Vincent Price. One of the all-time great horror icons. Some call him a master. Others call him an innovator. Most call him a god of the horror genre. All of which I agree on by all accounts, but for my Traumafession, I will refer to him as a someone who cost me hours of sleep between 1983-1984. When the Michael Jackson Thriller video was first released, it scared the crap out of me when I was a kid, so everything related to that video activated anxiety in my fragile, little mind. Since Vincent Price did the rap at the beginning and his signature laughter was used during my scariest moment of the video, during the "Cat's Eyes" sequence at the end, Price simply horrified me. Just when I found peace with Thriller, as it became my all-time favorite music video instead of my most feared, Vincent Price struck once again!
Around late 1984, I remember staying up very late to watch some R-rated raunchy comedy on HBO. Once that was over, I accidentally switched over to a local channel when I tried to shut the TV off. Once the channel changed, it was a close-up of Vincent Price's face as his eyes glowed green and he executed his famous evil laugh!! It lasted about 8 seconds but felt like 8 years to me. Frozen in terror, I did not sleep properly over the course of the next two days. It had to be at least 2am when this happened, and I was only about 7 or 8 at the time, so this was all my fault for sneaking to stay up so late on a school night in the first place. Come to find out later on the following week, it was a commercial for a Time-Life horror book series they released, for which Price was the face of the promotional ad. As the weeks went on, every time the commercial started playing on the channel I was watching, and it happened A LOT, I'd feverishly run to switch the channel in a panic.
In retrospect, this is all very embarrassing to admit, but I can laugh at myself. Not to mention that this happened before I learned how to do long division, so I'm not going to be too hard on myself. I read someone's Traumafession the other day and somehow the memory of this commercial (thanks Kindertrauma!) just popped back into my mind. Better yet, I actually found the commercial on YouTube, which unfortunately really cuts out a lot of the ending that scared the bejesus out of me. You can grab a glimpse of it though. Looking at it now for the first time in 7 years, the commercial is extremely corny and cheesy. It is silly to look back at this TV spot and think about how it affected me so much back then, but this is Traumafession and all, right?
UNK SEZ:: Thanks for the excellent traumafession Geofree! All you fine folks out there make sure you moonwalk over to Geofree's top-notch joint, THE MAN CAVE!
Great post! And The Man Cave is an awesome blog, I wholeheartedly agree!
Happy 4th!
It's a good thing you never bought Vincent Price's Egg Magic. If the feet were missing, you would have had to hear his voice over the phone telling you the replacement feet would be rushed to you by his grandson Jody.
Good thing you didn't see him in this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZKybIIyvG4
He was introducing a syndicated Canadian TV kid's show that was out in the early to mid 70's. I'm sure there were some kids back then who were scared by " Laughing Headless Vincent"! I wasn't scared by Vincent. I actually watched his "Dr. Phibes" films just to see how he would kill off his victims! I was also in my mid-teens when the "Thriller" video came out. I didn't like MJ but this was great!
Now when I was 10 years old (Summer 1977) this made me run out of the room whenever it came on TV………
{Yes, it's that trailer for you know what}
Well, if you're on Tumblr I know who you should follow –
http://vincentfuckingprice.tumblr.com/
bdwilcox, that kit is "egg-septional"! XD
Anyhoo, I would sell my soul for those books…wait, maybe that's a bad choice of words…
The Hilarious House Of Frightenstein played in syndication every afternoon after school when I was in first grade, preceded by Speed Racer and followed by Ultraman. I watched every day, but the intros of both Frightenstein and Ultraman scared the crap out of me. Ultraman was scary for the weird, creaky, swirling pools that spelled out the Ultraman titles. Frightenstein was scary, of course, because of the disembodied head of VP reciting that poem at the start of every episode. There's some Kindertrauma for you.
Now see…THAT is why I love this site. I had forgotten all about that commercial until just this minute. God, did anybody actually own those Time Life books? I think I remember checking out the "Ghosts" volume from the library once…
Pinchy – Yeah, I got them but only because I found a set at a garage sale a couple of years after Time Life originally sold them. They were in perfect shape and the lady selling them told me that they belonged to her ex husband – good deal for me! Got the whole set for like six bucks.
Like you, I had also forgotten about that ad but once it started, I could practically recite the thing word for word.
I'm pretty sure that the books are still at my parent's place. I recall being somewhat disappointed in them after being so pumped up by Vincent Price.
Thanks Unk for the clever shout out and Wings for the kind remark!
Here I thought no one would even know what the heck I was talking about, so it's refreshing to see that some remembered this obscure commercial. So silly this used to scare me as a single-digit tyke. God Bless Kindertrauma!