Vinnie as The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
“One thing is certain: the arts keep you alive. They stimulate, encourage, challenge, and, most of all, guarantee a future free from boredom. They allow growth and even demand it in that time of life we call maturity but too often enter it with a childish faith that what we learned in youth is sustenance enough for the years when most men are mentally famished but won’t admit it—or when they are apt to curb their hunger with the sops of complacency, security, and the assurance of death.”
― Vincent Price, I Like What I Know: A Visual Autobiography
From 1960 to 1964 Vincent Price starred in seven adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe (with a dash of H.P. Lovecraft) for director Roger Corman and American International Pictures.
“Art is love-times-love; the creator loves it and his audience adores it. To miss the sensation of loving art is to miss a kind of parenthood—false pregnancy perhaps—but as Van Gogh said, “If, defrauded of the power to create physically, a man tries to create thoughts in place of children, he is still part of humanity”…a big part.”→ Vincent Price (May 27, 1911 - October 25, 1993) - I Like What I Know: A Visual Autobiography
“Vincent Price was somebody I could identify with. When you’re younger, things look bigger, you find your own mythology, you find what psychologically connects to you. And those movies, just the poetry of them, and this larger-than-life character who goes through a lot of torment—mostly imagined—just spoke to me.”
- Tim Burton
Vincent by Tim Burton
Vincent Malloy is seven years old
He’s always polite and does what he’s told
For a boy his age, he’s considerate and nice
But he wants to be just like Vincent Price
He doesn’t mind living with his sister, dog and cats
Though he’d rather share a home with spiders and bats
There he could reflect on the horrors he’s invented
And wander dark hallways, alone and tormented
Vincent is nice when his aunt comes to see him
But imagines dipping her in wax for his wax museum
He likes to experiment on his dog Abercrombie
In the hopes of creating a horrible zombie
So he and his horrible zombie dog
Could go searching for victims in the London fog
His thoughts, though, aren’t only of ghoulish crimes
He likes to paint and read to pass some of the times
While other kids read books like Go, Jane, Go!
Vincent’s favourite author is Edgar Allen Poe
One night, while reading a gruesome tale
He read a passage that made him turn pale
Such horrible news he could not survive
For his beautiful wife had been buried alive!
He dug out her grave to make sure she was dead
Unaware that her grave was his mother’s flower bed
His mother sent Vincent off to his room
He knew he’d been banished to the tower of doom
Where he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life
Alone with the portrait of his beautiful wife
While alone and insane encased in his tomb
Vincent’s mother burst suddenly into the room
She said: “If you want to, you can go out and play
It’s sunny outside, and a beautiful day”
Vincent tried to talk, but he just couldn’t speak
The years of isolation had made him quite weak
So he took out some paper and scrawled with a pen:
“I am possessed by this house, and can never leave it again”
His mother said: “You’re not possessed, and you’re not almost dead
These games that you play are all in your head
You’re not Vincent Price, you’re Vincent Malloy
You’re not tormented or insane, you’re just a young boy
You’re seven years old and you are my son
I want you to get outside and have some real fun.”
Her anger now spent, she walked out through the hall
And while Vincent backed slowly against the wall
The room started to swell, to shiver and creak
His horrid insanity had reached its peak
He saw Abercrombie, his zombie slave
And heard his wife call from beyond the grave
She spoke from her coffin and made ghoulish demands
While, through cracking walls, reached skeleton hands
Every horror in his life that had crept through his dreams
Swept his mad laughter to terrified screams!
To escape the madness, he reached for the door
But fell limp and lifeless down on the floor
His voice was soft and very slow
As he quoted The Raven from Edgar Allen Poe:
“and my soul from out that shadow
that lies floating on the floor
shall be lifted?
Nevermore…”
