Rutger Hauer's performance based on Vincent Price?

When I was first watching this movie about three years ago, it occurred to me that there was something oddly familiar about the "Lothos" character. I knew I had seen his like before. And then it hit me: thin frame, little moustache, slightly effeminate yet still creepy voice, demonic laugh....it could only be a tribute of sorts to one of the original horror actors, Vincent Price!

I'm sure this was deliberate on Rutger Hauer's part. After all, Price had been a cult figure in American film and television for nearly 40 years by the time BUFFY was made. And he had recently gained newfound fame as "The Inventor" in Tim Burton's EDWARD SCISSORHANDS. In fact, at the time that BUFFY was being filmed, Burton was preparing a series of interviews with Price that for various reasons never got off the ground.

I wonder if Vincent Price himself could have played Lothos in this movie? I think he would have relished it, and it would have been an amusing coda to an acting career stretching all the way back to 1937. Then again, it would have been his last film (he died in 1993), so his "staking" at the end would have come off as a little sad.