Page 51 - Shakespeare in the Movie From the Silent Era to Shakespeare in Love

40 I Shakespeare in the Movies

Rather than Richard's relationships with other members of the
royal family, the Lees focused instead on the murderous incidents
within the tower itself and on Richard's relationship with Mord
(Boris Karloff), his chief assassin. The suave Rathbone and lumbering
Karloff had already proved themselves a fine horror team in Son of
Frankenstein earlier that year, once more forming a fascinating yin-
yang of evil. In the film's best remembered sequence, they get the
innocent dupe Clarence (Vincent Price) drunk, then drown him in
wine while gleefully beating him.
Price's depiction of Clarence is, like his early character roles in
films as diverse as Brigham Young, The House of the Seven Gables,
and Laura, excellent. Sadly, Price would allow himself to be cor-
rupted by commercialism, wallowing in popular junk rather than,
like Rathbone, managing to rise above it. By the early sixties, Price
had replaced both Rathbone and Karloff as the screen's scariest
superstar, appearing in a succession of low-budget quickies for
schlockmeister Roger Corman that included House of Usher, The
Pit and the Pendulum, and The Masque of the Red Death. Though
the films themselves are sumptuous and stylish, Price's perfor-
mances went ever further over the top. By the time he played
Richard in Gorman's 1962 remake of Tower of London, Price's over-
acting was not to be believed; he made of Gloucester the very sort of
simplistic demon that, years earlier, Olivier had warned against.