Wednesday, October 12, 2011

AN EVENING OF EDGAR ALLAN POE - Les Baxter - "Vincent Price" (1970)

As of May 27 of this year, Mr. Vincent Price would have been 100 years old, so as suggested for part of this Halloween Countdown, I'd like to share with you some info about a film a lot of people don't know about, Vincent Price in a one man show as Edgar Allan Poe!

There are four tales in this film, and each one is delivered with the enthusiasm that only a man of this talent can render! If people running high schools had any brains, they'd be showing this film in classrooms from California to Maine! The first story is the classic "Tell Tale Heart!"

The whole film is only 53 minutes long, and Vinnie is riveting!

Vincent Price was not only a fine gentleman, a patron of the arts and a culinary expert, he also had the uncanny ability to dig deeper inside than most and find the true madness that resides within each and every one of us!

Deeper and deeper into the madness until.......

.....Wait a minute, is that a real heart??

ON IMDB, Vincent is listed as narrator on this film, but boy, is that an understatement! This is so much more than a reading, this is an opportunity to feel the depth and depravity of Edgar Allan Poe's mad genius in all it's glory delivered in the first person!! I defy you to name a modern actor with big enough balls to attempt such a feat!!

"The Cask Of Amontillado" has special meaning to me because it's a poem I chose for a dramatic reading for a speech class I had in high skool!! There should be no doubt I didn't win any awards!

The limited music there is was composed by Dungeon hero and AIP workhorse Les Baxter! There's not much, but it adds punctuation to Edgar and Vinnie's performance!! Give Nicholson and Arkoff some extra credit for enabling this flick to exist! It's sure not the regular fodder most studios felt a need to release then or ever!

Just like today, "The Inqusition is in the hand of it's enemies!!"

Vincent Leonard Price Jr. managed to rack up 194 credits in his short 82 years on this planet, and as the beautiful scary Karen Carpenter would later say, "We've Only Just Begun!"

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