YMMV / The Price of Fear

• Complete Monster:
  • "Lot 132": Nathaniel Jeremiah Blackwell was a misogynistic murderer who gave his children poison and hacked his wife to death. After his death, his wicked soul persists within a portrait that remains soaked with the blood of his victims. Upon going to a suitable new owner, Blackwell possesses the father to repeat the same murders and leave the man to face the consequences, which is the fate that befalls Michael Emsley, a friend of Vincent Price, who only learns in time to rescue one final family.
  • "The Waxwork": Dr. Bourdet is a sadistic killer who murdered at least a dozen innocent people "for the devilish thrill of it" before he was caught. Escaping imprisonment, Bourdet disappeared but somehow continued his killings, and what is heavily indicated to be Bourdet's spirit haunts and terrorizes Raymond to death while laughing giddily.
  • "Fish": Richard is a veteran angler with a dark secret. Fancying the thrill of catching sharks, Richard enjoys a special chum to lure them out and resorts to abducting and brutally murdering innocent victims to chop them into bits of bite sized meat to lure in sharks, a fate that befalls several victims in the story and many before them.
  • "Specialty of the House": Sbirro is a seemingly pleasant restaurant owner who hides a malicious secret. Under the guise of serving only the most elite of society, Sbirro fattens up his patrons over months' time, gains their trust, then lures them into the kitchen to be killed and cooked into the very food that is served to others. Countless people have been cannibalized by Sbirro and his unwitting patrons, and the story ends with him inflicting the same fate on Vincent's close friend Harry.
• Funny Moments: The times when Vincent gets Distracted by the Sexy tend to be this. For instance, in "The Ninth Removal", when he sees an advert in a magazine using a photo of an attractive woman in a low-cut dress:
  Amelia: Disgusting! Just look at her!
  Vincent [in narration]: I must admit, that's just what I was doing...looking at her.
  • His narration can also just be quite funny in itself. "The Ninth Removal" has another good example when he's talking about how he often finds himself in awkward situations having to listen to people's monologues and being too polite to interrupt: "Remember The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, where he 'stoppeth one of three' to tell him his long and complicated story? Well, I'm the one of three."
• Harsher in Hindsight: Vincent being a heavy smoker to the point of being shocked at the idea of not smoking in a restaurant can become this knowing that he died of lung cancer.
• Older Than They Think: The narrative style of exclusively first-person accounts of a regular person encountering bizarre and horrific events is similar in format to a lot of contemporary Creepypasta or r/nosleep stories.
• The Woobie: Vincent himself (the fictionalised version of Vincent Price who is the protagonist of the series). It's not immediately apparent at first, but then comes "Lot 132"... while not the first episode, it is one of the earliest-set, and his earliest encounter with the supernatural depicted on the show, and also one of the most disturbing. In it, Vincent unknowingly sells a possessed painting to a friend—causing said friend to murder his wife and children. Vincent blames himself for the deaths and is clearly horrified by the gruesome crime scene, to the point of nearly being sick, and sounds traumatised and at times on the verge of tears even recounting the story years later. While the episodes are standalone and don't reference other episodes, if you do view the series as a whole, this episode being set so much earlier than most of the rest becomes Vincent's Dark and Troubled Past. Then there's all the other episodes in which his friends die, he witnesses someone get gruesomely killed in front of him, he witnesses his friends getting gruesomely killed in front of him, etc. More than one episode ends with him saying the events of the story affected him in such a way that he could never face certain reminders of it again. It's slightly mitigated by the fact that he does still seem, for the most part, to be enjoying his life, having a successful career as an actor, and seems to spend a fair bit of time travelling to nice places, meeting up with friends, and enjoying good food and wine without anyone getting killed (those times just don't get made into episodes), but still. The guy's been through a lot.

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