The Vincentennial event at the Portage Theatre was pretty fun. This was the first time I attended this elegant theatre, despite it being just a short bus ride from me.
The highlight of the evening was when Vincent's daughter, Victoria Price, gave a talk on her father while accompanied by a fan-created slide show of studio photos, home photos, and video clips of Victoria's much older brother adding some remembrances. She's been going around the country celebrating this once in a lifetime centennial. I'm sure you have heard what a very appreciative and nice person Vincent Price was, this was confirmed by his daughter, who said he always took time out to greet fans and acknowledge their major role in his career. She also told stories of how funny, sincere, hard-working and loving he was, as well as his diverse interests in later life with art collection, travel and as a gourmand.
Two films were also screened, the first was House on Haunted Hill. Price plays a rich man who buys the attendance of several strangers to join him and his wife, played by Carole Ohmart, in an overnight stay in a supposed haunted house. The typist who is invited keeps coming up against what she believes are ghosts, despite no one else witnessing these encounters. When the rich man's wife dies, it creates a tension that the group must suffer the rest of the night.
The second film was The Last Man on Earth. It is an apocalyptic film where Price plays a researcher hoping to find the cure for a plauge that has decimated the world. We see how his family has succumbed to the plague, and he now lives alone, tormented by zombielike vampires who threaten to burst in every night. This looked as if it was filmed in Italy and dubbed in English, and pretty low budget.
I saw a few people in attendance in Halloween garb but I don't think anyone specifically dressed as to a Vincent Price character or film. Several vendors were there with posters, buttons, photos and other memorabilia for sale. Victoria also did a meet and greet and signed autographs too.
Other little highlights were the additional screenings of two shorts that Vincent Price had a key role in. The first was the early TIm Burton short film Vincent, where a boy named Vincent Malloy wishes he were Vincent Price. In this film, you can already see Burton's signature gothic style of puppetry which featured in his stop-motion films the Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. Of course, Burton also had many animated stop-motion elements in other films such as Beetlejuice, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, and Mars Attacks! And certainly his gothic sensibilities has truly infused his career.
The other little highlight was the music video for Michael Jackson's song Thriller. This was directed and co-written by John Landis, a true "creature feature" director/fan who seemed to be the perfect partner to Jackson to create this short story out of a song. Price narrates a rhymed dialog in part of the video (it's listed as a "rap"). Seeing it on the big screen, I didn't realize how little of this was singing, and how much of it is a real narrative of a horror film.
