Blu-ray/DVD release in the US from Kino Lorber of The Oblong Box. Interestingly, according to The Vincent Price Exhibit curator Rick Squires, it wasn't the first time that American International Pictures had used the same illustration. As you can see below, it was used as pre-publicity for the US release of Witchfinder General (The Conqueror Worm).
Kino's Oblong Box release will include an audio commentary from film historian Steve Haberman and one very exciting extra that I have never seen before, the 10-minute 1969 World Wide Adventures short Annabel Lee narrated by Vincent Price. Transferred from an original 35mm print, this has come from the personal collection of Price fan and Drive In Super Monster-Rama head honcho, George Reis. Now this is something worth checking out.
This great ad comes from the original American International Pictures campaign pressbook that was given out to film distributors to help sell the 1970 sci-fi-horror-thriller starring Vincent Price, and featuring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.
This coming November, the Vincent Price London Legacy Tour will screen the cult film as part of the Master of Menace, Lover of Life event at Barts Pathology Museum on Friday 6 November, which will be preceeded by a special presentation on Vincent's life by his daughter, Victoria. Won't you join us?
Vincent Price and Tab Hunter square up in the 1965 AIP fantasy tale, War-Gods of the Deep, co-starring Mary Poppins’ David Tomlinson and Susan Hart (Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine), which gets a newly re-mastered US release in HD on 11 August from Kino Lorber Studio Classics.
This faux Jules Verne adventure was titled City Under the Sea in the UK in a bid to cash in AIP’s Poe cycle of films which officially ended when Roger Corman jumped ship after the excellent Tomb of Ligeia. It was also the last feature by the once great director Jacques Tourneur, who also helmed 1964's The Comedy of Terrors. Check out my review of the Blu-ray release HERE
Released in the US on 26 May 1965 and in the UK in June of the same year, War-Gods is nothing as exciting as the synopsis that I found on Amazon makes out, but which echoes AIP's OTT exploitation marketing techniques of the period… 'This turbulent thriller pits gill-men against he-men, with a sexy woman caught between and surges with excitement from initial fade-in to climatic fadeout. When a slimy, gilled monster from the deep kidnaps the beautiful Jill (Hart) it'll take her boyfriend (Hunter), his sidekick (Tomlinson) and his sidekick's sidekick – a rooster – to get her back! Following her trail into the deep, they are shocked to discover a lost underwater city, ruled by a ruthless captain (Price) and an army of mutated sea creatures, who imprison the hapless landlubbers... while a restless volcano threatens to bury them all!'
For me, the only reason to add this damp squib to my Vincent Price
film collection is the special feature – an interview with Tab Hunter. Can't wait to hear his version of how this got made. Expect a full review in August.
THE ARROW UK BLU-RAY/DVD RELEASE The Comedy of Terrors is presented its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 with mono 2.0 audio
(uncompressed PCM on Blu-ray). The HD master was made available by MGM
via Hollywood Classics, and includes optional English subtitles.
THE EXTRAS
• Audio commentary with David Del Valle and Rapid
Heart TV's David DeCocteau. Del Valle dedicates this commentary to actress Joyce Jameson, a great friend to the film historian who
tragically took her life in 1987, aged 54. My full analysis of the commentary is coming soon.
• Vincent Price: My Life and Crimes: This is the unseen alternate cut of the 1987 David Del Valle interview that was previously released on DVD in 2002 as The Sinister Image. An historic testament to Price, despite the ageing video source material.
• Whispering in Distant Chambers:
17-min video essay by David Cairns, exploring the recurrent themes
(like the 'nocturnal walk') and stylistic motifs of Tourneur's work. This is quite informative, nicely narrated by Fiona Watson, with Cairns
quoting the director.
• Richard Matheson Storyteller - Comedy of TerrorsThis featurette on the late screenwriter also appears on the Shout! Blu-ray and on the older MGM Midnite Movies DVD.
