In its own words, the BFI’s Flipside strand “is dedicated to rediscovering the margins of British and Irish film, reclaiming a space for forgotten movies and filmmakers who would otherwise be in danger of disappearing from our screens forever. It is a home for cinematic oddities, offering everything from exploitation documentaries to B-movies, countercultural curios and obscure classics.” So – drumroll like the one during the credits – on to the fiftieth title in the Blu-ray (and previously DVD as well) series ready to grace your player in your home is...a cookery show. In nearly a quarter-century of reviewing online, for this site and others before it, this is a first for me. But of course it’s not just any old cookery show. Here, in his kitchen (studio set) and disseminating culinary advice to the nation, is none other than Vincent Price.

Cookery on television goes back a very long way, but the formula is much the same. Put a chef on your screen, particularly if he (and many of them were men) could be called a “personality”, and have them dispense their cookery tips and recipes to the public. This was in a country stereotypically not especially adventurous in what it ate, with foreign muck usually kept on the other side of the Channel. Of course, there was the issue that women (and it was mostly women) had to cook for a husband and children and simplicity and time-saving were the watchwords. Whether their husbands appreciated what the man on the little box in the corner of the front room were suggesting their wives cook, or if they preferred the old standbys, is a question lost to time.

The first chef on British television was the Frenchman Marcel Boulestin, who appeared on the small number of sets in the London area from 1937 to 1939, demonstrating such dishes from his native country as veal escalope with white wine sauce as salads and lamb kebabs. That may reflect his audience as most people able to receive pre-War television and able to afford a set would be well-heeled Londoners. Interned by the Germans during World War II, Boulestin died in 1943. Another early television chef was Philip Harben, who first broadcast on the radio in 1943, when there was no television service due to its having been shut down for the duration of the War. Then, when television transmitters started up again in 1946, at first just in London and eventually around the country, he migrated to the small screen and appeared both on the BBC and the other side (ITV) until 1969, the year before he died. Harben began by emphasising basics and the best use of your ingredients, given that rationing was still in force when he started, not ending until 1954. Contemporary to the present series was Graham Kerr (born 1934 and still with us as I write this), who presented The Galloping Gourmet from 1968 to 1972, before future shows in New Zealand, Australia and Canada. Also around was Fanny Cradock, who played the imperious personality role to the hilt, sometimes to the point of rudeness. She often presented her shows with her put-upon husband Johnnie and had a long run from 1955 to 1975.

A cheese chess set

And so on to Vincent Price. His gourmet credentials were rock-solid, as he and his second wife Mary Grant (mother of Victoria Price, see below) had published three cookery books, starting with A Treasury of Great Recipes in 1965. However, in 1971, Price was best known for his film roles, particularly in horror films, and something of that persona is on display in Cooking Price-Wise, which he made in July 1970 (all six episodes recorded in the space of a week, Monday 13th to Friday 17th, one a day except for two on the Friday, and not in transmission order) and which was broadcast on the ITV network in 1971. Wearing a succession of colourful shirts and a cravat, Price presents himself as a man of the world, though one in the privileged position of having been able to travel said world with his wife, at a time when foreign holidays weren’t common in the UK. But he has used that privilege to bring back recipes from all over the world and here he is to convey them to you, dishes you could make using nothing you’d be unlikely to find in your local shop or supermarket. He augments this with little titbits of history illustrated by artwork which kept the rostrum cameraman in work. As this was a time when almost no one could record television programmes, you’d have to have a pen and paper handy to note things down, though Price does helpfully recap all the ingredients at the end of the programme. Or you could buy the book of the series. There is some slight sauciness (not of the kind you can eat) when Price winkingly passes on the secret of how Turks and South Georgians could live to past one hundred and they, the men anyway, could still sire children – daily yoghurt. (You could try this at home, but success is not guaranteed.) On the other hand, he advises the women who you’d suspect made up the majority of the audience for a cookery show on the Javanese qualification for marriageability: the ability to cook rice. Now you know, ladies. Price’s horror side is not much to the fore, apart from the sequence where the lights dim and he shows you how to make a cucumber crocodile and a melon monster to potentially bond with it. He also shows us a cheese chess set, with different cheeses representing white and black pieces, though I’d be more likely to want to eat it rather than perform an opening gambit with it.

Cooking Price-Wise was made by International Documentation Television for Thames, then the ITV franchise for Monday to early evening on Friday, when London Weekend Television would take over. It’s very much a television production of its day, shot on 625-line PAL videotape in a studio set. For the most part it’s all very brightly lit, as if to show off the colourful kitchen that set designer Alex Bull has recreated for you. Never mind that the majority of the audience would have been viewing on black and white sets in 1971. (I would have done, if I’d been watching this at the age of six.) It’s all done as-live (with no more than two takes, apparently) with some cutaways and those illustrated inserts. Each episode runs between twenty-three and a half and twenty-four minutes, so as to fit in a half-hour ITV slot with a commercial break or maybe two. As it’s as-live, there isn’t a natural break around the halfway mark where you’d expect the transmission to break for the adverts, and on these versions no captions saying End of Part One and Part Two or the like, but maybe the ITV networks did shoehorn in an abrupt break.

