(6) Vincent also appeared in Universal’s 1939 version as Clarence (as seen above), where he was dumped in a vat filled with cigarette butts as a joke by the film’s stars Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff. (5) Vincent had only done one Shakespeare play before – and, ironically, it was Richard III, back in 1953, in which he played the Duke of Buckingham to Jose Ferrer’s Richard. Then we added some new, diabolic devices to fill our Richard’s character as one of the ten meanest men in the world.’ (Vincent Price, from the Tower of London pressbook) ‘Every trick of dastardly I ever learned,’ Vincent says, ‘was preparation for my role in Tower of London. (4) Vincent Price enjoyed the challenge of doing a Shakespearean-styled character combined with the horror film. (3) With no real historical facts about Richard III available (at the time), they created their own version of events, including a non-historical ending. (2) Using Universal’s 1939 Tower of London and The Bard’s Richard III, Hamlet and Macbeth as their springboard, they fashioned a script called The Dream of Kings, in which Gordon and co-writers Amos Powell and Robert Kent (as James B Gordon) fused macabre Poe elements with a Shakespearean tone by including some re-phrased blank verse – an example being, ‘Is this defeat, that I stand alone here?’ instead of ‘Is this a dagger which I see before me?’. (1) Roger Corman had already scored much success with four Edgar Allan Poe films ( House of Usher, Pit and the Pendulum, Premature Burial and Tales of Terror) when his producer brother Gene and screenwriter Leo Gordon turned to William Shakespeare for another gothic horror vehicle for Vincent Price. To celebrate the UK Blu-ray release of the Corman-Price-Shakespeare horror, here’s 20 frightfully fun facts you should know…

The Price of Fear by Joel Eisner