Vincent Price: Essential Facts About The Horror Legend
“I don’t play monsters, I play men besieged by fate and out for revenge.”—Vincent Price
A class-act movie star who was a leading man with an engaging voice, actor Vincent Price (1911-1993) first appeared onscreen in the 1938 comedy Service de Luxe. However, he soon became an actor whose career focused on horror films. Price had already served as a supporting character player in noirs like Laura (1944), The Long Night (1947) and The Bribe (1949), before becoming tied to horror, thanks to his turn in the 1953 classic House of Wax.
Although he would still appear in mainstream films, his cult status led to such highlights as The Fly (1958) and Return of the Fly (1959), as well as working with Roger Corman on Edgar Allan Poe adaptation such as House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) and The Raven (1963).
“Perhaps one of the biggest names in Hollywood horror of the 20th Century was Vincent Price,” notes entertainment news site Collider. “His performances in films like The Fly, House on Haunted Hill, and House of Wax certified him as a master of horror. Over his career, he collaborated seven times with director Roger Corman to adapt the works of Edgar Allan Poe. These sixties horror films proved that Poe could be adapted to screen and adapted well.”
Below, watch the video from the folks at Grunge to learn more about Vincent Price…
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Price’s official website suggests that his career’s low point included a pair of spy-fi parodies—the 1965 films Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine and Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs—plus his role as the villain Egghead on the Adam West series Batman (1966-68).
Price spent the following decades using his extraordinary voice in several projects, including Tim Burton’s stop-motion short Vincent (1982) and Michael Jackson’s captivating music video Thriller (1983).
The actor made his final film appearance in Burton’s 1990 film Edward Scissorhands before dying from lung cancer in 1993 and leaving behind a legendary body of work intertwined with the horror genre.
Related links
How Vincent Price inspired the Marvel Comics character Doctor Strange (Grunge)
Master of Horror: Vincent Price's 7 Edgar Allan Poe Adaptations Ranked (Collider)