The series was originally broadcast oddly late at night, maybe assuming that Price’s name would attract the night owls familiar with his films, even on a school night. In my ITV region, which was then Thames, it was shown from 13 April to 18 May 1971, Tuesday nights, starting between 11.15 and 11.35 pm. The series then had a quick repeat at the more civilised time of 6pm on Wednesday evenings from 7 July. To the best of my knowledge, it has not been repeated since, so this disc is the first opportunity many will have had to see it. And of course, other than the use of imperial measurements, recipes don’t date, so as well as watching this you can take a culinary journey in your own kitchen.

Cooking Price-Wise is number fifty of the BFI’s Flipside line, and is released on a Blu-ray encoded for Region B only. As all of the disc’s contents are documentary material and none of it would earn anything stronger than a PG certificate, this release has been exempted from BBFC classification. The six episodes are as follows:

Potatoes (23:43)
Dishes from New York, Savoy and Holland: Manhattan Vichyssoise, Pommes de terre Savoyard, Fish Fillets Noord Zee

Lamb (23:44)
Dishes from Greece and Morocco: Dolmades, Moroccan tajine, Café Napoleon

Bacon (23:49)
Dishes from Great Britain: Gammon in common crust, Wilted spinach salad, Ayrshire poacher’s roll

Cheese (23:59)
Dishes from California, Switzerland and Austria: Pannequets de fondue, Cheese party dishes

Rice (23:31)
Dishes from the Gulf Coat, Hawaii and Indonesia: Gulfcoast salad, Nasi goreng, Hawaiian chicken and long-grain rice

Cream (23:40)
Dishes from Italy, America and Turkey: American ice-box cake, Yoghurt fluff, Soufflé pudding Charmian

The 1080i HD presentation (above) and 576i SD presentation below

As this is television from the early 1970s, it was recorded on PAL videotape, in colour at 625 lines (576 lines of actual picture), with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. There are two versions of the episodes on this disc, the first upscaled to 1080i50, respecting the TV running speed of twenty-five frames (or fifty fields) per second. These versions have the 4:3 frame pillarboxed into the high-definition ratio of 1.78:1 or 16:9. Also on the disc, if you want to go old-school with your archive television viewing, are the same episodes in standard definition, so 576i in modern parlance. Whether upscaled or not, the results are suitable colourful if necessarily a little fuzzy in places. Screengrabs follow, the HD version with the pillarboxing I’d normally crop when producing pictures for these reviews, but no other tweaking except to make them the same width. Other screengrabs are from the HD versions of the episodes.

[pics cookingpricewisepic1HD and cookingpricewisepic1HD here]

As you would expect from television of this vintage, the sound is mono, rendered here as LPCM 2.0. Nothing to report here: it was good enough for your TV speakers fifty-three years ago and it’s certainly good enough for your audio system of choice now. It’s very much dialogue-only, with the only other sound being diegetic kitchen noises and the theme tune at beginning and end. Subtitles are available for the hard of hearing on the episodes only, both HD and SD versions.

Commentaries on selected episodes
Here are three different pairs of commentators on particular episodes, available on both the HD and SD versions, and they do find different ways to approach the material. First up are Flipside co-founders Vic Pratt and William Fowler, on “Potatoes”. As you’d expect from them, this commentary is in part a celebration of the Seventies kitsch on display, with those bright colours you could have seen if you had a so-enabled television set in 1971. Pratt even drops the name of Primitive London (another Flipside title) in discussing the introduction and theme tune, with its beckoning us into a strange and otherworldly place, which here is the Price kitchen. They talk about some television technicalities and how Price’s persona was adapted for television, at a time when the horror genre was moving towards more bloodiness than he was comfortable with, the likes of Witchfinder General notwithstanding.

Next up are BFI curators Lisa Kerrigan and Josephine Botting on “Bacon”. Kerrigan begins by filling us in about the theme tune, played by percussionist Ginger Johnson, who had at the time recently featured in the Stones at the Park. They talk about cookery as performance on the small screen, contrasting Price with Graham Kerr, who had a larger set and an audience, and at the end he’d take a woman from that audience to dine with him. Fanny Cradock was similarly one to put on a performance, and imperious when more recent TV cooks like Delia Smith and Nigella Lawson were warmer and more motherly. Price, on the other hand, has just the set and the camera(s). Botting gives us more information on the making and curing of bacon than Price does, and they do discuss the programme’s balance between quite fancy cookery and the needs of housewives to make things to feed a family every day, possibly on a budget, as Claire Rayner and others pointed out.

