Tuesday, April 29, 2008
We now move on to part 2 of the "Two for the Price of One" Vincent Price double feature, which I guess means this one was free. Or were they both half off? I'm not sure. I didn't really think this title out very well.
Moving on, it turns out that Price isn't one of the leads in Laura, although he does have a very significant supporting role that's practically a lead any way, so good for him. He was only in his early 30's here, and fairly handsome looking.
Laura is a sorta film-noir by Otto Preminger, whose Anatomy of a Murder I watched a while back for my K2K and totally gushed about it, and now find that it hasn't really stuck with me. How about that? I bet it would still be a great watch, but I guess maybe it's more like cinematic Chinese food.
Contrary to what I had heard, this wasn't a great movie, but I liked it. I love Preminger's visual style (deep focus, I believe you call it, and I especially dig the way long shots will turn into close-ups and vise versa), and there are a lot of interesting characters. The story and mystery elements, however, aren't very compelling, and this being a mystery/noir type of movie, it doesn't go over well. There's also a subplot involving the main character becoming obsessed with the murder victim he's investigating that feels half-assed. It's one of my favorite oft-used elements in detective stories, but it doesn't really go anywhere here and isn't developed enough. I'll stick with James Ellroy when I want detectives sporting wood for dead chicks.
The movie is helped by the quirky characters and some strange details. What really jumped out at me, although I suspect maybe it's just my imagination, was all the homosexual subtext. The three male leads are all in love with Laura, yet each one has a sort of gay vibe going on. Vincent Price, as I've already said, has mannerisms that suggest homosexuality. Clifton Webb plays a bitchy, catty author named Waldo Lydecker who seems almost like the proto-Capote. At one point, the main character sees Lydecker naked, coming out of his bathtub, and I swear they make a point of showing a slight smile cross his face. I have no idea what any of this means, or if it's even really there, but it added an unexpected layer to the movie.
And the real shock here is Price, doing something I've never seen before: playing a normal guy in a reasonably normal movie. And you know what? Compared to everything else I've seen him in, he's subdued and natural and lacking in his overt theatricality. He plays a regular, kinda good looking guy, and never once stands out as some weirdo, iconic camp figure. So there you go, Vincent Price can act.
Showing posts with label Two For The Price Of One. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Two For The Price Of One. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
The Baron of Arizona
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Vincent Price has an interesting screen presence. It's hard to call him a good actor, but he's an incredibly memorable one. I guess we tend to think of him as a campy over-actor. Certainly, he's a theatrical one. He comes off as possibly homosexual, although he was not, and that adds some campiness. By the time I was watching cartoons, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo was on TV, and Price's persona or iconography was already familiar to me, despite not having even seen any of his movies. I've wondered for a while now, though, if Price was really a bad/campy actor, or if it's just the campy movies he showed up in.
So last night I did a double feature of non-horror movies starring Vincent Price, that I'm going to go ahead and right now name the "Two for the Price of One Double Feature." And yes, this is my second VP double feature in only 4 months. Before you know it, I'll have double-featured my way through his entire filmography.
Two Price movies, both dramatic roles, as a test to see if he is a better actor given different material. No haunted houses, no murders-by-pendulum, and certainly no killing yappy dogs, baking them into a pie and feeding them to their master.
Two things I learned about "the Veep" (as I call him) last night:
1) He is very tall. I mean, I think I knew he was tall, but goddamn, I didn't realize he was some towering gigantor with long monkey-arms. Maybe it was the monkey-arms that I hadn't noticed before.
2) When he was young and beardless, he was actually a decently attractive guy.
So first on the list was The Baron of Arizona, which is Sam Fuller's 2nd movie (I think), and the 3rd I've watched in the past few weeks, so this was really like a perfect storm for me. It's a shitload better than I Shot Jesse James, although it still has some serious flaws that keep it from realizing its full potential. I would say the worst part is that the movie has a useless wraparound story where some older rich dude is telling the story of the Baron of Arizona to a bunch of other guys. So for a while we get this really annoying, cheesy, obvious narration going on over the (far more interesting) story of the Baron, every now and then cutting back to the rich guys sipping scotch in their study or oppressing minorities or whatever it is the upper crust does. Oddly, by the end, the movie has slowly abandoned the narration, and the whole wraparound never comes back. Like they completely forgot it.
