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When I was a kid Vincent Price was the pre-eminent American star of horror films, but legendary figures like Karloff, Lorre, Chaney and Rathbone were still alive to appear in films with him. This is a sweeping generalization, but I think the real problem with Vincent Price is that he USUALLY played his horror roles very tongue-in-cheek and often campy -- but not always; notable exceptions include HOUSE OF WAX, HOUSE OF USHER, THE CONQUEROR WORM, etc. Even as a teenager I could tell that there was a significant difference in the way other horror actors approached their roles -- Cushing in the Hammer films is a perfect example. (Lorre is a bit of a puzzlement since I think he was hamming it up quite a bit in his later films, though he had played it straight with his earlier performances.)

No disrespect intended, and I LOVE Vincent Price (I was thrilled to meet and talk to him when he brought his "The Villain Still Pursues Me" lecture to West Virginia University in the early 80's) -- but when I was a youngster, he didn't QUITE make it to my personal canon of top-ranked horror stars.

Bela Lugosi stated it very succinctly somewhere, and I wish I could quote him exactly -- but it was to the effect that an actor really has to play this kind of material straight or it falls apart. Vincent seldom did -- when he DID, he was worthy of the canon... but he very rarely chose to play it straight. Considering all the crazy crap that was going on in Hollywood in his heyday, maybe his approach was the most intelligent thing he could do at the time.

So aside from HOUSE OF WAX and a few others, I primarily cherish Vincent for the handful of films where his campy approach is well-suited to the material -- the black comedy PHIBES films and THEATRE OF BLOOD, for instance, and horror farces like COMEDY OF TERRORS and THE RAVEN.

He was a tremendously gifted actor, but I think his true medium was comedy -- check out his non-horror work in CHAMPAGNE FOR CAESAR and HIS KIND OF WOMAN, just brilliant.