And finally we have Jenny Hammerton, of the Silver Screen Suppers website, and Peter Fuller, on “Cheeeeeeeese!”, as the ever-enthusiastic Hammerton puts it. The theme tune is so groovy and makes her want to limbo-dance. She also says that she is wearing a dress colour-coordinated with Price’s saucepans. There are comments aplenty on the kitchen set and Price’s own clothes (oven gloves worn the wrong way round). As this is the episode with the cucumber crocodile and the cheese chess set, there’s plenty of discussion about them, and more about the former elsewhere on this disc.

Until We Eat Again (18:09)
Victoria Price makes her second appearance on a BFI release talking about her father, after The Oblong Box. As this item emphasises Price Senior’s credential as a gourmet, her mother Mary Grant is also relevant. Price was a big man (6’4”, making him about the same height as Christopher Lee) so had plenty of space for fuel of the culinary kind. In fact, he came from a foodie tradition, as his grandfather (also called Vincent) invented baking powder. Victoria tells a story of how her father was unusually overcome and tongue-tied when he met Greta Garbo and broke the ice by talking to her about bread-making. She later came up to him to tell him she had enjoyed their conversation.

Cucumber crocodile and melon monster

Monster Munch (24:37)
Jenny Hammerton again, demonstrating how you can make a cucumber crocodile of your own. You need one whose “nose” points upwards and she has a reserve cucumber just in case. Also needed are olives (for the googly eyes), cheese and fruit, plus plenty of sticks to attach them. You know you want to.

Kitchenfinder General (21:09)
And here’s Jenny Hammerton a third time, having an onscreen conversation with Vic Pratt. She has a five-figure number of recipes from film stars, and shows some books she has written – including recipes by Joan Crawford, from every episode of Columbo (Peter Falk was a good cook, we’re told) and Murder She Cooked, from guess which TV show featuring Angela Lansbury, another good cook. She also shows us some very well-used original editions of Mary and Vincent Price’s books, which are worth snapping up if you see them in charity shops, plus original and reprint copies of the book of Cooking Price-Wise itself.

Short films
As usual for a BFI release, items from the archive which reflect the themes of the main feature. In this case, they reflect it very directly as all are food- or cookery-related. Many of these were made as part of the War effort, often shown in the supporting programme (if you didn’t nip to the loo or go and buy cigarettes or chocolate while waiting for the feature you paid for to start). They were made to encourage people – housewives mainly, with their of-age and able-bodied menfolk were likely away fighting – to make the best of sometimes scarce resources, and to keep those on the home front healthy and productive to combat the enemy. There is no Play All option on this disc. Each film is from the sound era and is presented in a ratio of 1.37:1, all black and white except for Centenary Express which is in colour. Some of these films have appeared on previous BFI releases: Oatmeal Porridge and When the Pie Was Opened are on the DVD set Ration Books and Rabbit Pies, though here you have them in HD.

Oatmeal Porridge (5:58)
From 1940, made by the Ministry of Food, this is number one of a series called Cookery Hints. Oatmeal Porridge features writer/narrator Max Munden instructing the housewives of the land on how best to start their charges’ days with a warm bowl of undoubtedly improving porridge. It begins with a demonstration of the different types of oatmeal, coarse, medium and fine. If you have the wherewithal, including the wood and spare newspapers, you can construct a hay box to keep your boiled oats warm overnight, a “rather démodé method of cooking”, sniffed the Monthly Film Bulletin in March 1940, which found this film of “little teaching value”.

Potatoes (6:12)
Also with Max Munden, and from the Ministry of Food in 1940, Cookery Hints No. 3 is a paean to what appears to have been Vincent Price’s favourite vegetable, which featured in the first-broadcast episode of his series. So how best to grow and maintain this staple crop, how to mash them without them being “sodden or sad”, a warning not to peel them so you receive the nutrition inherent in the skins and finally how to combine them with suet to make a crust. Three months after Oatmeal Porridge, the MFB thought this an “excellent little film in which every operation is shown simply and clearly”.

American Ice Box Cake

When the Pie was Opened (8:11)
A year later and again from the Ministry of Food, something more fanciful from the New Zealand-born animator Len Lye, though unlike many of his works, this is live-action and finds more out of what might have been prosaic, namely how to make a vegetable pie, which mother makes to cheer up grumpy daughter. At least it doesn’t contain four and twenty blackbirds as our narrator informs us that that dish is not often served on British dining tables nowadays, then or now.

Tea Making Tips (10:29)
Also from 1941, this was made by the Empire Tea Bureau to encourage canteen owners on how best to serve their product, knowledge apparently passed on from one manager to the next and on to future generations no doubt. A Multipot tea urn has its virtue extolled, but be warned about the water you use: “a dirty tap means dirty tea”. You have been warned.

