Dissecting Vincent Price, Horror’s Flamboyant Gentleman

‘Diabolically Good: The Movie Career and Afterlife of Horror Icon Vincent Price’By Drew PisarraAnxiety Press, 145 pagesI’m not sure any other movie star belongs quite so perfectly in purgatory, which is where playwright Drew Pisarra positions Vincent Price. The actor is still best known for performances in horror films such as “The House of Usher,” “The Raven,” and “The Fly.” No one did a better diabolical cackle, or portray mad men with such enjoyable aplomb.The book is comprised of Mr. Pisarra’s radio play “Price in Purgatory” and “Price in Celluloid,” the author’s examination of his filmography. If you are not that familiar with Price, then the introduction by Sean Redlitz and Maitland McDonagh will be helpful. As they suggest, Price made wickedness look dapper with an inimitable delivery, making “every sentence, every poly-y-syl-lab-ic word into a symphony, surprising the listener with shift in pitch and cadence that reveled in Price’s wry wit and natural, if not preternatural, flair for the dramatic.”For most movie actors, the secret to great performances is understatement. Though Price was capable of that, he relished overacting, transforming flamboyance into an enviable achievement. What other actors did with their eyes, Price did with his voice; as if like a slide trombonist he could subtly alter the tone of his delivery so as to communicate the insidiousness of evil. ‘Diabolically Good: The Movie Career and Afterlife of Horror Icon Vincent Price,’ by Drew Pisarra. Anxiety PressOn screen, Price is always in command of a scene, but in Purgatory he is out of his depth. Even so, he does not lose his cool when he meets his spirit guide, identified as V2, who looks like the actor’s double: “Amazing,” Price exclaims, addressing V2: “What a bizarre sense of humor God has. You don’t mind if I touch myself. I mean you, do you? The likeness is uncanny. The hair. The eyes. The patrician nose. If I do say so myself, that’s a beautiful face. Right down to the mustache. Okay, continue.”How marvelous, even after death Price wants to control his otherworldly place. Like Price in many of his performances, Mr. Pisarra’s character is enchanted with himself, but in this case not with his screen presence but with the facsimile over which he has no control.Then Vincent Price vanishes, God appears, and V2 is puzzled:GODYou made some unforgettable ones: House of Usher, House on Haunted Hill, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, The Last Man on Earth…V2You know that movies aren’t real, right?GODReal enough. I still shudder at that moment when the human head is crying out from atop a spider’s body trapped in a web in The Fly. “Help me! Help me!” Can you get more real than that? That scene gives me chills.The outcome of the play is best left alone. It is a quite an indeterminate metaphysical riff on the nature of the body and the soul. What follows the play is Mr. Pisarra’s pithy entertaining survey of Price’s body of work, both the horror of it and the pre-preternatural roles in film classics such as “Laura,” in which he plays “a broke ladykiller . . . vapid, vain, and duplicitous without the street smarts or inner rage to achieve his goals,” the perfect foil for detective Dana Andrews, looking “like a piece of steak wrapped in wool,” delivering the “epitome of noir deadpan. Everything he says sounds subdued, as if each line is somewhere between a joke and a secret, an insult and a throwaway.”Vincent Price in the TV series ‘Time Express,’ 1979. Silver Screen Collection/Getty ImagesMr. Pisarra’s best lines, of course, evoke the latter-day Price in many of producer Roger Corman’s films, such as the adaptation of “The Pit and the Pendulum”: “One imagines Corman commanding him ‘Show me your saddest face’ or ‘Look distracted’ or ‘Go certifiably insane!’ before each take. For the record, Price does not hold back. If expressionism is first and foremost about conveying emotions, then Pit and the Pendulum is an -ism exemplar thanks to Price’s beautiful bombastics.”Mr. Pisarra misses an opportunity, I think, in overlooking the interplay between Price and Eve Arden in “Curtain Call at Cactus Creek,” which is virtually a primer on acting styles, with her understated sarcasm undercutting the preening histrionics of Price’s ham actor:I shall never forget, there were twenty-four curtain calls.Twenty-two curtain calls, you said last time.“Diabolically Good” neatly conveys the consummate work of an actor who specialized in characters out of control. It also shows off Mr. Pisarra’s indefatigable quest to recover hard to find films, as well as much of Price’s television work.Mr. Rollyson has authored biographies of Ronald Colman, Dana Andrews, and (forthcoming) Eve Arden.

Dissecting Vincent Price, Horror’s Flamboyant Gentleman

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