• Original US theatrical trailerThe film looks racier and scarier than it actually was in this unrestored trailer.
• Collector’s booklet featuring a critical analysis of the film by Chris Fujiwara, author of Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall, plus archive stills and posters. Nice litte primer for classic horror newbies and film studies students.
• Newly commissioned artwork by digital artist Paul Shipper. See more of his work (here)
OTHER RELEASES
Also available on Blu-ray from Scream Factory (from October 2014), an
imprint of Shout! Factory, as part of their Vincent Price Collection II
bundle, which includes a Iowa Public Television introduction with Price,
but no audio commentary. Blu-ray reviewers have praised Arrow’s
transfer over this one, both for its excellent print and audio transfer, and for the fact that a couple of seconds that were missing in the Shout! release are present here.
A German Blu-ray was also released in May 2013.
‘Every
shroud has a silver lining when old friends get together for a real
swinging blast of grave robbery… poisoning, and multiple mayhem!’
So declared the promo poster for American International Pictures' horror spoof, The Comedy of Terrors,
which famously brought together four great names from the horror hall
of fame. In the early-1960s, AIP
were riding high with their winning formula of director Roger Corman,
star Vincent Price, screenwriter Richard Matheson, composer Les Baxter,
et all. Following their full-on Colorscope Gothic horrors, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum, AIP added some comic relief in 1962's Tales of Terror, in a segment called The Black Cat, whose highlight was an improvised wine tasting scene between Price and Lorre.
Because the two spooks gelled so well, director Corman gave Price and Lorre the chance to do it all over again in his 1963 fantasy spoof, The Raven.
Out of that was born a gruesome twosome comedy duo that were like an Abbott
& Costello for the drive-in generation. Wanting to tap those funny bones again, AIP gave
Matheson free reign to conjure up another vehicle for them. The result
was The Comedy of Terrors (originally called Graveside Story), which was shot over 15 days, starting 4 September 1963, and released in US cinemas on 22 January 1964.
‘Comedy
and terror are closely allied. My job as an actor is to try and make
the unbelievable believable and the despicable delectable’ Vincent Price
As the roguish Waldo Trumbull, Price is at his ‘delicious boozy hammiest’ - according to the New York Herald Tribune
– and has a whale of a time making the most of Matheson’s venomous
dialogue – in particular his sardonic put-downs on Lorre's wanted
fugitive Felix (who is a terrible coffin-maker, I might add),
while their slapstick misadventures evoke Laurel and
Hardy – Price even gets to reappropriate their famous catchphrase: ‘A
fine mess you’ve made of things again!’
Sadly, this would be the last time that the two pals got to act together, as the 59-year-old Lorre was in poor health during the shoot (his regular stunt double Harvey Parry did all of his action scenes wearing a mask), and died just two months after the film’s release. Fittingly, it was Price who delivered the eulogy.
Interestingly in this film, Price and Lorre reverse the roles they played in Tales of Terror, and again there's Joyce Jameson playing a buxom mistreated wife with a drunk for a hubby. As
Amaryllis, an unfulfilled opera star with the ‘vocal emissions of a
laryngitic cow’, Jameson hits a real high with her
‘off-key’ singing during a funeral service, while her verbal sparring
with Price is eminently quotable.
Veterans Rathbone and Karloff are also game for a laugh in thisArsenic and Old Lace-styled
affair (and shares a similar structure as that classic 1941 play which famously sent up Karloff's horror
screen persona). Rathbone is exceptional as the
Shakespearean-spouting cataleptic who refuses to ‘shuffle off his mortal
coil’, while he also gets to play up his thespian image and swashbuckling days (the sword play being an homage to 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood.)
At 76, and suffering from arthritis, Karloff was not up to playing Mr
Black, a role which was originally offered to him. But as the
endearingly senile Amos, who somehow manages to avoid the poison that
Waldo offers him at every turn, Karloff is only one who keeps the farce
from taking full flight.