How to Cook a Cabbage (1:00)
On to after wartime, this brief skit from the Central Office of Information, a “Food Flash”, is missing a few seconds at the end. However, there’s time enough for comedians of the day Arthur Haynes and Charlie Chester. Arthur tells Charlie how best to go about the activity of the title, and Charlie gets it wrong.

The Good Housewife “In Her Kitchen” (8:34)
That title is rather of its time, isn’t it? A rather well-heeled lady, who might have been watching Philip Harben on television at the time (1949), introduces a film about food hygiene, only to be interrupted by one of the film crew who tells her that most modern women can’t afford such fancy kitchen gadgets. So the crew redress the set so that it looks more like a kitchen the average housewife would have at her disposal.

Centenary Express (6:35)
One from the British Transport Films archive, shot in 1980 in colour 16mm. Celebrating one hundred years of railway catering, it takes you on board a steam train with vintage dining cars where you can eat a roast dinner topped off with a brandy. When the train reaches St Pancras, Sir Peter Parker (chairman of British Rail and father of film director Oliver and actor Nathaniel), cuts the birthday cake with a sword.

Booklet
Available with the first pressing of this release, the BFI’s booklet runs to thirty-two pages plus covers. Victoria Price starts us off with “Cooking Price-Wise: An Introduction”, which expands on her interview on this disc. It’s a warm portrait of her father, a well-known foodie but an unpretentious one, as able to enjoy a hot dog at a baseball stadium as a meal at a Michelin-starred restaurant. He was keen that people would be adventurous in the food they made, to do better than TV dinners, but with ingredients you could find locally. She talks about how she was able to address her father’s legacy when a new edition of the Cooking Price-Wise book came out in 2017, so what was a short-lived television show (shown once, repeated the same year, not since) can live on.

Fish Fillets Noord Zee

Peter Fuller, author of Supper with Your Stars with his commentary partner Jenny Hammerton and co-author of another book about Vincent Price, contributes “‘No Longer Will You Be Horrified by the Horrors of Hollandaise’”. This is more specifically about Price and this telephone programme, which pitched Price as midway between Graham Kerr and Fanny Cradock. Given his reputation in horror, he promised no bat’s blood or mandrake roots. An anglophile since his first visit in 1928 (aged seventeen), Price was a busy man in 1970, promoting the releases of The Oblong Box, Scream and Scream Again and Cry of the Banshee, entering pre-production on The Abominable Dr Phibes, recording spoken-word albums and being a regular guest on British television. In between all that, he recorded this show in a week – just another job, no doubt, but one he clearly enjoyed. The recipes might not be for the health- or weight-conscious, with plenty of cream, butter and oil (and vegetarians, let alone vegans, might well feel left out), but Fuller vouches for the fact that they work.

Next is a two page credits listing for the show. Given that the onscreen credits are short (just three names at the end of each episode, producer/director Bob Murray twice) there is space to include the recipes from each episode and their recording and transmission dates. After that, Jenny Hammerton returns with “Vincent’s Theatre of Food”. As with her featurette with Vic Pratt, this concentrates on Price the writer of cookbooks, beginning with his and Mary’s A Treasury of Great Recipes. She tells how she went to one of the establishments whose recipes Price had included in the book, one which the average viewer could only dream to visit. She goes on to discuss the Prices’ other books, including the book of Cooking Price-Wise (an original copy, yours for about £1000), and also his later series of LPs, Vincent Price International Cookery Course, so you can have the man’s mellifluous voice guiding you all the way. And have a drink while you’re at it, maybe some of the Angostura Bitters that Price promoted, or maybe put on the LP Wine is Elegance.

Now we have Vic Pratt, with “‘Can You Think of Something Richer or Yummier Than That?’”. That’s what Price says when he shows us the American Ice Box Cake he’s just made. Pratt had written about Cooking Price-Wise in the book he cowrote with William Fowler, The Bodies Beneath: The Flipside of British Film and Television. He isn’t old enough to have seen Cooking Price-Wise on its first broadcast, but does still evoke a Britain of the Seventies, when foreign countries and their food were pretty much somewhere else entirely to your average dining table. Like Fuller, he considers Price’s show as smaller-scale and less glam than Graham Kerr’s, and it’s obviously done on a low budget, but Price’s enthusiasm, more or less as-live, carries us through.

The booklet ends with credits for the extras and notes on them provided by Vic Pratt.

At the time maybe just another cookery show, made different by its star, and hard to find since, Cooking Price-Wise proves itself a worthy choice for BFI Flipside number fifty. And unlike most other Flipside entries, there’s plenty you can try at home, with some Grade A food porn along the way.