Vincent Price Day: SWEET DREAMS....

Seventeen years ago today, horror lost its greatest legend and ambassador. Fortunately, we still have the films which will sustain his memory for all time... Take a moment now to commemorate and celebrate the one and only Mr. Vincent Price. There will never be another. Sweet dreams, dark prince...

Requiem for a Geek-Out...

It's all well and good being a geek these days. It's easy for you young folk. See, nerd is now the new cool, so it's hip to be into all kinds of genre stuff, and know your Boushh from your Bossk.

But it was not always so.

No, there was a time when being a geek meant leading a solitary, shunned existence on the periphery of adolescent society. When roleplaying and quoting Dr. Who episodes made you a social pariah. In those days, it was something to rejoice about whenever you came across others who shared your interests, people you could commune with and debate the weighty issues, like who was the coolest X-Man and whether or not Ricardo Montalban wore a fake rubber chest in Wrath of Khan. These things were important to you, and if you met the rare other person to whom they were also important...well, then that person was cool in your book.

Those days are gone now, and yet I couldn't help but be reminded of them thanks to the experience of discovering and taking part in an amazing phenomenon known as Kevin Geeks Out. The brainchild of writer/comedian Kevin Maher, co-produced by Meg Sweeney Lawless and Jay Stern, Kevin Geeks Out was a nearly monthly multimedia extravaganza paying tribute to all sorts of themes in genre entertainment. Held at Manhattan's 92YTribeca, the comedy-variety clip show devoted whole evenings to Vincent Price, werewolves, sharks, robots, monkeys, Frankenstein, superheroes, the post-apocalypse, and so much more. And now it's over.

Last Friday night marked the final edition of Kevin Geeks Out, with a special show that was all about aliens. And just as I had the other times I got to experience it, I felt right at home. It was that same feeling from back in high school, meeting the kid in the cafeteria with a bootleg VHS of Slime City tucked under his arm. As my wife looked around the darkened theater at her first and final KGO, she said it best: "Yep, these are definitely your people!" And they were.

It saddens me to have discovered KGO so late in the game, only having the opportunity to catch three of the 23 events presented since the whole thing started in January 2008. And yet I'm glad I got to enjoy it before it disappeared. I'm especially glad I got to enjoy it with other very cool people, some of whom I previously knew only as a name on a computer screen, others whom I didn't know at all: folks like Tenebrous Kate, Emily Intravia, Dylan Santurri & Christine Makepeace, Matt Glasson, Heather Buckley and others.

Being a fellow family man, similarly forced to balance home life and a real-life job with a hungry compulsion to discuss the career of Gil Gerard, I completely relate to Kevin's tough decision to bring the curtain down on the Geek-Outs. But it doesn't mean I have to be happy about it. At least I got one last night full of Mac & Me clips and green cupcakes, got to introduce the Mrs. to the KGO phenom, and also got to close out the show by impersonating an FBI agent and escorting Kevin from the theater for the unlawful exhibition of copyrighted material...

So here's to cherishing the opportunity to get together with like-minded fans and have so much fun with the stuff we all love. It might be cool to like all this stuff now, but for all those who remember when it wasn't, thank you Kevin, for giving us a place to geek out among friends.

Remembering a True Gentleman of Horror

A Happy Birthday in Hammer heaven to one of the genre's greatest legends, Peter Cushing, who would've been 97 today...



For more on Mr. Cushing:

The Official Site of the Peter Cushing Association
The Peter Cushing Shrine
Peter Cushing at HouseofHorrors.com
Good and Evil: The Peter Cushing Fanlisting

Happy Mother's Day from The Vault of Horror!

Happy Birthday to the Undisputed King of Horror

On this date in 1911, in St. Louis, Missouri, one Vincent Leonard Price Jr. entered this mortal plane. For my money, there had never been before, nor has there been since, an actor who more naturally and effortlessly epitomized the horror genre like he did. The world was quite literally made a better place for his being in it, and even though he left us nearly 16 years ago, the body of work that remains will continue to thrill lovers of Grand Guignol for generations to come. Thank you, Mr. Price for populating our nightmares with your brilliant performances, and making sure we never forget how important it is to smile once in a while, even when you're being scared out of your wits...

