filmbriefs
Actor · 1911–1993

Vincent Price

4
briefs
13:00
average
52 min
in total
On film.briefs4
13:00

Leave Her to Heaven

John M. Stahl · 1945

Leave Her to Heaven (1945), directed by John M. Stahl, is a Technicolor psychological drama starring Gene Tierney as Ellen Berent, a woman whose obsessive love curdles into calculated violence. Adapted by Jo Swerling from Ben Ames Williams’s novel, it uses Leon Shamroy’s precise cinematography and Tierney’s controlled performance to map the internal architecture of possession. Though some narrative threads remain underdeveloped and its protagonist’s passivity tests credulity, the film endures as a formally rigorous study of zero-sum love — selected for preservation by the Library of Congress in 2018.

13:00

The Baron of Arizona

Samuel Fuller · 1950

Samuel Fuller’s 1950 film tells the true-ish story of James Reavis, a conman who forged documents to claim the Arizona Territory as his personal fiefdom. Starring Vincent Price as the fastidious fraudster, it unfolds as a procedural drama of paper, precedent, and institutional hesitation — less a Western than a forensic study of how authority is manufactured, authenticated, and eventually unmade.

13:00

Edward Scissorhands

Tim Burton · 1990

Edward Scissorhands (1990), directed by Tim Burton and written by Caroline Thompson, tells of an unfinished humanoid with scissor hands adopted by a suburban family. Johnny Depp stars opposite Winona Ryder, with Danny Elfman scoring and Bo Welch designing the iconic pastel suburb and Gothic mansion. It is a visually unified, deliberately paced fable about difference, empathy, and the quiet violence of assimilation — more mood piece than narrative engine.

13:00

Laura

Otto Preminger · 1944

A New York detective investigates the apparent murder of advertising executive Laura Hunt, only to discover she is alive — and that his obsession with her portrait has reshaped both the case and himself. Directed by Otto Preminger and shot by Joseph LaShelle, the 1944 crime drama uses stillness, sound, and surface to explore projection, class, and the fragility of identity.