did you know Vincent Price had a cooking show? - Cooking Price-Wise (1971)

one of horror's greatest icons and seventies gourmet cooking, TOGETHER AT LAST

Allow me if you will to be deeply unserious for a moment, dear reader, because it’s not often that I get to combine this specific set of my great loves (aka horror and cooking shows).

Vincent Price. Actor. Horror legend. Owner of a glorious moustache. Lead of THTH favourite, Theatre of Blood. To quote director John Waters:

One raise of his eyebrow and you knew you were about to be thrilled by a debonair, evil, yet sympathetic villain...I can't imagine these films without Vincent Price in them. He was just a fine actor, never pretentious.

Price was a titan of the horror genre, with a screen presence that can best be described as undeniable; it didn’t matter what the project was, because if Price was involved you knew that at least one person understood the assignment and was prepared to use every tool in his arsenal to get the job done scaring the shit out of you.

So imagine my delight when I discovered, late last year, that when he was not at work laying down a veritable buffet (… pun intended, let’s say that) of iconic horror performances, Vincent Price was a devoted, passionate gourmet chef.

And from that passion birthed this…

Cooking Price-Wise, a six-episode show fronted by Price, was produced for the ITV network by Thames Television in the UK. The British Film Institute released the series on Blu-ray last year, under their Flipside imprint, which is how I discovered its existence, as well as the general existence of Price’s cookery side hustle (with his second wife, Mary Grant, he co-authored a number of cookbooks, including the five-volume series Mary and Vincent Price present a National Treasury of Cookery).

When he was asked to host Cooking Price-Wise, he (according to the foreword his daughter, Victoria Price, provides for the Blu-ray release of the series) eagerly agreed; as a lifelong Anglophile, “any excuse to be or work in England always earned an immediate yes”. The fact in this case he was being asked to share his expertise and enthusiasm for the art of cooking with the British television audience was a nice bonus for him.

The show is hilariously low-budget, with the kitchen set (SO SEVENTIES OH MY GOD) almost too tiny to contain Price himself, let alone any of the food he’s making. He rattles saucepans burning bright orange and patterned paisley. The opening credits look like they’ve been burned directly into the screen, and they’re accompanied by less of an opening theme, more of the sound of someone just having an improvisational freak-out on the percussion.

The show also features an attempt at a “history bit” illustrated via rostrum camera, although this is not kept up throughout the six episode run. What is kept up, however, is Price rocking an array of very fetching neckerchiefs while greeting the viewer with That Voice (the camera opens on a close-up of a menu card, laying out today’s dishes, before panning upwards as Price turns around, walking I would estimate 1.5 steps across the tiniest kitchen set in the world and introducing himself, as if that’s at all necessary because it’s VINCENT PRICE).

But once you get over the hilarity of just how retro everything looks (including the dishes), that’s when this show starts to sing. Because the real joy of Cooking Price-Wise is that Vincent Price really is very passionate about cooking, and excited to talk to you about how to make dishes that may expand your culinary horizon (again, this was the seventies in Britain, and Price was out here making Manhattan Vichyssoise and waxing rhapsodically about the poe-tato in his magical mystery tour of an accent).

You may just be wondering how this at all relates to the general horror through the lens of storytelling ethos of this Substack, apart from the fact that Vincent Price is involved. And yes, I admit to you dear reader that wanting to write about Cooking Price-Wise was born out of a desire to find some lightness after last week’s dive into the New French Extremity (more of that on the way by the way because GUESS WHO FOUND A COPY OF MARTYRS ON DVD, IT IS INDEED I). I have not had the lightest time of it myself in the past couple of weeks (which I hope is enough of an explanation for the week I missed), and I have been craving comfort.

Cooking Price-Wise provided me that comfort. It’s soothing to watch one of horror’s titans gush over a perfectly executed soufflé, or explain to you the meaning behind the presentation of fish fillets Noord Zee. I cannot stress this enough, this is a series where the man who played the Abominable Dr. Phibes (in the same year as this series aired) explains the various cuts of pork using a papier-mâché model of a pig he lovingly nicknames “Streaky”. He masterfully styles out the fact that the handle to one of his pans falls off in the early seconds of the first episode. He ends each episode by squeezing his ludicrously tall frame at the tiny folding table, where he tucks into one of his dishes as the end credits play.

None of these things have a jot to do with horror as a genre. But they all have everything to do with a man who was one of its biggest embodiments. In the story of Vincent Price’s life, cooking was written as large as his storied film career. You cannot tell the story of this giant of the genre without the chapter marked COOKING - and when you watch Cooking Price-Wise, you feel like you truly understand Vincent Price as a person. Passionate, never pretentious, debonair even when it looks like the entire set is about to come crashing down on him. A consummate professional.

And what is more comforting than watching a consummate professional be really good at a thing they love?

Normally, I insert a trailer for the film I’m discussing below, but this week I am treating you to that clip of Price producing a perfect soufflé pudding Charmian. May we all know this kind of unabashed joy.