Vincent Price Honored with Film Festival in Jaffrey

The Park Theatre's River Street Theatre (RST) announced that they will present in June a film festival of three films to honor acclaimed actor of the macabre, Vincent Price. The films include The Bat (Saturday, June 2), THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (Saturday, June 9) and The House on Haunted Hill (Saturday, June 16). All films will be shown at 7 pm.

Vincent Price was born to a wealthy family in St. Louis in 1911. He graduated from Yale with an art history major. He went to London to receive a master's degree in fine arts. He began to fall in love with the British stage and eventually got his first acting job in London with the Orson Welles Mercury Theatre's production of Laurence Housman's Victoria Regina. He went on to do theatre roles on Broadway and Hollywood found him. He started with dramatic character roles in the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s.

As the horror genre was coming into its golden age in the 1950s, Mr. Price was starring in a number of iconic horror films (House of Wax, The Fly). He made a long-lasting impact with one of the films being presented in the River Street Theatre festival, The House on Haunted Hill (1959). Produced by the master of campy horror films, William Castle (Rosemary's Baby, Strait-Jacket, Bug), The House on Haunted Hill featured Price as Frederick Loren, a stylish oddball millionaire who brings together a mixed bag of strange types to stay in his house overnight. His challenge was, for those who survived the night, a reward of $10,000 each. The film has been hailed as one of the great horror films of all time. RottenTomatoes.com rates the film 96% Fresh. It has been recently RESTORED to high definition perfection. (Trivia note: the exterior of the house used in the film is The Ennis House in Los Angeles, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.)

Also being presented at the festival is The Bat (1959) about a killer called "the Bat" who has claimed many lives in the small town inhabited by a novelist, Cornelia van Gorder (Agnes Moorhead). The New York Times said in 1964, " 'The Bat' put 'The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb' to shame. THE WINNER IS a remake of the famous old haunted-house play by Mary Roberts Rinehart."

Another Vincent Price classic at the festival is THE LAST MAN ON EARTH (1964). Price plays Dr. Robert Morgan, the only SURVIVOR of a global zombie epidemic. He reluctantly becomes a vampire hunter. The Austin Chronicle calls it "A chilling study of loneliness and an acting tour de force for Price as the last SURVIVOR of a dead race."

Vincent Price was not only an accomplished actor but an well known art collector as well as a writer of some of the best selling books on cooking and fine food of the past 50 years. He died in 1993 and can be best remembered with his quote, "It's as much fun to scare as to be scared."

Tickets for each film at the Vincent Price Film Festival are $5.00. More program and schedule information, as well as ticket purchases, can be found at www.riverst.org or by calling the RST Box Office (603) 532-8888. The after-hours box office can be reached by calling OvationTix at (866) 811-4111.

The River Street Theatre is located in downtown Jaffrey, New Hampshire at 6 River Street. The River Street Theatre is sponsored by Grove Street Fiduciary, Coca-Cola, the Board of Trustees of the Park Theatre, Janet S. Grant, Betty Locke, Owen Houghton and the James F. & Fernande Kelly Charitable Trust.

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