Happy 114th Birthday to Vincent Price
When Vincent Price was born on May 27th, 1911, I doubt that his parents imagined that he would become one of the most important pop culture figures of the 20th century. His charm, good looks, and ability to commit to even the campiest of roles with sincerity enabled him to have a highly successful career that spanned genre. He gave strong performances in films directed by some of the best directors in the history of film (Michael Curtiz, Otto Preminger, Anthony Mann, Fritz Lang, and Ernst Lubitsch to name a few) and brought equal professionalism to lower budget genre films by directors like Mario Bava and Roger Corman. He was a “worker” whose charm made him ideal to play villainous roles ranging from Cardinal Richelieu to Dr. Anton Phibes, roles that required charisma and subtlety.
While Price starred in many non-horror roles, I highly recommend watching Laura, it is his horror roles that I most often think of and watch on an annual basis. That’s because there is something special about a Vincent Price horror film that sets them apart from many entries in the genre. The horror films that Vincent Price starred in were not the violent shockfests people today often imagine when they thing of the words "horror film." His films were not about gore, or quick cathartic release of tension, rather they were about fear. H.P. Lovecraft, a pioneer in American "Weird Fiction", wrote in his essay Supernatural Horror in Literature :
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is the fear of the unknown...their admitted truth must establish for all time the geniuneness and dignity of the wierdly horrible tale as a literary form. Against it are discharged all the shafts of a materialistic sophistication which clings to frequently felt emotions and external events, and of a naively insipid idealism which deprecates the aesthetic motive and calls for a didactic literature to "uplift" the reader toward a suitable degree of smirking optimism...men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars...
— HP Lovecraft Supernatural Horror in Literature
This horror of the unknown is the kind of horror that permeated the films of Vincent Price. To be sure some like the Tingler had moments of visual shock and gore, but even here the build up is slow and filled with tension. When the visual shock appears, it also includes what is a kind of shift in reality as a brilliant red color comes to fill the screen in an otherwise black and white film.
Most of the horror in Price's films was internal to the viewed characters. The audience felt the horror not as an immediate thing which passes when the musical sting chimes, but as a lingering afterthought which remained with the viewer long after the film had been viewed.
Vincent Price and Roger Corman's screen adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe tales are some of the best examples of this lingering kind of fear. With modern special effects making the imagery in The Pit and the Pendulum tame, possibly completely enervated of shock value, in comparison to the slaughter a Jason Voorhees is capable of committing. It is not the violence in Pit which horrifies, it is the thought of what man is capable of doing. This is the best kind of fear, the fear that reminds us as we look into the abyss that the abyss is looking back into us. True fear is horror at the possible meaninglessness of existence and the potential cruelty of man. How horrible is the realization in Fall of the House of Usher that Roderick Usher had accidently put his living sister prematurely into the tomb? The audience who watches this film can imagine both having to dig oneself free of an early grave and the terror of realization Roderick comes to when he realizes what he has done. There but for the grace of God go I.
When Price died many years ago, I wondered if the rising trend of slasher films would mean that the "lingering fear" horror tale was dead. I "feared" that all I would be able to watch were gorefests made purely for shock value, but I should have known better. History had already demonstrated that many filmmakers knew what kind of fear was most valuable. In John Carpenter's version of The Fog, the horror wasn't that the dead had come back for revenge. It was why they came back, and that it didn't matter who they killed to get the requisite number of victims in compensation. Even a child would have sated their lust for vengeance. There were other films as well, but I would like to focus on what has come since Price died.
First and foremost among these films, in my mind, is The Blair Witch Project. This “found footage” film was released in 1999 and it perfectly encapsulates the lingering fear kind of horror over the rising trend of slasher films and body horror. What makes it more remarkable is that as a found footage film, it was in a genre that has been largely dominated by more visually graphic horror in the past. While I think that later generations will never get the full Blair Witch experience that I got as an undergraduate in college, where the television marketing was as much a part of the film as the film itself, I do think that the film stands on its own.
