He became a character actor, appearing in The Song of Bernadette (1943), Laura (1944), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), Dragonwyck (1946), The Three Musketeers (1948) and The Ten Commandments (1956).

He collaborated with Roger Corman on a series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, including House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Haunted Palace (1963), and The Masque of the Red Death (1964).

Price voiced the villainous Professor Ratigan in Disney's animated film The Great Mouse Detective (1986), and appeared in the drama The Whales of August (1987), which earned him an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male nomination.

The following year, Price portrayed the title character in The Invisible Man Returns (a role he reprised in a voice-only cameo in the closing scene of the horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein released in 1948).

He also had many villainous roles in film noir thrillers such as The Web (1947), The Long Night (1947), Rogues' Regiment (1948), and The Bribe (1949), with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Charles Laughton.

He did a comedic turn as the tycoon Burnbridge Waters, co-starring with Ronald Colman in Champagne for Caesar (also 1950), one of his favorite film roles.

That same year, Price starred in two thrillers by producer-director William Castle: House on Haunted Hill as eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren, and The Tingler as Dr. Warren Chapin, who discovered the titular creature.

About this time, he also appeared in episodes of television shows such as Science Fiction Theatre, Playhouse 90, and General Electric Theater.

In the 1960s, Price achieved a number of low-budget filmmaking successes with Roger Corman[21] and American International Pictures (AIP) starting with the House of Usher (1960), which earned over $2 million at the box office in the United States[22] and led to the subsequent Edgar Allan Poe adaptations of The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Tales of Terror (1962), The Comedy of Terrors (1963), The Raven (1963), The Masque of the Red Death (1964),[21] and The Tomb of Ligeia (1964).

[23] He starred in The Last Man on Earth (1964), the first adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend, and portrayed witch hunter Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General, (US: The Conqueror Worm, 1968) set during the English Civil War.

In 1975, Price and his wife Coral Browne appeared together in an international stage adaptation of Ardèle, which played in the U.S. and in London at the Queen's Theatre.

That same year he hosted the hour-long television special America Screams, riding on several roller coasters and recounting their history.

[34] That same year, Price provided the spoken-word sequence throughout the Michael Jackson song "Thriller",[35] and appeared as Sir Despard Murgatroyd in a television production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore (with Keith Michell as Robin Oakapple).

He appeared in House of the Long Shadows with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and John Carradine; he had worked with each of those actors at least once in previous decades, but this was the first time that all had teamed up.

One of his last major roles, and one of his favorites, was as the voice of Professor Ratigan in Walt Disney Pictures' The Great Mouse Detective in 1986.

In 1984, Price appeared in Shelley Duvall's live-action series Faerie Tale Theatre as the Mirror in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and the narrator for "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers".

In 1987, he starred with Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, and Ann Sothern in The Whales of August, a story of two sisters living in Maine facing the end of their days.

Since the 2019 reopening, the new tracks are dual-language; Price's original excerpts as well as previously unused material from his 1990 recording comprise the English-speaking portions, while actor Bernard Alane voices the Phantom in French.

[40] In 1957, impressed by the spirit of the students and the community's need for the opportunity to experience original artworks firsthand, Vincent and Mary Grant Price donated 90 pieces from their private collection and a large amount of money to establish the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California,[41] which was the first "teaching art collection" owned by a community college in the United States.

In the 1960s, portraits of Native Americans painted by Charles Bird King were secured for Jacqueline Kennedy's White House restoration.

The movie His Kind of Woman has a comedic scene in which Price, having invited Jane Russell and Robert Mitchum to dinner, receives bad news.

He plays the entire scene holding a duck in his hand, ready to be cooked "soaked in sherry with only salt, sage, and pepper."

"[52] However, Price became a liberal after becoming friends with New York intellectuals such as Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellman in the 1930s,[52] so much so that he was "greylisted" under McCarthyism in the 1950s for having been a prewar "premature anti-Nazi".

After being unable to find work for a year, he agreed to requests by the FBI that he sign a "secret oath" to save his career.

[66] Price was an honorary board member and strong supporter of the Witch's Dungeon Classic Movie Museum in Bristol, Connecticut, until his death in 1993.

The museum features detailed life-sized wax replicas of characters from some of Price's films, including The Fly, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, and The Masque of the Red Death.

Price had his own Spitting Image puppet, who was always trying to be "sinister" and lure people into his ghoulish traps, only for his victims to point out all the obvious flaws.

It included a public event with Victoria at the Missouri History Museum and a showcase of ephemeral and historic items at the gallery inside the Sheldon Concert Hall.

[68][69] In an unusual convergence of widely different generational and cultural backgrounds, the genteel Price was a friend of the English hard rock band Deep Purple and in 1975, he appeared on Roger Glover's live version of The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast as a narrator.

[70] That same year, American director and writer John Waters composed a "heartfelt and appreciative" retrospective on Price for Turner Classic Movies, which recognized the actor as its "Star of the Month" in October 2013 and showcased then a selection of his most popular films.