The Vincent Price Movie Review

aka From a Whisper to a Scream
Released in 1987
Directed by Jeff Burr

The Offspring is a horror anthology movie from the late 1980’s that Vincent Price starred in at the tail end of his career. It’s the last horror movie he made, in fact. The Offspring is in the similar vein as other horror anthologies of the 80’s like Creepshow and Tales From the Crypt which feature sordid characters and twist endings. The largest difference is that The Offspring does not offer any lighthearted black comedy; it’s gruesome and unrelenting.

The movie is made up of four separate story segments that each take place in the same town of Oldfield Tennessee, but at different periods in time. The segments are wrapped together by another story that stars Vincent Price as the narrator of the tales. Price plays Julian White, a chronicler of Oldfield’s lurid history who relates the horrible stories to a visiting journalist that is covering the execution of Julian’s niece. Even though there isn’t much of a purpose to the wrapper story besides narration, it’s kind of nice to see a horror anthology that actually ties all the separate elements together in some way.

Since each of the segments in this film have a twist ending, I will try to refrain from spoiling the fun by limiting the details of my review.

The first segment stars veteran actor Clu Gulager as Stanley Burnside, who is a creepy guy that lives with his invalid sister in their old family house. Most of the segment deals with Stanley’s desire to court one of his female coworkers, and his subsequent inability to cope with the rejection amid hints of incest. I found that I enjoyed this segment mostly due to Gulager’s portrayal of Stanley. The performance of Miriam Byrd-Nethery, his wife in the film and in real life, was equally creepy. You’ll probably be wondering what the twist ending is by the time you get towards the end of the story because nothing is really withheld from the viewer up to that point. Let me just say that this movie was made in the late 80’s during the days of the cute monster horror movies like Ghoulies and Gremlins.

Moving on…

The second segment is probably my favorite out of all four. It opens with a sleazy guy named Jesse Hardwick(Terry Kiser) being ambushed in his trailer by a couple of heavies who are shooting to kill. In his frantic escape attempt he gets shot up pretty bad, but manages to make it to a boat at the edge of a swamp. He wakes up several days later in a shack owned by a hermit who lives there in the swamp. Despite being grievously injured, he survives and learns more about the peculiar old guy who saved him. While the old hermit is out hunting for mushrooms one night, Jesse discovers a journal that leads him to believe the hermit is over a hundred years old and possesses the secret to everlasting life. After secretly watching the hermit perform some witchcraft ceremonies, Jesse believes he has found the ingredients that grant the power over death. He asks the old man to teach him the secret, but gets frustrated when the hermit seems to be only showing him phony tricks instead of the real thing. Being the treacherous degenerate that he is, Jesse tries to murder the old man and steal his potions, but you can’t murder someone who is immune to death. Jesse finds out that there are fates worst than death, however.

The third segment is a somewhat bizarre story about a group of circus freaks. The circus is run by a magic-using circus master, who actually grants the freaks’ powers. She also uses her magic as a threat against the circus workers who want to escape. The story focuses on one particular freak called the Glass Eater. This is the guy who eats glass, of course, but he also munches on nails, razorblades, and other sharp objects. After he falls in love with a young girl, the Glass Eater tries to escape from the circus to be with his lover. The circus master finds out, and decides to enact some extremely gory punishment on both of them. Let’s just say the Glass Eater certainly ate a lot of sharp objects during his tenure, but he didn’t necessarily digest all of them. The story ends on an upside: his girlfriend gets a new job at the circus.

I liked this third story the least out of the four. The acting is pretty weak.

The last segment goes back in time to the civil war period, when Oldfield was just being founded. I think the premise is interesting and somewhat terrifying. Imagine travelling to the war-torn South, and stumbling upon a small town where there are no inhabitants but children; all the adults have been killed in the war. Having witnessed the full brutality of war, the children are so traumatized and desensitized to violence that they use dead soldiers’ body parts as toys to play with. I realize this theme has been tried many times with Children of the Corn, etc, but I find this particular story has more impact because it actually could have happened. (or at least certain aspects of it)

Even though Vincent Price doesn’t have much to do in his last horror movie, I would still recommend giving it a try. Be aware that this is 1980’s horror material here…there’s definitely a cheese-factor mixed with a fair amount of gore.