The
downside to Tourneur's film, however (it was the director's
second-to-last feature before some TV work and then retiring), is that it's rather stagey and
old-fashioned (especially for the 1960s teen crowd that it was aimed
at). It remains, however, a firm favourite of mine – a gleefully
ghoulish slapstick affair with a classy never-to-be-repeated cast of old
Hollywood greats.
This fine caricature by Jack Manning was available as part of AIP’s original marketing campaign.
DID YOU KNOW?
Richard Matheson scripted a follow-up called Sweethearts and Horrors,
that was to feature the fearsome four once again, but it was shelved
due to Lorre’s death and the film’s poor box-office takings. The
unfilmed screenplay ended up being released in 2009 as part of Matheson's collected works, entitled Visions Deferred.
THE SCORE
The music is by celebrated composer Les Baxter (who also did the US scores for Mario Bava's Black Sabbath and The Evil Eye in 1963, as well as Corman's The Raven).
The complete mono session which was recorded in November 1963 at Goldwyn Studios
was uncovered from the MGM vaults last year and released on a now sold
out CD.
RHUBARB | THE CAT IN THE HOUSE OF UNHOLY HORROR
Cleopatra is played by one of Hollywood’s most celebrated animal stars, Rhubarb (aka Orangey) – a 12-pound marmalade tabby who won two American Humane Association’s PATSY awards for 1951’s Rhubarb and 1961’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (in which he has almost seven minutes of screen time), and who also appeared in The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) and Village of the Giants (1965). In The Comedy of Terrors, Rhubarb gets an inspired scene in the closing credits.
My review of Arrow's UK Blu-ray/DVD release - coming soon!
Christmas has come early for Vincent Price fans (like myself) and aficionados of Roger Corman's 1960s-lensed films inspired by the feverish imaginings of Edgar Allan Poe, as Arrow Films unwrap their Six Gothic Tales Blu-ray box-set (due out on 8 December).
Included in the box-set is 1960's The Fall of the House of Usher and 1961's The Pit and the Pendulum (both released separately earlier this year); 1962's Tales of Terror (which adapts Poe’s Morella, The Black Cat and The Facts in the Case of Mr Valdemar); 1963's The Raven (a comic take on Poe's poem co-starring Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre); 1964's The Haunted Palace (the first screen adaptation of a HP Lovecraft story); and the necromantic masterpiece The Tomb of Ligeia, which ended the Poe/Price/Corman cycle in 1965.
This limited edition run of just 2000 copies features all six features in high definition Blu-ray (based on the MGM HD masters, with additional restoration overseen by Arrow), with original uncompressed mono PCM audio and optional English subtitles. The special features are pretty impressive (click here for the full list) and there's a hardback collector’s book which features full repros of three comic tie-ins as well as some insightful essays on the films. Eagle eyes will notice a slight change to the packaging, as Roger Corman's name has been dropped since I last did a post about this release back in October.
While there are no plans for any Steelbook releases for these titles, unlike The House of Usher and The Pit & the Pendulum, Arrow will be releasing The Haunted Palace and The Tomb of Ligeia as standalone Blu-ray releases on 23 February 2015, featuring some wicked cover designs; while Jacques Tourneur's 1963 spoof The Comedy of Terrors (one of my favourites) will be out on 16 February. The Raven will also be released in 2015, but no date has been set, and the same goes for Tales of the Terror.
And if you are wondering why Masque of the Red Death isn't included in this box-set - ask StudioCanal. They own the print and denied Arrow's request to sublicense it for this release. Silly them! Don't they know there are some serious completists out there! Me included.
I'll be posting reviews of the box-set and its contents shortly, so watch this space!