An Amazing Tribute to Horror's Greatest Movie Legend

Recently, VoH reader and proprietor of Single Image Toys John Hadlow put together this superb video montage tribute to the one and only Vincent Price, which he shared on both his YouTube and Facebook pages. I've never done this before, but I'm sharing that video today right here. It's on the level of any Oscar telecast tribute montage I've ever seen, and John should be proud of his work. Check it out:

The Blob's Golden Anniversary

This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of the release of the classic 1950s B-horror flick The Blob--and to celebrate the occasion, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania is kicking off Blobfest 2008, a tribute to everyone's favorite extra-terrestrial ooze.

Site of much of the action filmed for the 1958 movie, including the famous climactic scene in which moviegoers at Phoenixville's Colonial Theatre flee the acidic gelatin, the town has been holding Blobfest for years now, but naturally, this year's event is extra-special.

A party at the theater will kick off the festivities on Friday night, according to the Phoenixville News. Other events will include a reenactment of the Colonial Theatre scene, as well as a retrospective hosted by Kris Yeaworth, son of the film's late director Irvin "Shorty" Yeaworth. Naturally, the movie itself will be screened several times over the weekend, and so will two other '50s B-classics: Universal's Creature from the Black Lagoon and William Castle's The Tingler. Ricou Browning, the swimmer who portrayed the Gill-Man in his underwater scenes, will introduce Black Lagoon. Also on hand in the theatre will be makeup effects master Tom Savini.

For more info, go to thecolonialtheatre.com. Sounds like a fun time. Although there's no mention of it, I hope there is also some kind of plan to honor The Blob's co-screenwriter Kay Linaker, who passed away earlier this year.

Lon Chaney Shall Not Die

Today The Vault of Horror marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of the great Lon Chaney Sr. How fitting indeed that April Fool's Day would be the birthday of Hollywood's greatest illusionist.

Born Leonidas Frank Chaney on April 1, 1883, he would go on to become the single greatest celebrity of the silent film era, with only Charles Chaplin being a possible exception. He was best known for his incredible skill with makeup--so much so that he even wrote an entry on the subject for the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Always doing his own work, Chaney was able to dramatically transform himself for a wide variety of roles, most memorably including Fagin in Oliver Twist (1922), Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), Prof. Echo in The Unholy Three (1925), Erik in The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Alonzo the Armless in The Unknown (1927), Prof. Edward C. Burke in London After Midnight (1927) and Tito Beppi in Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928). In those early days of movie makeup, Chaney suffered greatly under painful applications, and even lost some of his vision due to his work on The Hunchback Of Notre Dame.

Many have attributed his fascination with unusual, often deformed roles to the fact that he grew up the son of parents who were both deaf and a mother who was an invalid. His ability to communicate so effectively without words and under heavy makeup might also be attributed to this.

His career was confined almost entirely to the silents, and in fact he made only one talkie, a 1930 remake of The Unholy Three, in which he performed the voices of five different characters. He was in line to portray Dracula in Tod Browning's 1931 production when he became ill with lung cancer brought on by heavy smoking and aggravated by a piece of artificial snow that became accidentally lodged in his throat while working on his final silent film, Thunder (1929). Lon Chaney passed away on August 26, 1930 at the age of 47.

Although known primarily for his work in horror, Chaney was also an accomplished dramatic stage actor, as well as a gifted comedian, dancer and singer. He was played by James Cagney in a 1957 biopic, The Man of a Thousand Faces. His son, born Creighton Chaney but using the screen name Lon Chaney Jr., became a prominent horror actor in his own right, but never quite escaped the awesome shadow of his legendary father.

(Special thanks for the animated GIF go to LonChaney.com, the family's official website.)