Perhaps no performer past or present embodies the intersection of creepiness, camp, and comedy quite like the late Vincent Price. (Just pause for a moment and conjure his voice in your head. It’s unmistakable, isn’t it?) Long fascinated with Price, poet/playwright Drew Pisarra honors the man and his extensive filmography in his new book, Diabolically Good: The Movie Career and Afterlife of Horror Icon Vincent Price.

You write that Price “was a horror icon, a camp icon, and a queer icon — three iconic statuses that somehow didn’t earn him the glorious respect he so clearly deserves.” As a TV-obsessed kid from the 1970s and 80s, I agree! There’s something irresistible about a man who can appear in the “Creature Feature” during the day and guest star on “The Love Boat” at night. When was your own admiration for him born?

Like many of my generation, my fascination with Vincent Price began with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” Price’s vocals for that song really do make for the best duet in Jackson’s epic music catalog. Who can forget Price’s sinister delivery of “Darkness falls across the land...” or that intoxicatingly evil laugh at the end? Now, that’s true harmony.

It may seem strange to cite a hit record as one’s gateway drug into an actor’s filmography, and maybe it wasn’t quite that. Maybe it was simply an unforgettable introduction to an endlessly curious performer — debonair, flirtatious, quick-witted, wicked... Plus, he seemed to be everywhere. Hosting PBS’ “Mystery!” Guest-starring on “The Muppet Show.” Camping it up as a Batman villain. Even hawking Tilex mildew remover in commercials. After all these passing encounters, I decided to get to know him better through his movies. And I found out I liked him. A lot.

Not only do you list all of Price’s films — from both the big screen and small — but you recap each one. How much rewatching did this require, and did the experience teach you anything about his oeuvre that you didn’t already know?

Rewatching a Price movie is never a requirement. It’s an opportunity! I’ll welcome any excuse to rewatch “Edward Scissorhands,” “The Ten Commandments,” “The Song of Bernadette,” “The Fly,” and nearly all those Roger Corman adaptions of Edgar Allan Poe’s gothic tales. The biggest discoveries for me came via his made-for-TV movies, which I wasn’t that familiar with beforehand. Especially memorable are Playhouse 90’s Cold War thriller “Forbidden Area,” costarring Tab Hunter (and featuring a suspenseful plot from screenwriter Rod Serling), and General Electric’s “The Ballad of Mender McClure,” a totally unexpected precursor to Roberto Gavaldón’s “Macario,” a classic now widely considered one of the greatest Mexican films of all time.

Price was truly sui generis, but do you see echoes of him in any current pop-culture figures?

The first person to come to mind is honestly Nicolas Cage, a performer equally unafraid of being theatrical, even hammy, but also capable of showing depth and vulnerability. He, too, started off working with major talent, then had a career slump, then got a reboot via genre pics — albeit action instead of horror. Another kindred performer who would probably be better suited to playing Price is Willem Dafoe, who is arguably at his most effective when deranged. Additionally, Dafoe — like Price — often feels like a bit of an anachronism. So what if Price is from some half-glimpsed past, while Dafoe is from a different space-time continuum?

If you’re wondering why my choices are both older actors, I’d like to point out that Price didn’t really hit his stride until later in life. “House of Wax,” the 3-D blockbuster that solidified Price’s fame, didn’t happen until he was in his 40s. So you couldn’t possibly show Price potential until you’d made it at least as far as middle age.

In an unusual move, you begin the book with the full text of your “Price in Purgatory: A Live Radio Play,” which was performed in Manhattan in 2023. How did the production come about, and why was it important to include it here?

I had originally envisioned “Price in Purgatory” as an elaborate dance-theater piece. Then reality hit. As a minor playwright greying at the temples, I was never going to get the necessary funds to back a lavish production involving tap dancing and the cha-cha. And so I scaled way back — stripping away the need for actors-who-dance or a choreographer or various designers or a roomy rehearsal studio or a fog machine. Funnily enough, the shift also made logical sense because Price is remembered first and foremost for that signature voice. I mean, radio really is the ideal format. I suppose I put the play up front because I wanted the reader to hear Price as I imagined him before I sent them off to watch all those wonderful movies. I wanted them to enter his filmography with a playful spirit, not a hypercritical one.

Finally, Halloween is the perfect time to introduce neophytes to Price’s scary-movie canon. Where would you suggest they start?

Since Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, I’d like to recommend a double-feature. Start off with “House on Haunted Hill,” which spotlights Price’s most iconic performance. In this B-movie directed by William Castle, Price plays a slick and sinister know-it-all who delights in terrorizing his guests to death. I’d pair it with “The Tingler,” another Castle fright flick, this one about a mad scientist hoping to discover what exactly makes humans “tingle” when they’re afraid. (Spoiler alert: It’s something like a giant centipede.)

“The Tingler” possesses some inexplicably gay cruising between a movie theater owner and Price’s character at the local autopsy lab following a death-penalty execution. Naturally, this leads to LSD experimentation. It’s that kind of movie. If, however, you only have time for a single film, go with “The Haunted Palace,” an absolutely wackadoodle horror pic that showcases Price in a many-layered performance as a man possessed by an ancestral warlock. Think The Picture of Dorian Gray meets “The Three Faces of Eve” meets “Poltergeist II,” as written by H.P. Lovecraft. Scary good.

[Photo by Miriam Berkley.]

Holly Smith is editor-in-chief of the Independent. She’s still upset that Vincent Price was never on “Fantasy Island.”