Amazon Order Link Here £61.25 Arrow Video Order Link Here £69.99 Zavvi Order Link Here £59.99
From the Merchant of Menace, Vincent Price and the King of the Bs, Roger Corman come six Gothic tales inspired by the pen of Edgar Allan Poe and adapted by acclaimed fantasy screenwriter Richard Matheson. Included isThe Fall of the House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum (previously released separately, check out my reviews by clicking on the titles); Tales of Terror (which adapts Poe’s Morella, The Black Cat and The Facts in the Case of M Valdemar); The Raven (a comic take on Poe's poem co-starring Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre); The Haunted Palace (which reworks HP Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward); and the necromantic masterpiece The Tomb of Ligeia, which ended the Poe/Price/Corman cycle.
Due for release on 8 December, but available to pre-order now, the Arrow Films box-set is a limited edition run of just 2000 copies, featuring all six features in high definition blu-ray (1080p), with original uncompressed mono PCM audio and optional English subtitles. The special features have yet to be announced, but will include a 60min documentary about Roger Corman, as well as trailers, reversible sleeves featuring original and new artwork and a 200-page collector’s book. As Usher and Pit are already available as standalone releases, the other four titles will also be available separately at a later date. There are no plans for any Steelbook releases of these titles.
Amazon Order Link Here £84.99
Arrow Video Order Link Here £69.99
Zavvi Order Link Here £59.99 (or £53.99 by using the code 10OFF50)
The Greatest Terror Tale Ever Told!
16th-century Spanish nobleman Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price) is a haunted man: he fears his late wife Elizabeth (Barbara Steele) was prematurely interred and now stalks his gloomy seaside castle as a vengeful spirit. But he’s mistaken. Elizabeth is very much alive and is using a childhood trauma – Nicholas witnessed his mother being entombed alive by his inquisitor father as a child – to drive him insane. But her sick plan works only too well – Nicholas goes over the edge and becomes his own raving mad father, which puts the lives of Elizabeth’s brother Francis (John Kerr) and the rest Medina household in mortal peril…
Bring me my pendulum, kiddies! Roger Corman’s second stab at Edgar Allan Poe, 1961’s Pit and the Pendulum, is a wilder, darker, more violent ride than the previous year’s The Fall of the House of Usher. Aiming to repeat that film’s success, Corman used the same team and stylistic design, even the same story. But he ended up crafting a Gothic masterpiece that’s definitely its own beast and another commercial success in his Poe/Price cycle of films.
Again Richard Matheson was called on to flesh out Poe’s original 1842 tale, which essentially was a monologue about the torments suffered by a prisoner at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. While not pure Poe (you have to watch the great extra on this release for that), the film certainly has a Poe-esque atmosphere about it: all dread and madness draped in mauve cobwebs and rococo furnishings.
Floyd Crosby captures this with some wildly fluid camerawork and rich colour cinematography, while Daniel Haller’s art direction comes to satanic fore in the scenes involving the titular rat-infested pit and blood stained pendulum (which was 18ft-long and weighed over a ton). Les Baxter’s minimal electronic score, meanwhile, lends the film a schizophrenic air – beginning with the film’s lurid liquid sky opening titles, which makes you think you are entering a terrifying acid trip.
While Crosby’s camera has full reign of Haller’s superb castle interiors, Vincent Price really lets loose with a performance that’s become as iconic as the film’s nightmarish set-pieces. Watching him go from morbidly depressed to murderously deranged while spewing Matheson’s fruity dialogue is a hoot. It’s also what made audiences want to come back year after year. If 1960's House of Usher officially launched Price's Master of Menace persona, Pit and the Pendulum most certainly crowned him the new king of Horror. This was what seeing ‘a Vincent Price’ movie was all about.
Price, whose first appearance in the film is ‘like a ghost in an amusement park funhouse’ according to Tim Lucas in his audio commentary, certainly outshines the likes of the stiff John Kerr (who later ditched acting to become a doctor), Luana Anders (who looks lovely, but that’s all) and Antony Carbone (who looks too much like Kerr to bother with), while Barbara Steele shows her mettle as the new horror queen with her sleek feline-like performance as Price’s scheming ‘dead’ wife. While some critics felt Price overdid it, director Corman thought his star was on the mark: ‘He was able to convey the intensity and the madness of the character, bringing it to its fullest extent without going over the top’.
