I chanced upon this the other day and couldn’t resist posting it here. It’s a short (52-minute) film featuring the wonderful Vincent Price in a one-man show consisting of dramatic recitations of stories by Edgar Allen Poe: “The Tell-Tale Heart“, “The Sphinx“, “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Pit and the Pendulum“. As a huge fan of both Price and Poe I don’t really understand why I’ve never seen this before. This film was made in 1972, by which time his acting roles were largely self-parodying, playing camp villains in hammy horror films, roles I might add that he played with matchless gusto despite the often low quality of the scripts. But in this movie, filmed in front of a live audience, reminds us what a fine actor he was, his theatricality perfectly appropriate for Poe’s writing.
The whole movie’s a bit longer than I’d usually post in a blog item, but at least watch all of the first story which starts
TRUE! –nervous –very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses –not destroyed –not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?
Hmm.
Anyway, they just don’t make them like Vincent Prince any more…
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