Theatre of
Blood Walking Tour at Kensal Green Cemetery
Did you know that Kensal Green Cemetery in North London was the location for a key scene in the 1973 black comedy horror, Theatre of Blood?
This coming Saturday, during the annual Open Day celebrations at the cemetery, I will be hosting two tours at 12.30pm and 2.30pm...
• You’ll hear the bloodcurdling story of Edward Lionheart’s terrible revenge on members of the London Critics Circle who dared to mock his season of Shakespeare at Putney’s Burbage Theatre.
• You’ll visit Lionheart's memorial and the resting place of one of the doomed critics
• You’ll learn how horror film icon Vincent Price found love among the tombstones of Kensal Green cemetery.
Did you know that Roger Corman's THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH had its UK and US premiere on June 24 1964?
To celebrate 51 years of the 'Masquerade of the Macabre' as conceived by the 'Master-Designer of Evil Desires' and presented by the Crown Prince of Horror, Vincent Price, here's a selection of trailers, clips and gifs for your satanic amusement.
This great ad comes from the original American International Pictures campaign pressbook that was given out to film distributors to help sell the 1970 horror film, starring Vincent Price.
This coming November, the Vincent Price London Legacy Tour will revisit the real-life location of this cult classic and we'd love you to join us.
To find out more and to book tickets for this not-to-be-missed luncheon and tour, hosted by Victoria Price, please visit the website: vincentpricelegacy.uk
And if you love this ad, stayed tuned for more from the press back soon.
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.
From 4-8 November 2015, a celebration of the life and career of horror movie icon Vincent Price will take place in the London in the UK, hosted by the late actor’s daughter, Victoria Price, and yours truly.
Events include: • Visits to the film locations used in Theatre of Blood, Cry of the Banshee and Witchfinder General. • A special talk by Victoria Price on her father's life and legacy. • The 50th anniversary book launch of A Treasury of Great Recipes at Harrods. • An electronic music performance of The Last Man on Earth. • and much more.
A first-time festival dedicated to horror film legend Vincent
Price will be staged in London this November, headed by the late actor’s
daughter Victoria Price and award-winning Vincent Price blogger and
expert, Peter Fuller.
Price, who starred in over 100 films, including such cult classics as The Abominable Dr Phibes and Theatre of Blood, was a lifelong Anglophile, a noted art lover, collector and lecturer, and a self-confessed foodie.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of his acclaimed cookbook, A Treasury of Great Recipes,
Victoria and award-winning Vincent Price blogger Peter Fuller, will be
hosting series of events in and around London commemorating Price’s love
of art and food, while also paying tribute to some of his most iconic
screen roles that were made in the UK.
What do you get when you mix Master of Menace, Vincent Price, some Hammer Glamour screen sirens, Edna Everage and a handful of famous British comedy stars? The 1974 sex comedy Percy’s Progress – that’s what! To celebrate its UK high-definition restoration release (Monday 13 April), here’s a look back at the very 1970s oddity.
WHAT'S IT ABOUT?
With a bounty of Bollinger 1969 stored onboard his yacht, Percy Edward Anthony (Leigh Lawson) takes to the high seas to escape his notoriety as the well-endowed recipient of the world’s first penis transplant.
But when the entire male population becomes impotent after the US-made PX-123 drug accidentally gets into the water supply, Percy becomes the British Government’s secret weapon in reversing the world’s falling birth rate.
After ‘servicing’ the representatives of several countries in the Miss Conception International contest, Percy decides he’s done his patriotic duty and goes back into hiding – which doesn’t go down well with his advisors or the bevy of beautiful birds who only want a favour most men would be happy to oblige…
WHY IT'S WORTH WATCHING - OR NOT?
This 1974 British sex comedy was director Ralph Thomas and producer Betty E Box’s sequel to their box-office hit Percy, based on Raymond Hitchcock’s 1969 debut novel, with Leigh Lawson packing into Hywel Bennett’s briefs as the sexed-up anti-hero with a rather enviable manhood.
