Cooking Price-wise (E) |Home Ents Review

Celebrity cooking from a starkly lit, rather drab incarnation of the 1970s, Vincent Price’s legendary tv show doesn’t do frills but the great man’s bonhomie shines through. 

Taking a break from a series of now-classic horror films that he made in Britain in the late 60s and early 70s, the marvellously ripe Vincent Price cooked up this six-part tv show. The premise is that the dishes, all influenced by his travels round the world, can be made quickly and cheaply with supermarket-available foodstuffs. As the great man says: “It’s an easy thing to be an adventurous, international cook” when you have him as a kitchen helper, even if you are stuck in economic slump Britain. 

Visually, several things are striking. The kitchen studio is very brightly lit (why was I expecting dark crypts, cobwebs and squeaky coffin lids as worktops?) and the series branding looks very cheap. Mr Price’s approach to food presentation is refreshingly non-existent – there are lots of dollops of stodgy looking blobs into waiting dishes – or other-wise bizarre: melon monsters and crocodile cucumbers, I am thinking of you. I guess the brief was to do an anti-Fanny Craddock show – and if you don’t know who that is, I suggest you go to a séance and attempt to contact your great grandmother. 

Finally, there’s a disturbing amount of cream and butter in use. 

The good news is that Vincent Price is always a game trooper, even when reading off a cue card. Nobody else can imbue “I’m going to show you some amusing ways to present cheese” with the same camp tease. That is the takeaway here: old-school charm shines through the often duff lines he is given. And perhaps, also, this show allows us to normalise the 1970s as a slightly less glamorous era than retro shows of our own time suggest. 

Extras include: 

• Until We Eat Again (2024, 18 mins): Vincent Price’s daughter, the writer and inspirational speaker Victoria Price, reflects upon her father’s love of the finer things in life
• Audio commentaries on selected episodes: Episode 1: Potatoes (Vic Pratt and William Fowler), Episode 3: Bacon (Lisa Kerrigan and Dr Josephine Botting), Episode 4: Cheese (Jenny Hammerton and Peter Fuller)
• Monster Munch (2024, 25 mins): the Queen of the Kitchen, Jenny Hammerton of Silver Screen Suppers, demonstrates how you too can prepare classic Vincent Price dishes in this all-new kitchen caper
• Kitchenfinder General (2024, 21 mins): Jenny Hammerton celebrates Vincent Price’s writing on cookery and his love of all things edible
• A selection of food-related films made by the Central Office of Information (1940-1949, 30 mins total): Oatmeal Porridge, Potatoes, When the Pie Was Opened, How to Cook a Cabbage and The Good Housewife ‘In Her Kitchen’
• Tea Making Tips (1941, 10 mins): take the strain out of brewing up a perfect cuppa with this handy wartime instructional film
• Centenary Express (1980, 7 mins): a gastronomic journey from Yorkshire to London on board a special train formed of vintage restaurant cars and hauled by a steam locomotive

Cooking Price-wise is out on Blu-ray from BFI on 25 November 2024.