Oakley Court Hotel | The House That Screamed and Screamed Again

On Saturday 22 July 2017 I led my annual Theatre of Blood Film Location Tour to Oakley Court, Windsor, the setting of many a classic British horror.

Check out the full post on The Vincent Price Legacy UK website.

Tower of London (1939) | When Vincent Price almost drowned - in a butt of Coca-Cola

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

Sixth in line for the English throne, the conniving Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Basil Rathbone) sets out to eliminate all those who stand in his way, aided by his loyal executioner Mord (Boris Karloff). But once he is crowned king, Richard must then defeat the exiled Henry Tudor (Ralph Forbes) to retain the throne…

WHY IT'S WORTH A LOOK
The 1939 historical drama Tower of London was Shakespearean tragedy re-envisioned as a Universal horror film. The screenplay, written by the director’s brother, Robert, is based not on the Bard’s play as one might expect, but on ‘350 volumes of British history’, with a passing romantic story thrown in between Nan Grey and John Sutton as Lady Alice and John Wyatt. 

Heavy on atmosphere and Grand Guignol histrionics, thanks mainly to Karloff’s club-footed Mord lumbering about the tower's cobwebbed corridors, the brothers Lee used the traditional depiction of the much-maligned monarch to move their murderous monochrome drama along. It’s a creaky classic of the old Hollywood variety that's well worth a revisit.

Having had his first brush with British royalty on screen in 1938’s The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Vincent Price returned to merrie old England (well, the Universal backlot) to play King Edward IV's younger brother George, Duke of Clarence, who gets a most memorable death scene: being drowned in a butt of malmsey wine. 

thanks to Marie Jose Vahe for the screengrabs

Price (who was still many years from becoming the master of menace) plays his effete whiney rake to the hilt, while also sharing screen time with cinema's current kings of horror, Karloff and Rathbone (the three would later reunite – and for a last time – in 1963’s The Comedy of Terrors). 

Now here's a bit of trivia for you: Barbara O'Neil (who plays Queen Elyzabeth) was Vincent Price's former St Louis school chum and first love who he said he was 'engaged' to from the age of eight and thirty-eight.

VINCENT PRICE ON THAT SCENE
On recounting his big scene, Price later said: ‘They fixed a handrail at the bottom of the barrel so that I could dive down and hang on to it. The liquid was water (mixed with Coca-Cola), but Basil and Boris had used the barrel to deposit cigarette butts and old bottles. I had to hold on to the rail for a full ten counts, which seemed endless, and then a couple of hefty lads opened this damp tomb and yanked me out by the heels. I got a round of applause from the crew, but I was disappointed to find my two co-stars, who had been very nice to me so far, not on the set. I thought the least they could do was lead the applause. But they appeared a few moments later with a beautifully wrapped gift - a carton of Cokes.’ 

THE FANTASTIC FILMS OF VINCENT PRICE
In this episode of the video review series, Dr Gangrene revisits The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and Tower of London.

The Comedy of Terrors (1963) | Your favourite creeps together again in HD - the Arrow Video UK release

With the 1963 horror farce, The Comedy of Terrors, now in HD, here's what you get in the new Arrow Video UK Blu-ray/DVD combo release.

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 Terrors This featurette on the late screenwriter also appears on the Shout! Blu-ray and on the older MGM Midnite Movies DVD.

• Original US theatrical trailer The 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.

The Comedy of Terrors | A look back at Jacques Tourneur's 1963 horror farce starring four masters of the macabre!

To mark the 16 February UK Blu-ray/DVD release of 1963's The Comedy of Terrors from Arrow Video, here's a look back at the vintage horror farce.

‘You’re invited to a funeral’
Welcome to the Hinchley & Trumbull funeral parlour, the only establishment of its kind that has found the secret of increasing business - by furnishing its own corpses! From Jacques Tourneur, director of the horror classics, Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie and Night of the Demon, comes the 1963 horror spoof, The Comedy of Terrors, starring four masters of the macabre - Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff.

‘What place is this?’
Inebriate undertaker Waldo Trumbull (Price) is running a New England funeral home business owned by his ageing father-in-law (Karloff)… straight into the ground. Hounded by his penny-pinching landlord Mr Black (Rathbone) for non-payment of rent, Trumbull and his put upon assistant Felix Gillie (Lorre) hatch a plan to boost business. But murder is not their forté, especially when their latest ‘client’ refuses to stay dead…

‘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 this Arsenic 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!

Fab at 50 | 1963's The Haunted Palace - just one of seven Vincent Price films celebrating their 50th anniversary

1963 was certainly a very good year for the merchant of menace Vincent Price as he had seven films hitting US cinemas throughout the year. The Raven, which also starred Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre, was released on 25 January, while the underrated Diary of a Madman came out on 6 March.

In July, he had a cameo as Big Daddy in July's Beach Party musical, while August saw the Italian-made swashbuckler Rage of the Buccaneers (which was actually made in 1961) and the HP Lovecraft-inspired chiller The Haunted Palace heading into cinemas and drive-ins (with Palace being today). Capping off the summer, Twice-Told Tales, featuring Vinnie in three different roles, would be released in September, while The Comedy of Terrors, which again teamed him up with Karloff and Lorre, as well as Basil Rathbone, would close the year, coming out on Christmas day.

Happy 50th anniversary one and all...

THE TRAILERS