The story itself is pretty cool though, about an audacious con man in the late 1800's who sets up a complicated plot to try and claim all of Arizona for himself. He forges all sorts of documents and adopts a little girl for whom he invents a new identity as a Spanish Baroness with rightful claim to the land. When she grows up, he marries her, making himself the Baron.
OK, here it is. I'm going to come out in defense of Vincent Price. Because he's pretty good in this movie. He's still got that weird voice, that sexual ambiguity and some serious theatricality, but it works for the character. I mean, this guy is one ballsy con artist, creating a fictional royal position and persona for himself. It fits. It doesn't come off as hammy... in fact, in a movie that does have some accidentally hammy moments, V.P. comes off as the least corny, most nuanced character.
I'm not gonna give him a posthumous Oscar or nothing, but his demeanor and style of acting don't come off as overly campy in a non-campy movie. So, I'm thinking this means that his style lends well to camp, but that it more has to do with the movie he's in rather than his being a shitty actor. Good job, Vincent, you proved to me that you actually could act.
Vincent Price has an interesting screen presence. It's hard to call him a good actor, but he's an incredibly memorable one. I guess we tend to think of him as a campy over-actor. Certainly, he's a theatrical one. He comes off as possibly homosexual, although he was not, and that adds some campiness. By the time I was watching cartoons, The 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo was on TV, and Price's persona or iconography was already familiar to me, despite not having even seen any of his movies. I've wondered for a while now, though, if Price was really a bad/campy actor, or if it's just the campy movies he showed up in.
So last night I did a double feature of non-horror movies starring Vincent Price, that I'm going to go ahead and right now name the "Two for the Price of One Double Feature." And yes, this is my second VP double feature in only 4 months. Before you know it, I'll have double-featured my way through his entire filmography.
Two Price movies, both dramatic roles, as a test to see if he is a better actor given different material. No haunted houses, no murders-by-pendulum, and certainly no killing yappy dogs, baking them into a pie and feeding them to their master.
Two things I learned about "the Veep" (as I call him) last night:
1) He is very tall. I mean, I think I knew he was tall, but goddamn, I didn't realize he was some towering gigantor with long monkey-arms. Maybe it was the monkey-arms that I hadn't noticed before.
2) When he was young and beardless, he was actually a decently attractive guy.
So first on the list was The Baron of Arizona, which is Sam Fuller's 2nd movie (I think), and the 3rd I've watched in the past few weeks, so this was really like a perfect storm for me. It's a shitload better than I Shot Jesse James, although it still has some serious flaws that keep it from realizing its full potential. I would say the worst part is that the movie has a useless wraparound story where some older rich dude is telling the story of the Baron of Arizona to a bunch of other guys. So for a while we get this really annoying, cheesy, obvious narration going on over the (far more interesting) story of the Baron, every now and then cutting back to the rich guys sipping scotch in their study or oppressing minorities or whatever it is the upper crust does. Oddly, by the end, the movie has slowly abandoned the narration, and the whole wraparound never comes back. Like they completely forgot it.
The story itself is pretty cool though, about an audacious con man in the late 1800's who sets up a complicated plot to try and claim all of Arizona for himself. He forges all sorts of documents and adopts a little girl for whom he invents a new identity as a Spanish Baroness with rightful claim to the land. When she grows up, he marries her, making himself the Baron.
OK, here it is. I'm going to come out in defense of Vincent Price. Because he's pretty good in this movie. He's still got that weird voice, that sexual ambiguity and some serious theatricality, but it works for the character. I mean, this guy is one ballsy con artist, creating a fictional royal position and persona for himself. It fits. It doesn't come off as hammy... in fact, in a movie that does have some accidentally hammy moments, V.P. comes off as the least corny, most nuanced character.
I'm not gonna give him a posthumous Oscar or nothing, but his demeanor and style of acting don't come off as overly campy in a non-campy movie. So, I'm thinking this means that his style lends well to camp, but that it more has to do with the movie he's in rather than his being a shitty actor. Good job, Vincent, you proved to me that you actually could act.
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