Vincent Price

  • Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) Oh wow—Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine popped up on the TCM schedule as the only film in their “Stars of the month: Robots” monthly feature that I hadn’t already seen, and I’m glad I made a point out of recording it. It’s the kind of bright, funny, energetic film that could only come out of the mid-1960s, it’s dated and a delicious heap of pure fun. Focused on the concept of female robots designed to seduce and rob rich men, the film happens to star Vincent Price as the mad scientist controlling the robots, Frankie Avalon as a secret agent investigating the fembots, Dwayne Hickman as a swindling target and the beautiful Susan Hart as an android designed to break hearts and empty bank accounts. This being said, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine is not big on plot—the focus here is on jokey moments and one absolutely terrific chase sequence in and around mid-1960s San Francisco. Thanks to veteran director Norman Taurog, the film is broad goofy low-budget comedy whose misogyny is so pronounced that it becomes satirical. I liked it a lot: it’s a poppy piece of cinema with unexpected delights (including a rather amazing Claymation credit sequence with a title song by The Supremes!), an incredibly carefree atmosphere, Connery-era James Bond spoofing, and a premise that links to Austin Powers. I’m repeating myself, but the San Francisco car chase here is utterly terrific, and only finds an equivalent in What’s Up Doc? a decade later. It’s great good fun, despite a bit of a middle lull and some social assumptions that are bound to offend modern viewers, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine nearly ranks as a must-see if you’re interested in 1960s cinema: it captures something very specific about the pre-hippie clichés of the decade.

  • The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) Colour and Vincent Price remain the best assets of The Masque of the Red Death, one of many Edgar Allen Poe adaptations spearheaded by Roger Corman. Despite Corman’s reputation as an infamously low-budget exploitation producer, he directs this film and manages something quite enjoyable. Working with a bigger-than-average budget, he’s able to put together a credible representation of a fantasy world where the local lord promises his vassals protection from the plague, but doesn’t realize that the evil is already in the castle. Much of the action takes place in a large ballroom filled with colourful costumes and several extras—but none more interesting than a pleasantly overacting Vincent Price. The final moments of the movie are great fun. Corman hasn’t directed a better film. The result is still quite watchable, especially if you have a fondness for Price in full-ham mode.

  • Dangerous Mission (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2022) You could reasonably argue that Dangerous Mission is a film that’s interesting in spite of itself—a strange blend of one good casting choice, a demonstration of proto-action-movie mechanics, and an example of how far thrillers have come in execution. Part of the film’s mixed impression has to do with how ambitious it was in the first place. Not only was it shot in colour at a time where mid-range thrillers usually weren’t, it was also created for the first wave of 3D movies, and set itself up for greater scrutiny by largely taking place in outdoors setting—the Glacier National Park. Twenty-first century viewers will not be convinced by any of it—the fakeness of the studio shooting clashes with the actual exteriors and the technical stiffness of the production is the kind of thing that calls attention to itself after fifty years of much-superior production techniques. (And I’m not even going to touch the stereotypical portrayal of the Native American character.)  One thing does work rather well, though, and it’s the presence of Vincent Price as a character who—SURPRISE!—turns out to be a villain tracking the female protagonist—he’s far more interesting with his silky-voiced villainy than the bland federal agent played by Victor Mature, or the adequate Piper Laurie as the witness-on-the-run. The premise of the film still generally holds up—there’s something inherently fascinating in setting a thriller in a lodge in the middle of nowhere. But this early Irwin Allen production, directed by Louis King, simply doesn’t have what it takes to do justice to what it intends to do, and the years have not been kind to the result. (Never mind not having access to the 3D version of the film.) Dangerous Mission is not terrible, but it’s often disappointing, far more so than many other urban-set black-and-white thrillers of the time that knew how to work within their limitations.