If you are trying to find this on DVD it will be titled From a Whisper to a Scream.

Released in 1970
Directed by Gordon Hessler

“smells like cheese, looks like ham, tastes like chicken…”

Oh my lord. This is the most god awful movie I have ever seen. Hmmm, I wonder who could have made such a terrible movie, let’s see….yep it’s Gordon Hessler…again. Not satisfied with the incredible stinkbomb that was The Oblong Box, Hessler manages to actually make a movie that’s even worse! Let me reassure you, this movie is not bad in a good way - it’s just all bad.

Well, almost all bad. At least it has Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing in it. Vincent Price has a small role, but Lee and Cushing only have a few lines each. Their characters are basically unnecessary.

But let’s get back to the bad stuff:

This script is totally fragmented. It’s as if someone randomly interchanged the scenes from three different movies and spliced them all together in a confused jumble. So there’s a mad doctor who cuts people up and assembles a totally new human out of a combination of different parts. There’s a psychotic maniac who strangles women and sucks their blood. There’s some officer of a faux Soviet country that uses a Vulcan neck pinch to murder people. There’s an extremely long and unnecessary car chase. Bleh. In the end they do their best to try and mesh all the plot lines together but it ain’t happening. Not even Vincent Price can save this movie.

I don’t care much for the directing either. Hessler has this style where he shoots a lot of awkward close-ups. He does it over and over and it’s annoying. Combined with the constant shaky camera it actually makes the film somewhat nauseating. Also there are a lot of scenes where it’s too dark to even see what’s going on. It probably doesn’t matter that you can’t see them though, because about 1/3 of the scenes in this movie have no relationship with the “plot” anyway.

I am seriously not looking forward to viewing Hessler’s next collaboration with Price. (Cry of the Banshee) If it’s as bad as Scream and Scream Again and The Oblong Box I might consider egging Hessler’s house.

Please, for the love of God, do not watch this movie under any circumstances. There are so many better movies with Vincent Price in them.

Released in 1971
Directed by Robert Fuest
Written by James Whiton and William Goldstein

“Nine killed you. Nine shall die.”

“Bravo!”
“How bizarre!”
“How did this movie ever get made?”

These three thoughts alternated repeatedly through my mind while viewing the Abominable Dr. Phibes for the first time. (i’ve seen it about 20 times since then) How do I begin to explain this wonderful movie? It’s a combination of horror and black comedy that is mixed together with a refreshing amount of style and a sense of the bizarre.

Dr. Phibes (Vincent Price) is an independently wealthy genius with multiple PhDs. He also has a beautiful but dead wife, a beautiful but mute servant (Virginia North), the coolest looking organ ever created, and a penchant for revenge…Old Testament style revenge. The latter is unfortunate for the British doctors who failed to save Phibes’ wife during surgery. Blaming them for their lack of skills and neglect, Phibes starts bumping off the doctors one by one, each in a novel fashion inspired by the biblical ten plagues of Egypt. (bats, frogs, bees, boils, etc)

Dispatched to stop the gruesome murders is the good-natured but incompetent Inspector Trout,(Peter Jeffrey) who always seems to be one step behind Phibes. His bumbling antics and dry dialog provide much of the black humor in the film.

What really makes this movie special is the way it’s infused with style and a touch of whimsy. The sets are done mostly in the 1920’s Art Deco style, and look very slick. (the movie is set in the 1920’s) The music is great as well, and features some songs from the 20’s that most people will recognize and also some interesting organ instrumentals.

This is definitely not your average cookie-cutter film and as such I know some people will not like it. But for me, this makes my Top 10 Vincent Price movies, and is one of my favorite films period.

They did make a sequel that, like most, is not as good and is “more of the same.” Another movie that is similar in style is Theater of Blood, which I found to be interesting but ultimately couldn’t capture the original magic that The Abominable Dr. Phibes had.