Drawing on themes originally exploited in the 1933 sci-fi musical comedy, It’s Great to Be Alive (a remake of the 1924 silent, The Last Man on Earth), and in the 1946 Pat Frank novel, Mr Adam, Percy’s Progress comes off like a poor-man’s Carry On. It should have been a saucy seaside postcard delight, but it’s not. Director Thomas, who was responsible for the ar superior Doctor series of comedy films, and Up Pompeii! writer Sid Colin have merely served up a series of flaccid, vulgar jokes about impotence.
Getting into bed with Lawson (who famously wedded both Hayley Mills and model Twiggy), are some well-known Hammer glamour stars, including Jenny Hanley, Madeline Smith, Julie Edge and Judy Matheson. But it’s the roll call of famous names that’s the real reason to check this oddity out. Among the embarrassed faces on display in the messy farce are Elke Sommer, Milo O’Shea, Denholm Elliott, Bernard Lee, Anthony Andrews, Ronald Fraser, Alan Lake and Anthony Sharp.
As the Aristotle Onassis-styled tycoon Stavos Mammonian, Vincent Price is confined to a wheelchair (the last time he did that was in 1953’s House of Wax); while Harry H Corbett (who wrote some of the dialogue, along with comedy legend Ian La Frenais) gets in an hilarious Harold Wilson impersonation (albeit with a Yorkshire accent) as the British PM.
Following his multiple roles in the crude but entertaining Barry McKenzie movies, Barry Humphries takes on the dual role of scientist Dr Anderson (sporting a great whistling speech pediment) and an ‘Australian TV lady’ who bears an uncanny resemblance to his Moonee Ponds housewife, Edna Everage. Judy Geeson, meanwhile, has a very odd role as Dr Anderson's overly cheery assistant who become instrumental in reversing the drug's sterility factor.
Interestingly, author Raymond Hitchcock ended up publishing a novel based on Sid Colin’s screenplay, while the film’s theme tune ‘God Knows I Miss You’ was co-written by The Seekers’ Keith Potger and Tony Macaulay, who had a string of hits for the likes of Long John Baldry and The Hollies.
EMI Films originally released the film in the UK in August 1974, but it took another two years before a US distribution was announced. Retitled, It’s Not the Size That Counts, trimmed by 90-minutes, and with additional scenes of a penis transplant and a dwarf (played by one-time Ewok, Luis De Jesus) tacked on, the film was eventually released Stateside in November 1978. You can watch a US TV trailer below.
THE UK HD RELEASE
Released as part of Network's British Film collection, Percy’s Progress gets a brand-new high definition transfer from the original film elements, in its original aspect ratio, and in both Blu-ray and DVD formats. The special features include original theatrical trailers, image gallery and promotional material (pdf).
Out this week from Final Cut Entertainment in the UK is the DVD re-release of director Sidney Salkow's 1963 horror anthology Twice-Told Tales, based on the stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and each starring Vincent Price.
Dr Heidegger's Experiment tells the tale of an elderly physician who develops an elixir of life, and uses it to resurrect the woman he was to have married; Rappaccini's Daughter finds a botanist, who has been deserted by his wife, turning his daughter into a poisonous creature whom no one can touch; and The House of the Seven Gables concerns newlywed Gerald Pyncheon scouring his cursed ancestral home for a hidden fortune.
No preview copies were available to check out the quality of the print, while there are no extras to speak of.
WHAT'S IT ABOUT? The Eve of St Mark was a 1944 World War Two drama based on a successful 1942 Broadway play by Maxwell Anderson which followed a group of American soldiers undergoing training before heading for combat duty an island in the Philippines, where they come under heavy attack by Japanese forces. WHY IT'S WORTH CHECKING OUT
Directed by John M Stahl (who also lensed Keys of the Kingdom and Leave Her To Heaven before his death from a heart attack in 1950) and based on a screenplay by George Seaton, who supplied a morale-boosting new ending, The Eve of St Mark gave Vincent Price one of the best roles of his career.