  • Master of the World (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2022) I won’t insist on Master of the World being a great movie, but it’s often a lot of fun: a good helping of Vincent Price as a megalomaniac goes a long way in making this Jules Verne novel adaptation (taking bits from both Maître du monde and Robur le Conquérant) feel fun and light. Clearly modelling itself on the 1954 Disney version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in a decade that also featured other blockbuster Verne adaptations such as Around the World in 80 Days, this film is an atypical release from low-budget studio American International Pictures: more ambitious than their usual low-budget thrillers and horror, it goes for large-scale themes and spectacle. Here, a valiant crew of heroes finds itself in a submarine airship captained by a noble crackpot, and seeks to both understand what’s going on, and save the world from an overly progressive agenda. None other than Charles Bronson gets an early heroic role, but Price is still the main draw here as an anti-war madman intent on saving the world from itself. The script is noteworthy for being from noted SF writer-screenwriter Richard Matheson. Still, Master of the World doesn’t go for subtlety, and before long Bronson is the only one who can make the world safe from bombs for peace. The film is clearly limited both by technology and its budget—there are good ideas here, but even the most forgiving of twenty-first century viewers will wish it had been able to fulfill its own ambitions. In the meantime, colour cinematography keeps it more accessible than many low-budget black-and-white films of the time, and the grandiloquent nature of Robur’s speeches (as delivered by Price’s mellifluous voice) helps keep the entertainment factor above what we could have expected. I’ll forever cheer a faithful modern adaptation, but until then I have seen far more disappointing Verne adaptations.

  • Dragonwyck (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2022) While I didn’t particularly care for much of Dragonwyck, I have to appreciate the way it manages to hammer a medieval gothic romance into an upstate New York 19th century framework. Most notable for being the first film written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, it already shows some of the most characteristic traits of his later productions: the dialogue flourishes, keen wit and cinematic self-awareness are all there, albeit in less pronounced form. This can be attributed to the film’s troubled production history, with Ernest Lubitsch (a mismatch!) dropping out as a director and screenwriter Mankiewicz abruptly stepping in—albeit adapting an existing novel, limiting his freedom with the material. What I like most about Dragonwyck is probably the way it heads upstate from 1844 New York City in order to travel even further back in time—a land where a child bride finds herself stuck with a husband ruling as a medieval lord over his vassals, complete with a throne from which to hear grievances. Much of the gothic romance thriller tropes are there—the foreboding manor, the naïve heroine, the evil husband: it’s just impressive to see it transplanted in such a historical context. The next best thing about the rather ordinary result is the cast: The ever-beautiful Gene Tierney in the lead, of course, but also Walter Huston and especially Vincent Price honing his later-career persona as the deeply menacing husband. I can’t say that the result is all that impressive: Mankiewicz later verve with dialogue isn’t quite there yet, and Dragonwyck meanders too long before getting to the hear of its story. But there are a few things worth praising here, even if they’re drowned by the rest of it.

  • His Kind of Woman (1951)

    His Kind of Woman (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) I’m not going to say that His Kind of Woman is a good or great movie, but I will say that if you’re looking for something halfway between romantic drama and film noir, this is a very representative example of form as of the early 1950s — and that does double if you start looking at the film’s typical production problems. The story itself sees a tough guy (Robert Mitchum) travelling to a Mexican resort, where he encounters a beautiful singer (Jane Russell) and a movie actor (Vincent Price) with marital problems. After various shenanigans, the film eventually realizes it has to go with dead bodies, gunfights and something more suspenseful. The escalates to a tidy action-driven conclusion with a heavy helping of dumb comedy and that’s that. Even if you don’t know about His Kind of Woman’s rocky production history, you can certainly see the evidence of an abrupt change of direction. In front of the camera, you have a few icons of the time being used as per their specifications. Mitchum is reliably enjoyable, Russell is the bombshell and Price plays to type as an actor prone to hamming it — he was never subtle, but maybe this is the film that validated his approach. The film’s genre-hopping is almost like getting an anthology of many of the era’s most distinctive genres. The last half feels like a desperate afterthought of action and comedy, but the film is strong whenever you have Mitchum and Russell going through their romantic material, or contemplating Hollywood’s backstage through one actor’s behind-the-scenes insecurities. His Kind of Woman’s representativeness grows even stronger one you read about the film’s production and find out that this was another one of RKO’s films that eccentric billionaire-producer Howard Hugues endlessly tinkered with during his tenure as the studio’s owner, much to the detriment and belated release of the film. The result speaks for itself as a bit of a mess, but a very pleasantly circa-1950 kind of mess.

