More Gory Than Funny But a Must for Vincent Price Fans
The plot of the 1973 British horror comedy Theatre of Blood is that a ham Shakespearean actor, Edward Kendal Sheridan Lionheart, played by Vincent Price, expects to win the best actor award at the Theatre Critics Guild in 1970 but is beaten out by a new young actor. He shows up at the after party, berates the critics, steals the award, and apparently dies by jumping into the Thames at a great height. This was particularly impressively done and looked real and not as if a dummy was used.
Two years later, beginning on the Ides of March 1972, Lionheart begins his plan of vengeance against the critics who had spurned his supposed genius by killing them in ways similar to the murder scenes in his last season of the plays of William Shakespeare. He consults a scrapbook containing the critics’ scathing reviews and reads aloud what each one wrote before killing them. He is helped by a surprisingly large number of accomplices, including his daughter Edwina, played by the very beautiful Diana Rigg. Besides Lionheart and Edwina, the rest don’t seem too bright and are only going along with the scheme.
For a comedy, I only got a few chuckles out of it, but someone with a warped sense of humor might find it hilarious. As indicated by the title, much of it is very gory, and most of the blood looks convincingly real, including a few scenes of blood being drawn from bare flesh. Stage blood must have come on in impressive leaps and bounds in just a few years, considering the relatively fake appearance of the blood in Witchfinder General, which came out in 1968, and the extremely fake blood seen in The Oblong Box, which came out in 1969, so fake in both cases that its appearance detracted from the movies, then with a comedy they decide to get real.
A large number of deaths are brought about in various gruesome fashions, including a man decapitated in bed next to his sleeping wife. Despite the police’s attempts to protect the remaining critics, Lionheart and his gang always stay one step ahead of them. Animal lovers please be warned, innocent animals are harmed in a scene which even adults may find disturbing and is not for kids.
Of interest to Vincent Price fans is that he recites a lot of Shakespeare. I might have given him the actor’s award; in any case, he seemed to really have fun with it. He gets a second chance to play Richard III, as he did in Tower of London from 1962, and this time with Shakespeare’s lines, so he again drowns a man in a vat of wine. The other point of interest is that the only female critic killed is Miss Chloe Moon, played by Coral Browne, who became Vincent Price’s third wife after they met while filming this movie.
None of the critics are portrayed as very likable except one. Lionheart is the type of character Price has played in other films, a genius, or would-be genius, who turns murderous, all the time believing his actions are right and rather reveling in revenge. The movie is beautifully and often creatively filmed in London. It is kind of interesting but as I say certainly gory. Viewers should use discretion.