[SPOILER'S AHEAD] The sequences which follow Price being lured down into the crypt to the grisly, heart-stopping finale (Steele gets locked up in an iron maiden, Kerr is almost cut in half by the razor-sharp pendulum, and Price tumbles into the pit) are the film’s visual highlights. And the final shots of Price glaring up out of the pit with his dead eyes open and Steele’s eyes peering helplessly from within the iron maiden have stayed with me for years. They also had a huge impact on other fans, including director John Landis, who said: 'It scared the shit out of me! The ending is amazing… I’ve deliberately never seen that movie again. Not so much because it scared me, but because I know it couldn’t possibly be that good, you know?'
On its original release, the film, which was made in just 15 days on a budget of US$300,000, earned close to US$2million and became a hit with both critics and audiences alike, with the plaudits ranging from ‘a physically stylish, imaginatively photographed horror film’ (Variety) to ‘a thoroughly creepy sequence of horrors’ (New Yorker) and - my favourite - 'Engagingly cornball insanity-in-the-castle hokum, with Vincent Price in fine eyeball-rolling, scenery-chomping form.' (Joe Dante, Castle of Frankenstein). Even American International Pictures chief, Sam Arkoff praised it, saying: ‘I thought it was really good – the best of the Poes’.
THE ARROW BLU-RAY RELEASE Arrow Video's high definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation is transferred from original film elements by MGM, featuring original uncompressed PCM mono audio, optional isolated music and effects track and optional English SDH subtitles. According to the experts over at DVD Beaver, its a robust transfer with a much higher bitrate than the US Shout! Factory edition, smoother and superior, supporting an excellent 1080P image despite some frame-specific damage, while the replication of the original production audio has noticeable depth.
THE EXTRAS
• In Roger Corman’s audio commentary (which is also on the Shout! Factory Blu-ray release), the maverick producer/director looks back at the making of the film, revealing the visual tricks he employed in his ‘Freudian-inspired’ horror. Who knew that doors represent the vagina and the dark corridors are an initiation into sexuality? You’ll certainly read the film differently after listening to this.
• The other audio commentary, by Video Watchdog’s Tim Lucas (*), is packed with juicy nuggets (I always wondered why those castle matt shots ended up in The Monkees). And when it comes to the film’s technical minutia, Lucas really knows his stuff. Film buffs will lap this up.
• Behind the Swinging Blade – This new documentary on the making of The Pit and the Pendulum features interviews with Roger Corman, Barbara Steele and Victoria Price, while director Brian Yunza, who is a big fan of the film, also pops up. (43-min)
• Added TV Sequence – Shot in 1968 for the longer TV cut, this scene features star Luana Anders and is set in an asylum. Its a real curio, but for the life of me, I couldn't work out where it would have been placed in the storyline. If you know, please enlighten me. (5-min)
• An Evening of Edgar Allan Poe – This terrific 1970 TV special, shot on video, gave Vincent Price the chance to do Poe unplugged, reciting The Tell-Tale Heart, The Sphinx, The Cask of Amontillado and The Pit and the Pendulum as he always wanted to do. The transfer quality here is on par with the 2003 MGM DVD release. But did you know, the period costumes were all designed by Price's second wife, Mary? (53-min. With optional English SDH)
• Original Trailer
• Limited Edition SteelBook packaging featuring original artwork (SteelBook only)
• Reversible sleeve featuring artwork by Gilles Vranckx (Amaray release only)
• Collector’s booklet featuring new writing by author Jonathan Rigby, illustrated with original archive stills
(*) Tim Lucas is also co-author of The Man With The Kaleidoscope Eyes: an original screenplay about Roger Corman and the filming of The Trip, which Joe Dante is in line to direct.
Additional sources: The Films of Roger Corman: Shooting My Way Out of Trouble, Alan Frank, 1998