  • Theater of Blood (1973)

    Theater of Blood (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, May 2021) On paper, Theater of Blood sounds much better than it feels on a moment-by-moment basis. Featuring none other than Vincent Price as a serious Shakespearian actor taking murderous revenge over his reviewers, it sounds like a great excuse as a fun romp: You get Price doing Shakespeare (even in small segments) and a fantasy sequence showing what filmmakers would really like to do to those pesky critics. In execution, though, Theater of Blood proves to be more laborious and less interesting than expected. As usual whenever filmmakers have to talk about reviewers, they’re portrayed as caricatural antagonists with no depth other than opposing our viewpoint character. Much of the narrative structure anticipates the slasher craze of later years, as director Douglas Hickox goes from one murderous set-piece to another, each critic getting a gory death along the way. There are a few welcome complications along the way, but much of it feels muted, far from achieving its own potential. Price is delightful as ever, but Theater of Blood itself feels like a missed opportunity… and I’m not just saying that because I’m a reviewer.

  • The Raven (1963)

    The Raven (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) Some movies should come with warnings along the line of “don’t watch this before you watch those other movies.”  If that was applied to The Raven, the prerequisite would probably include movies featuring Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre just so you’d come into it expecting their screen persona. You would probably also want to include at least one of producer/director Roger Corman’s horror films of the period just to give an idea of what audiences were expecting. Finally, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to throw in a later film from Jack Nicholson to show how far he’d go from this film to superstardom, and probably a modern fantasy film just to highlight what happens when a genre becomes fully defined. But let me explain — Roger Corman, at the time, was adapting classical works of horror literature (many of them from Edgar Allan Poe) as pretexts for horror films. Price and Karloff were already horror movie icons, whereas Lorre was a fixture as “creepy guy” in a variety of films. Jack Nicholson was barely beginning his long career, and fantasy as a genre (not just as movie genre) was at least a decade from being codified. But The Raven tried something weirdly different, delivering a fantasy comedy based on Poe’s “The Raven” that allowed Price and Karloff to portray rival sorcerers trying to one-up each other. The poem’s “Lenore” is a traitorous harridan, while Lorre portrays The Raven, occasionally spitting feathers. It’s definitely a comedy, although modern viewers may want to temper their expectations regarding the density and impact of the jokes. Sometimes, The Raven seems to bask simply in how weird it is, without going the extra mile of making itself funny — but then again, I suspect that Corman’s idea of what’s funny wasn’t that of a conventional comedian. From modern lenses, the weirdness of the film also comes from working with unbuilt tropes — picture “wizard” in your head, and you won’t match the film’s vision of “wizard” because it came in ten years before the printed version of The Lord of the Rings and, in turn, the way wizards have been portrayed in fantasy literature since then. Any circa-2021 attempt to retell the same story would be far more overly funny, but would also deal in visual archetypes familiar to audiences from decades of fantasy films all going for the same iconography. Where that leaves The Raven for modern audiences is more akin to interesting experiment… as long as you’re familiar with the prerequisites of the film. Seeing Karloff and Price in a lighter register than usual is fun, but the film stops well short of hilarious. If you’ve seen the prerequisites, though, go ahead and have fun — The Raven is meant to be playful all the way to its closing lines: Nevermore!

