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After several meetings with, and sometimes without, Mike being present, it became my mission in life to help Jeff Burr convince Vincent Price to act in FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM. Finally Vincent asked to see some of the film, so Jeff sent him a tape of the Cameron Mitchell segment, which was similar in tone to CHILDREN OF THE CORN, only darker. After seeing this footage Vincent agreed to act in the new wraparound material, creating a central theme to link the stories together.

The film was also known as THE OFFSPRING when it was first released theatrically, then reverted to its original title for the DVD release a few years later.

As the 1980’s came to a close, Vincent had been married to his third wife, the celebrated stage and film actress Coral Browne, for nearly two decades. Their life together had been a magic carpet ride in the beginning. Vincent confided once: “I always knew something wonderful would happen to me when I turned sixty five.” Each gave up considerable personal lifestyles to be together. Coral left her comfortable London flat and cherished friends of a lifetime to relocate in Hollywood and become Mrs. Vincent Price. Vincent divorced his second wife, Mary Grant, after three decades of marriage, and even risked the relationship with his daughter, Victoria, to be with Coral. The glory of their union was the realization that they were soul mates, and blessed to have discovered this even late in life, rather than not at all.

By the time of Jeff’s film, the Prices had weathered some rough spots in the marriage. Coral had resigned herself to living in LA, a city she really detested, just so Vincent could be close to Hollywood for film and TV work. When he was touring in DIVERSION AND DELIGHTS, giving perhaps his greatest performance as Oscar Wilde, a role he did over 800 times in nearly 300 cities over a period of five years, Vincent told me with pride, “It is an enormous challenge to get out on a stage, and I did it sometimes in front of three or four hundred people, talking about a man who was a dandy, who was probably the greatest wit in the world. I did it first in towns and big cities, New York, Chicago, and then I started taking it to colleges. I was really worried that maybe they wouldn’t get the full impact of his wit. They got it in spades. The show ran sometimes 10 minutes longer because they not only laughed harder, they clapped.” I asked him if he would ever just stop working. His reply: “I go mad not doing things, and sometimes this makes me do things perhaps I should not have done. Regardless, I do try and make them work the best I know how. I mean unemployment? I would have to cut my throat… so I am always employed”

While the Prices were staying in San Francisco for a limited run of DIVERSION AND DELIGHTS, Coral fell in love with the city and, for one fabulous moment, thought of what it might be for them to forsake Hollywood with all its vulgar glamour and thoughtless friendships and reside as a golden couple in this culturally rich Bagdad by the bay.

One of the perks in being Mr. and Mrs. Vincent Price was of course the endorsements for television commercials and especially pleasure cruises to exotic locations. The Princess Line was proud to announce the Prices were in residence to offer seminar screenings of their films with question and answers afterwards as well as hosting the opening and closing night parties for the cruise. In return they were handsomely rewarded with first class accommodations, not to mention a fee.

Vincent and Coral were halfway to Aruba on their Caribbean cruise when it was decided by committee that since Jeff now had the services of Vincent Price, why not take full advantage of them and rewrite his wraparound material. Courtney Joyner worked on the new material, producing a camp send-up of all that was “Vincent Price – Horror Star.” At least that’s what they hoped for in theory.

The new script was duly sent to Price while he was still at sea. It took only one day for his response, which came in the form of an angry ship-to-shore call to me. “You tell those guys that I signed a contract for the script I was given and if they expect anything else they can deal with my lawyers.”

Distant time, and the finality of death, have long since intervened, but the reality of this situation was why, at that particular point in time, and with this particular picture, should Vincent Price decide to exert his grand senior prerogative?

The time to question the motion pictures he had allowed his box office clout to exploit as the premier Horror Star had long passed. I wish as his friend and admirer that he had been more selective over the years. Price always seemed to be living in a state of fear regarding his career. This was brought about from his bout with “grey-listing” in the “Commies are everywhere” hysteria of the fifties, the end result being he took most anything that was offered if the money was right and the property was not too out of control.

The truth of the matter is, quite simply, that FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM was one of Vincent’s last decent roles at a time when he still looked like Vincent Price, with his effortless ability to invest a line of dialog with panache remarkably intact. As Julian White, the haunted librarian of Oldfield Tennessee, complete with a servable southern accent, suited the Price persona like a glove.

Looking at this film today you can appreciate the difference between it and say CREEPSHOW, which is much brighter like a comic, yes, but WHISPER is more like an EC comic, darkly gritty and sinister with very little brightness to it at all. The late Rosalind Cash noticed the rather groundbreaking use of black characters in the film. “The black roles are more knowing about the future, more resigned to their fate, you don’t see parts like this in most films in this genre.” Jeff Burr would return to this atmosphere years later in his next best film, STRAIGHT INTO DARKNESS.

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