Vincent Price is rightly noted for his fine speaking voice and suave, polished presence through which he can convey eerie graduations of a sinister motivating force.

—ROGER CORMAN

My voice has sort of been my trademark and I don’t know why, because to me, I sound like everybody else in America. My brother, who wasn’t in the theater at all, had exactly the same voice I had.

—VINCENT PRICE

Introduction by Lawrence French

The following interview with Vincent Price was transcribed and edited from the radio show, THE GOLDEN AGE OF RADIO, that was first broadcast on the Hartford, CT radio station WTIC, in November of 1972 . Many years ago I got an audio tape of this broadcast from a collector, but it only included excerpts from Price’s answers. It was also, unfortunately, after CFQ published it’s special Vincent Price issue in 1989, so I couldn’t include any quotes from this interview in our special Price issue! But, even in it’s truncated form, I felt it was Vincent Price at his best, talking expansively about what he himself called his “favorite entertainment medium: Radio.”

Continue Reading »

No Comments »

By Steve Biodrowski 

SUSPIRIA was one of those films I missed the first time around. When it hit U.S. screens in 1977, I found the advertising campaign decidedly uninteresting; for some reason, it suggested a schlocky gore movie to me. Not that I was opposed to explicit horror: I had been sneaking into R-rated movies like THE EXORCIST since 1973, but I had to feel there was something more than just mindless mayhem to get me into the theatre. The largely negative review in Cinefantastique magazine, which called the film “hackneyed in concept, but experimental in form,” was not enough to change my mind, but it did inspire me to check out SUSPIRIA when it played on cable television. That was the beginning of my life-long love affair with the work of Dario Argento, which continues to this day, thanks to the art house release of THE THREE MOTHERS this weekend. Continue Reading »

4 Comments »

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first in a new series that will focus on first-hand recollections of seeing classic films during their original release. We begin with the colorful and enjoyable DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE, the third Hammer horror film starring Christopher Lee as the Count.]

“Ah! The good old time - the good old time. Youth and the sea. Glamour and the sea. […T]ell me, wasn’t that the best time, that time when we were young at sea, young and had nothing, on the sea that gives nothing.”

- Joseph Conrad, “Youth: A Narrative.

Yes, the glories of a youth are a treasure trove of riches that shine on like dusky jewels buried in the pirate chest of one’s memory. For me, however, that “good old time” of Youth and Glamor had nothing to do with the sea. My dark ocean was the cinema screen; my luxury liner was the local theatre; my ticket was still a ticket, but my ports of call ranged from when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, to the Dawn of Man, to Beyond the Infinite. Unlike “the sea that gives nothing,” the vast timeless ocean that I explored - of past, present, and future - gave me everything: amazing adventure and enchanting excitement, fear and fantasy, and most of all - that grandeur of awe that first evokes a Sense of Wonder. I may have resided in a small, unexceptional suburb a half-hour east of Hollywood, but thanks to movies - particularly cinefantastique - my mind soared through the stars: I never felt earthbound, trapped, limited; infinite vistas always lay before me, for little more than a quarter. Continue Reading »

1 Comment »