Every good actor, or more accurately, every prolific actor will, sooner or later, find his way to this blog. Yet it seems that horror icon Vincent Price has thus far escaped exposure. And he will for a little longer, I’m afraid, because although he stars in this movie, it is not he that appears at the chessboard. He is playing a super villain who blames a bunch of doctors for the death of his wife and is now visiting all the plagues of Egypt on them.
That was perhaps common practice a couple of millenia ago but it is rather frowned upon by nineteenth-century law enforcement.1 The police are therefore closely following the few remaining doctors of the team. Not so closely, though, that they’re bothering him at the chessboard, where he is facing his son.
They are using what I think are replicas of the Lewis chessmen, which isn’t great for piece recognizability at a distance. I nevertheless managed a reasonable reconstruction:2
Bishops and rooks look a bit similar and black’s king’s side doesn’t come into view very clearly, but I think this reconstruction should be reasonably close to the truth.
The doctor’s son has just delivered a check,3 but his own thoughts seem to be with his murdered colleagues rather than the game. In fact, he seems to think he has been checkmated and when his son points out that’s not the case, he just shrugs and gives up on the game. I think that explains why they’re trying to kill him.
Realism:1/5 There is no earthly reason why the kings should be on the d-file — except for the exegetic reason that the camera inverted the image, I suppose.
Probable winner: The kid, as his father walked out on him. God only knows what would have happened if he hadn’t; though; the position is an unholy mess.
1. [Although that tetragrammatical character has the statute of limitation on its side.] ↩
2. [The ominable diagram editor.] ↩
3. [Apaprently, there’s also a midwife in the family.] ↩