  • Beach Party (1963)

    Beach Party (1963)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) While Gidget may have sparked interest, it’s Beach Party that formally launched the “Beach Party” movie subgenre of the 1960s, featuring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello in a series of seven films that spawned about twice as many imitators. This first instalment, as usual, doesn’t quite have the formula nailed down: While most of the recurring players are there, while the tone is very similar, there’s some narrative weirdness in spending so much time on an academic character (played by Bob Cummings) studying teenage mating habits—with a beard so thick and out-of-place that it’s fated to come off at some point. It’s a character that exemplifies how dumb movies portray smart people, but the caricature is very much in line with the absurdist comedy style of the film, with some fourth-wall breaks along the way. It’s all in good fun—even Vincent Price joins in with a special cameo that heralds more to come in the series—although the musical numbers are a bit weaker than in the follow-ups. The key to the series is probably found in the unobjectionable material featured here—some flesh but no nudity, some inept bikers but no real threat, some tension but no breakups. Plus, an academic who learns better from the teenagers.

  • While the City Sleeps (1956)

    While the City Sleeps (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) The more I discover lesser-known movies from the 1950s, the more I realize that, despite the conformist fairytale that many would like to make you believe about the decade, it was filled with social criticism, technological doubts and satires about the post-WW2 order. While the City Sleeps benefits from the outsider’s gaze of director Fritz Lang: it is at its core a crime drama that becomes an excuse to examine the growing power of media in American society. When a media magnate dies as a serial killer terrifies the city, the directors of the three divisions of his empire (newswire, newspaper and television) are encouraged to find the killer first in order to secure a prestigious new job. As an excuse to study the tensions between personal gain and news ethics, While the City Sleeps exploits its plotting for all it’s worth: the directors scheme and draw audacious plans that directly put others in danger in an attempt to seize the headlines (and accessorily catch the killer). A great cast complements the story – Dana Andrews at the protagonist, a suitably slimy Vincent Price as an underestimated heir, George Sanders as one of the competing directors and a great-looking Ida Lupino as a clever writer. It all amounts to an absorbing film, clearly going beyond film-noir clichés to attempt an ambitious study of how personal greed can corrupt institutions meant to be trusted by the public. It’s suitably cynical at a high level, but can rely on a likable protagonist to anchor the film. Lang’s Hollywood career was not perfect, but I don’t recall truly disliking any of his films during that period. While the City Sleeps is no exception.

  • The Tingler (1959)

    The Tingler (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) With producer-director William Castle, the gimmick was the thing, and what’s most remembered from The Tingler isn’t as much the silly story as the tales of theatre seats rigged with small devices that would vibrate at carefully selected moments in the film, echoing the on-screen theme of sensing fear and screaming to drive the monster away. The gimmick is carefully set up in the film’s first two minutes, as Castle introduces himself on-screen and delivers a portentous monologue that sets the tone and the topic of the film. After that, it’s up to Vincent Price to take up the slack with his soothing voice, playing a mad scientist who identifies a parasite living near human spinal cords that kills from fear… unless the victims can scream themselves hoarse. The plotting is ludicrous (and that’s without even mentioning the then-legal use of LSD by Price’s character as an experiment to scare himself silly), but there is an undeniable body horror moment at the idea of having a fear-fuelled parasite inside our bodies, and by the time the film makes its way to an actual movie theatre, the fun of Castle’s gimmick is back in full force. There are a few jolts along the way too: Other than the disgust of seeing a rather good parasite puppet move around the set, there’s also a scene with bright red blood flowing in the middle of a black-and-white film. Price is terrific as usual, and the added social satire of having married couples plotting to kill each other adds a bit of thematic content to the blunt high-concept. The result may not be sophisticated, but if you’re already attuned to Castle’s brand of gimmicky horror (start with House on Haunted Hill and 13 Ghosts), The Tingler is good fun with a bit of an added kick to it.

  • House of Wax (1953)

    House of Wax (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) Despite having seen enough movies to know better, I thought that having seen the 2005 remake of House of Wax meant that the original wouldn’t have many surprises in store. I was happily mistaken—it doesn’t take a lot of time to realize that the “remake” is as far apart in plot from the original as “movies about a wax museum created by a psychopath using live persons” could be. This version stars none other than the unique Vincent Price as a genius-level wax sculptor who, in the opening moments, sees his labour of love being burnt down. When he reappears, he’s got a few people working for him with designs far darker than before, and it’s up to the investigators to piece together the rebirth of his museum, the mysterious disappearances around the city and the reports of a horribly disfigured figure prowling around. House of Wax does feel a bit more daring than usual for a 1950s horror film—the prestige colour cinematography does help a bit, and Price does help make any material compelling. It’s a decent film in its own right, and much more interesting for those who have seen the remake.

  • Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

    Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2020) The first half-hour of Leave Her to Heaven had me very, very confused—it’s a film noir, and yet I was served a Technicolor romantic drama about a man and his possessive new wife. While the images were spectacular (That lodge! Wow, that lodge!) and a foreboding prologue promised much, we were so deep in melodramatic territory that I found my attention slipping—Sure, Gene Tierney is always worth a look (although Jeanne Crain has her beat here), but would the film eventually get any better? And then it does, spectacularly. After a few arguments realistic enough to be uncomfortable, the film cranks it up midway through as a shocking death puts the female lead’s psychological cruelty to the forefront, and then it’s off to races as things get more and more convoluted for our likable protagonist. There are femmes fatales in film noir, and then there’s Gene Tierney’s character here, willing to plot revenge from beyond the grave in an effort to ensure that her husband will remain hers no matter what. By the end of Leave Her to Heaven, the film’s moniker as “the first Technicolor film noir” made complete sense—although I note with some amusement that it does provide a somewhat uplifting ending after so much misery. The blend of genres may be off-putting on a first viewing, but it does make the film stand out, even today, as something refreshingly different. Cornel Wilde is fine in the male lead role and Vincent Price does make a mark in a relatively short turn as a jilted then prosecuting attorney. But the film belongs to Gene Tierney, who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance. I’ll note that the film fits rather well in the “domestic thriller” subgenre of the era, albeit gender-flipped so that it’s the woman who is the threat rather than the husband. From an inauspicious beginning, Leave Her to Heaven does pack quite a punch in its later half. If you’re bored still after the first few minutes, keep watching—it gets much better.

  • The Story of Mankind (1957)

    The Story of Mankind (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2020) Oh, what a mess. Any movie that punches so hard through my suspension of disbelief that I start asking why it exists has already lost. In the case of The Story of Mankind, here we have a science-fictional “alien judgment” framing device looking at the history of humanity as an excuse to have small historical sketches conveniently casting as many known actors as possible. It’s hard to resist a film that had Hedy Lamarr, three of the Marx brothers, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Dennis Hopper (!) and Cesar Romero, but just wait until it begins and you’re served sketches that are neither funny nor profound, skipping ahead history to serve the usual bromides, with stunt casting that doesn’t really use the actors to their fullest extent – even the Marx Brothers appear in different scenes, and don’t play to their strengths. (I was waiting for the Groucho scene… I should have skipped it.) The film being directed by Irwin Allen, I half-suspect that the idea was for a grandiose statement with state-of-the-art special effects. Instead, we get sketches comparable to a high-school production, and a constant back-and-forth between trying to make a statement and trying to make jokes. The Story of Mankind is almost fascinating in its hideousness, but I really can’t recommend it as anything but a curio.

  • The Private Lives of Elizabeth & Essex (1939)

    The Private Lives of Elizabeth & Essex (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) Historical costume dramas aren’t to everyone’s taste, but there’s something to be said in the case of The Private Lives of Elizabeth & Essex for an engaging cast. Bette Davis as Elizabeth I? Solid. Having her surrounded by Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, and Vincent Price? Now that’s interesting. Directed by Michael Curtiz, the film becomes more compelling than most equivalents in large part due to Davis’s steely performance and some deliberate choices to make the story more dramatic and accessible. Technical credentials are quite good, considering that this was a Technicolor production and Warner Brothers was willing to go all-out on the spectacle. It’s not so much about Elizabethan England than about 1930s Hollywood studio conventions, and that’s perhaps for the best. The Private Lives of Elizabeth & Essex remains a costume drama, but a click one, and more interesting than most.