I remember leaving the theater to watch the movie with my friend Jay. We planned on reviewing it for the Sparks Tribune. I’m pretty sure that Jay and I gave the film a relatively negative review in our first draft as I didn’t think I’d experienced any real sense of dread. I do remember that as I was getting ready to fall asleep, I was absolutely terrified. I wasn't scared while watching the film, but the seeds of fear had been planted and they lingered. Jay and I had to revise the review before we submitted it to reflect that later experience.
Since that time, many worthy dread based horror films have been released.
The Others, starring Nicole Kidman, is a wonderful example of personal realization bringing horror. Sure there are moments of suspense, but what keeps you talking about the film is the moment of realization. The same goes for Sixth Sense, but I think that the The Village with its demonstration of what people will do to create a "just" society is more horrifying. Even if you guess the "twist" in The Village the lengths the Elders go through to maintain the serenity of the village is frightening. When I talk about my love of The Village, or my enjoyment Lady in the Water, I often get pushback or eye rolls, but they are all films I enjoy. The first because I like its commentary on helicopter parenting and the second because it is a new fairy tale.
Eric Kripke's story about the Boogeyman isn't about gore, it is about how we give power to our fears and it gave Kripke enough clout to get the Supernatural series launched. The same can be said for the numerous Japanese horror films which have come our way over the past few years. They often contain shocking images, but it is the lingering thoughts of the spitefulness of the dead which have value in the long term. The most Lovecraftian of recent horror tales was The Forgotten in which humankind were naught but play pieces for aliens in a Godless materialistic universe. Julianne Moore, and all the other characters, were truly helpless against the antagonists and the resolution that she was "okay" isn't cathartic because the threat remains for everyone else.
Of all of the recent and semi-recent, and there have been many, fear based horror films that have been produced since Vincent Price died, my absolute favorite is Woman in Black. Not only did the film demonstrate a triumphant return of my favorite horror film studio, Hammer Films, it also contained a wonderfully terrifying commentary on parenting. I mentioned above that The Village was about paternalism/helicopter parenting and the damage it can do to society. Woman in Black is about parents who are not willing to make personal sacrifices for their children.
Though the film has been out for a while, I don’t want to spoil the ending though that solidifies my central argument. However, I will point out one feature of the film. All throughout the movie, children’s lives are put at risk and parents cry out for help. There is only one character who is willing to risk death to save the children, both currently and previously dead, and that is the lead character portrayed brilliantly by Daniel Radcliffe.
It is also a film that touches deeply on the real experiences of parents. I could never have predicted how my life would change when my wife first called me to tell me she was pregnant. A switch was flipped. Where in the past, I had only had to deal with my own stresses and knew from my own perspective all the dangers I faced, I now lived in a world of constant ambiguity.
My emotional life since first learning that History and Mystery were on the way has been one that alternates between two states. The first is a steady underlying sense of dread. This dread isn’t a large feeling. It is background noise that is always there. It is a tension building soundtrack that fills my every moment. It’s not hard to adjust to, and the rewards of having children far outweigh the dread, but it is a constant companion.
The second state is rare, but very dramatic. It is a state of extreme panic that occurs anytime I sense my daughters are in any kind of real danger of harm. It is heart-stoppingly terrible and it happens at the oddest moments like the first time one of my daughters wanted to walk down the stairs or when Jody called to tell me that my daughters had to be tested for cystic fibrosis because they had significant constipation for a time and that was a symptom. We were blessed in that they tested negative and we merely needed to add some additional fiber to their diet, but I still remember that fear. It wasn’t paralyzing, but it was painful.
That’s the kind of fear that I need catharsis from and that’s the kind of fear that Vincent Price specialized in providing.
On this day of Creepiness,
When rampant ghoulies run,
and kids go masked about,
Enjoying pagan fun...
Witches feast on human flesh,
While we recall a host,
(A haunt himself in living)
Recently turned ghost...
Scary movies [were] his thing,
(Theater gave '[i]m a try)
Whales of August I liked best.
My favorite was The Fly.
We do request a brief repose,
(A moment should suffice)
of silence just to say,
"So long" to Mr. Vincent Price.
Fine, Silence, and then we get the candy?!
SH!
Yow!