Friday’s show was one of our best geek-outs yet. The 2-hour tribute to America’s favorite horror icon included trailers, TV and movie clips, and rare footage of Vincent Price. The night’s co-host, Tom Peyer (comic book writer of Silver Age: Doom Patrol, Tek Jansen), shared some stories and clips of VP playing Egghead on Batman. During out salute to Vincent Price: The Gourmet (which featured the wine-tasting contest from Tales of Terror) Lisa Beebe served TWO kinds of Vincent Price cupcakes (portrait cupcakes as well as “fly” cupcakes with a plastic fly caught in a web of icing). 
Writer Eric Drysdale (The Colbert Report) edited down footage from the promotional film for Sears’ Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art, followed by clips from a Price-hosted instructional VHS tape that came with the Nishika 3D Camera. (At the end of the segment, an audience member won said camera!) 
Playwright Bob Satuloff screened scenes from two essential films that bookend Price’s career as a horror star: House of Wax and Theater of Blood. Actor Arthur Anderson provided a video-interview where he reflected on working with Price in Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater, and he showed photos from VP’s wedding. Nathaniel Wharton (fromThe Jim Henson Legacy) shared rare musical footage of Vincent Price on The Muppet Show (featuring a song that wasn’t released on the season one DVD.) And Media Historian Heather Hendershot (dressed as one of VP’s tragic dead movie wives) read a thought-provoking essay about VP’s on-screen persona being compared to a hysterical woman. (read the essay here – scroll down, it’s a post-script following her piece about Don Knotts being a reluctant sex object.)
In the middle of the show, audience members got to share their personal memories about Vincent Price: we heard tale of VP’s verdict on an early Michael Jackson trial; we learned the real reason one professor never finished his academic art history book with Vincent Price; and we heard a first-hand account of a teenage boy writing a fan letter to Vincent Price (promising him a role in a horror movie) – which was met with a heart-warming hand-written reply from the 82-year-old actor.
The video-variety show also included some of Price’s finest audio recordings: First we heard Price reading the poetry of Percy Shelley. And later, one lucky audience member got to perform a scene from Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Ernest”, thanks to the audio-magic of the record CO-STAR WITH VINCENT PRICE (Price released a high-concept album where he delivered half the dialogue in dramatic scenes, the consumer would read the script and play the other parts. Kind of a non-ironic version of Albert Brooks’ Comedy Minus One.) The night’s audience was a who’s who of geek super-stars, we had a writers from The Daily Show, DreadCentral.com, DC editors, AMCtv and indie filmmakers.
