BY HANK REINEKE
In the early spring of 1961, shortly following the
completion of his work on A.I.P.’s Master
of the World - and following a series of lectures regarding “The Enjoyment
of Great Art†– Renaissance man Vincent Price was to jet off mid-April for two acting
assignments in Rome, Italy. The two
productions he had signed onto for producer-writer Ottavio Poggi were Gordon, il Pirata Nero (Gordon, the Black
Pirate) and Nefertiti, Regina Del
Nile (Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile). The former film – arguably the better of the two - was belatedly released
in the U.S. in June 1963 under the title Rage
of the Buccaneers. The film was distributed
regionally in the U.S. with neither fanfare nor critical attention.
Rage
of the Buccaneers would first appear on the drive-in circuit as
the odd undercard to such films as Broccoli and Saltzman’s Bob Hope/Anita
Ekberg comedy Call Me Bwana. Rage was later paired, a bit more
sensibly, with The Playgirls and the
Vampire, an Italian-horror production mostly recalled by old-school monster
movie fans and admirers of voluptuous continental on-screen beauties. The weak-tea newspaper campaign in the U.S. for
Rage of the Buccaneers could have
hardly been helpful in exciting foot traffic into neighborhood cinemas. Though the posters for the U.S. release
promised Furious Action! Passionate Love!, the accompanying
newspaper adverts offered the far less sensational promise of Excitement plus… Emotional Turbulence. Emotional Turbulence? Meh.
In truth, Rage of
the Buccaneers would be dimly recalled, if at all, by U.S. movie fans due
to it popping up on television as 1964 drew to a close. In early November of 1964 it was announced -
with some degree of ballyhoo - that the NBC network had acquired no fewer than eight
post-1960 “first-run†films for television distribution. But even the network’s big newspaper
announcement was late out of the starting block. Rage of
the Buccaneers had already been televised by several NBC affiliates as
early as September 1964.
Several essays and film books would note that Price’s latter
ill-fated Italian film, Nefertiti, Queen
of the Nile would not actually see a theatrical release in the U.S. market. This is actually untrue. The film had the briefest of runs – as a second
feature in support of the Buddy Ebsen comedy Mail Order Bride - at a drive-in theater outside of Phoenix, AZ in
March 1964. The film then seemingly disappeared
from movie screens - both big and small - until it was picked up as a
late-night television programmer in 1966. Shortly thereafter, Nefertiti
too fell pretty much off the face of the planet, at least as far as U.S.
audiences were concerned.
Then, in 1985, with the home video boom in the ascendant,
Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile was briefly
resurrected as a “big box†VHS cassette release in the U.S. on the Force Video
label. In the UK, there were at least
two video cassette releases of Gordon, il
Pirata Nero, first as The Black
Pirate (Apex Video) and later as Gordon,
The Black Pirate (Midas Video). As
far as I’m aware, these are the only three editions of these two obscure
Vincent Price films to be officially
released on the English-speaking home video market, though there are bootlegs
circulating of both films. I only dredge
up this old history in the, perhaps, overly optimistic hope that Kino Lorber
might make note of these glaring deficiencies in their own burgeoning catalog
of Vincent Price home video offerings.
In any case, Price’s second professional visit to Italy
would prove to be more successful. In
January of 1963, Hollywood scene gossip columnists reported that Price would
celebrate the New Year by preparing a return to Italy for a “Halloween release
of his next horror movie, The Last Man on
Earth.†The film was to be based on
the novel I am Legend by Richard
Matheson. Matheson’s novel, the author’s
first, was published in August of 1954 by Fawcett Gold Medal books. It was a slim paperback of one-hundred and
sixty pages, but Matheson was no amateur writer, having previously published a
score of science-fiction-based short stories in magazines and anthologies.
Matheson’s novel was optioned by Britain’s Hammer Films
in 1957, that studio even commissioning the author to write a screenplay for a
proposed production. The problem was
that the British censor board found Matheson’s screenplay unrelentingly grim
and violent, warning should any production be mounted, there was little chance
that the film would pass code. So a wary
Anthony Hinds at Hammer chose to sell the rights of Matheson’s screenplay to American
producer and cinema theater chain owner Robert L. Lippert (Curse of the Fly). Lippert
subsequently engaged Price to star in the project, traveling to Rome in late
summer of 1962 to arrange crew and casting of the film’s Italian supporting
players.
Matheson’s I am
Legend recounts the final years of Robert Neville, one of the few survivors
of a pandemic turned plague that killed off most of the earth’s population. The rub is that while those afflicted
remained technically dead, they retained
mobility. Neville goes to great lengths
to investigate why the “undead†have transformed into bacillus vampires of a sort: they drink blood and avoid the rays of the sun much as did the Gothic
and folkloric vampires of yore did. But
otherwise they remained mostly human in appearance save for a decided graveyard
pallor.
Neville (renamed Robert Morgan in the film) is a reluctant,
modern day, post-apocalyptic Van Helsing. He has chosen to actively seek out and
confront the vampire hordes. He really
has no other choice as, much to his disdain, he’s under near-constant assault
by them. Matheson’s book is an
undeniably grim one with an equally fatalistic ending, but his slim volume
would go on to influence countless filmmakers and aspiring science-fiction
writers in years following publication. In manner of tone and presentation, it’s reasonable to say that George
Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was
highly and undeniably influenced by The
Last Man on Earth.
Price wasn’t terribly excited to travel to Italy in the grim
winter season of 1963, but the offer to visit Rome would give the actor the
opportunity to canvas galleries and antique stores in search of artworks. In June of 1962 it was announced that Price had
entered into his semi-famous partnership with the Sears, Roebuck & Co. to
search out art that could be consigned and sold as lithographs through the
department store chain. This interest in
art was a lifelong passion of the actor’s and he had already been collecting
artworks for Sears a month prior to the official press release of their
collaboration. The actor told columnist
Bob Thomas that his searching out the Vincent
Price Collection for Sears had already resulted in a “whirl†of activity,
and that he’d already “bought 1,700 paintings and etchings: I’ve got to have
2,500 before the sale starts.â€
By Mid-January of 1963 Price was already in Europe, first
visiting Paris before traveling on to Rome to begin filming. In the space of three days and visits to the galleries
and artist studios of the City of Lights, Price offered that he had already
purchased one hundred and fifty paintings that he thought Sears could sell for
$300 or less back in the U.S. Columnist
Doris Sanders noted that Price had already admitted dropping four thousand U.S.
dollars on the very first day of his Parisian shopping spree. It was also noted that the artists Price
approached were appreciably happy as the actor – funded by his corporate
sponsor - always chose to pay cash up-front.