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Theatre of Blood (1973)

Posted By: Efgrapha

Date: 28 Nov 2014 17:55:59

The darkly comic and sometimes quite gory Theatre of Blood is a vehicle tailor-made for its star Vincent Price, brilliantly capitalizing on his reputation as a master of period horror drawn from "literary" sources. Price portrays Shakespearean actor Edward Lionheart, who becomes enraged after losing a prominent acting award and decides to seek revenge on the critics responsible. Fittingly, he using the works of the Bard as a guide, basing his killings on violent scenes from Shakespearean plays. Price takes full advantage of his meaty role, ominously reciting classic Elizabethan monologues while rigging particularly nasty torture devices. This hilarious turn is assisted by a colorful supporting cast, including Robert Morley, Richard Coote, and Michael Hordern as critics and Diana Rigg as Lionheart's devoted daughter and partner in crime. The end result is a wonderfully evil lark that, in its own way, proves surprisingly faithful to the often bloody spirit of Shakespeare; certainly the full implications of Shylock's demand for a "pound of flesh" have rarely been made quite as explicit.

Synopsis by Judd Blaise, Allmovie.com

Film Forum’s self-proclaimed “Gruesome Twosome” double feature should give fright seekers and gorehounds plenty of bloody mutton to chew on. Theater of Blood is the more sanguine offering, featuring a wonderfully hammy Vincent Price as British thespian Edward Lionheart, who plots grisly revenge against his reviewers.

The trick is that he murders his victims in the style of William Shakespeare’s plays: One has his poodles fed to him a la Tamora her children in Titus Andronicus; another is drowned in a vat of Malmsey wine like George Plantagenet in Richard III. For anyone who’s ever wished ill on a pundit (we know you’re out there), Price’s merciless antics should strike a gleeful chord.

Scream of Fear, meanwhile, is a superb bit of Hammer hysteria. The British studio famous for its Lee-and-Cushing vampire sagas tried its hand at psychological horror with this tale of a crippled girl, Penny Appleby (Strasberg), who comes to the French Riviera to meet her estranged father. Penny’s stepmother (Todd) informs her that Dad’s away on business, but if that’s true, why is she seeing him (his dead body, actually) in every shadow?

Strasberg’s doe-eyed dedication to her role and Douglas Slocombe’s brilliant black-and-white cinematography counterbalance the film’s increasingly ridiculous plot turns, which nonetheless have a crude, jaw-dropper effectiveness. The initial reveal of the troublesome corpse—posed by candlelight in a vaguely Bates Motel–like sitting room—is particularly memorable, though keep in mind that nothing in this spine-tingler is as it seems.

Review by Keith Uhlich, Time Out New York

IMDB 7,3/10 from 5 784 users

Wiki

Director: Douglas Hickox

Writers: Anthony Greville-Bell (screenplay), Stanley Mann & John Kohn (idea)

Cast: Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, Ian Hendry, Harry Andrews, Coral Browne, Robert Coote, Jack Hawkins,
Ian Hendry, Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, Joan Hickson, Robert Morley, Milo O'Shea, Diana Dors, Dennis Price