As soft-speaking southerner, Private Marion, Price brought humanity, humility and an air of cultured refinement to the character, who spouts lines from Shelley, Shakespeare and Keats to woo girls and amuse his fellow conscripts. He also has a weakness for Cuba Libras. Stricken down with malaria in the second half of the drama, while the battle rages outside a cave in which his patrol is holed up in, Price's cynic ends up delivering a heart-moving speech which inspires his pals to 'stick it out another day'.
Price’s character was based on former soldier turned novelist/screenwriter, Marion Hargrove, whose 1942 light-hearted memoirs See Here, Private Hargrove, spent 15 weeks on top of the New York Times bestseller list, Two movies were also adapted, in 1944 and 1945, with Robert Walker in the lead, while a pilot for a TV series was produced in 1965.
Coming three years after Pearl Harbor, the film was regarded as rather dated by critics, with The New York Times calling it ‘brashly theatrical’, but the heroism of embodied by the characters was anything but. Price, who regarded the role as one of his proudest achievements, got some super reviews, with many tipping him as a promising star. Five months after this film's release, Price would appear as another southern gent, although one with less morality, that of playboy peacock Shelby Carpenter in Laura.
WHAT VINCENT SAID 'Marion could be cynical, with his pathetically ridiculous quotations, but there was a funny honestly about the guy that I enjoyed'.
WATCH SOME CLIPS
Here's a condensed version of the movie, in three parts, featuring Price's scenes as Private Marion.
WHAT'S IT ABOUT
This 1941 wilderness epic from 20-Century Fox finds Paul Muni continuing his series of historical portraits (which he had begun with Louis Pasteur, Emile Zola and Benito Juarez), with a fictional, ‘cock-eyed’ account of real-life fur-trapper and explorer Pierre-Espirit Radisson, who envisions a great empire in the lands around Canada's Hudson's Bay.
Radisson’s odyssey takes him through the wild regions of the country’s north in the year 1667, where he befriends the local indigenous population, while clashing with the French. Then, returning to England, he convinces King Charles II in backing an expedition for the sum of 400,000 pelts…
WHY IT'S WORTH WATCHING
Despite the lack of action and pedestrian direction (by Irving Pichel, who gave us such classic genre fare as 1932's The Most Dangerous Game and 1950's Destination Moon), it’s well shot by George Barnes (War of the Worlds) and J Peverell Marley (who also worked on House of Wax) on the Fox backlot (and on location in Idaho according to some sources), with a sterling ensemble cast holding it all together.
As King Charles II, a bewigged Vincent Price (who looks remarkably like Old Rowley - the nickname given to the restoration royal) brings a foppish air of refinement to the proceedings, whilst also having to deal with a dozen spaniels running about his feet. Interesting, Price originally tested for Muni's part at the behest of mogul Darryl F Zanuck – and one wonders how he would have tackled the role (and handled that heavy French accent that Muni affects for the film)?
Laird Cregar, Nigel Bruce, Vincent Price and Virginia Field in Hudson's Bay
This was the first of four 1940s features that Price appeared in the same film as Gene Tierney: the others being the super 1944 film noir Laura, the 1945 Technicolor melodrama Leave Her To Heaven, and the 1946 gothic masterpiece Dragonwyck (one of Price's favourites); while John Sutton, who appeared in Vinnie's first three features, also starred in 1949’s Bagdad, as well as The Bat and Return of the Fly. Screenwriter Lamar Trotti also shares a Price connection in that he penned the 1967 South African Western, The Jackals (based on his 1948 Yellow Sky screenplay). THE BEAVER – VINTAGE ARTICLE
VIEW A CLIP OR TWO
Here's a condensed version of the film, focusing on Vinnie's scenes.
WATCH THE VIDEO REVIEW
In this episode of The Fantastic Films of Vincent Price, Dr Gangrene looks back at the historical dramas, Hudson's Bay and Brigham Young (1940).
