Today we take time to salute two of the horror genre’s finest actors, Vincent Price and Christopher Lee. Now, if you do not recognize the names Vincent Price and Christopher Lee there may be some very good reasons. One, you’ve never seen a horror movie before and two, you have been living in a cave for the past oh, 70 years.
If you happen to be wondering why we are saluting these two icons today it’s because today, May 27th 2010 just so happens to be both of their birthdays. Vincent Price was born on May 27th 1911 and Christopher Lee was born May 27th 1922. Sadly Vincent is no longer with us as he passed away October 25 1993 from lung cancer, today would have been his 99th birthday. Happily, Christopher is still alive and well and celebrating his 88th birthday today.
Vincent Price was born in St Louis, Missouri and began his acting career in 1938 in the film Service de Luxe. In 1939 he starred in his first horror movie Tower of London along side Boris Karloff and it seemed as if Vincent had found his calling. Vincent’s rich, menacing voice was tailor made for the genre and he went on to star in such movies as The Invisible Man Returns, House of Wax, House on Haunted Hill and a slew of Edgar Allan Poe adaptions such as The Pit and the Pendulum and The Raven.
Now you may be asking yourselves, “What does this have to do with vampires?” Well, it just so happens that one of Vincent’s classic horror films happens to be The Last Man on Earth, an early adaption of the Richard Matheson novel, I am Legend. In The Last Man on Earth, Vincent starred as Dr. Robert Morgan who, after a plague breaks out turning everyone into vampires, really is the last man on earth. Morgan spends his nights hiding from the monsters but by day he hunts down their nests and slays them.
Morgan doesn’t know why he is the only person immune to the plague but he suspects it has something to do with being bitten by a vampire bat while preforming research in South America years earlier. He believes that because he had been bitten by a vampire bat his body now produced antibodies that make him immune to the vampire plague. Sure that he is now all alone in the world Morgan is shocked one morning to find a woman walking around in the daylight. Obviously the woman isn’t a vampire for the vampires cannot go out in daylight. She runs away when he first reaches out to her but he soon convinces her that he will not harm her.
Though he is relieved that he is no longer alone, Morgan begins to suspect that the woman is hiding something from him. What he doesn’t realize is that her revelations will turn his world and his beliefs completely upside down.
To celebrate Vincent’s birthday Vampires.Com would like to share with you Vincent Price‘s classic, The Last Man on Earth.
Stay tuned for Vampires.Com Salutes Vincent Price and Christopher Lee, Part Two.
-Chris
Vincent Price made many good films – House of Wax, Poe cycle, etc. Lost art of Technicolor boosting Gothic sets…