"An Evening Of Edgar Allan Poe" is a 1970 film which features Vincent Price, and Vincent Price only. He is seen performing 4 different pieces by the author, in what are very dramatic interpretations of the source material.
The film is hard to find now-a-days, and I was able to watch it on youtube, though the upload of it was pretty low quality. It's hard to judge the film completely, when the only way to watch it is a video that's of potato quality.
That said, I did find Price's interpretations to be great. Simply put. What I loved the most, was how much emotion Price put into each piece. Watching this film, I really felt like Vincent Price was perfect for theater, and of course, Edgar Allan Poe's writings. I really loved watching this, because there are many films from the late 60's and early 70's with Price, that don't utilize his theater skills, like this film does. Movies such as "Scream and Scream Again", and "The Oblong Box" are way too subtle in comparison to how Vincent performed here. Truly, I believe that Price was a perfect stage actor. You can tell how much he enjoyed performing, as he really seemed to be enjoying himself while interpreting these pieces. Overall, I really enjoyed this, especially since it's almost lost media. I don't know where you could easily find a high quality version of this, unless you bought something second hand online.
I couldn't find any reviews for this in the newspaper archives, but there were a few articles and ads for the showing.
Most of the articles I found, usually mentioned this film in passing. The exact date that this was released doesn't seem to be known, but it seems to have been around the late spring-summer time period of 1970. That same year, Price also renewed his contract with AIP (American International Pictures).
Another thing I found interesting, was that the news couldn't seem to figure out if the film was titled "An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe", or "An Evening Of Edgar Allan Poe". There were advertisements calling it both.
Not much more can be said about this one. I enjoyed it for what it was, and just wish there was a higher quality video to watch somewhere. I liked the idea of Vincent Price doing "solo" work. I wish there were more works of his like this.
That said, I gave it a 4/5 on letterboxd.
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