Until you watch HIS KIND OF WOMAN, you might not realize Vincent Price is the star. You might believe the credits and think you’re watching a Robert Mitchum/Jane Russell vehicle full of mobsters who crack wise and a beauty who sings a little. After all, up to this point, Vincent Price spent a lot of time in costume dramas or as the guy who didn’t get the girl. Gene Tierney threw him over for Dana Andrews in LAURA even after she was dead and she dumped him again the next year for Cornel Wilde in LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN. I’m not sure Hollywood knew what to do with the erudite actor. Handsome, articulate, and athletic, Vincent looked the part of the leading man, but had more to give. You might say he was too smart for his own good. Male ingénue parts don’t show off your sense of humor much so studios plugged him into the role of the witty, yet evil count. A few films, like SHOCK (1946) allowed him to show more range, but it wasn’t until Roger Corman’s Edgar Allen Poe phase in the 1960s that Vincent was really allowed to shine. The exception to that is HIS KIND OF WOMAN. Vincent Price sinks his teeth into the Mark Cardigan role.
Tag: John Farrow
It is comforting to know that the motion picture industry has not changed very much since its inception just over a century ago. The primary purpose of the product is still to entertain; to draw multitudes into the theater, there to take part in a collective escapist experience that distracts from the mundane cares of day-to-day existence. To that end there have always been, and always will be, movies made for the pure thrill of an adventure, free from the didacticism of any higher moral purpose. Director John Farrow’s adaptation of Kenneth Fearing’s suspense novel THE BIG CLOCK (1948), is just such a film, and triumphantly so.