October 2013 Edition #8: THEATRE OF BLOOD

Director: Douglas Hickox
Screenplay: Anthony Greville-Bell
Starring: Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, Ian Hendry, Harry Andrews, Coral Browne
Release Date: April 5th, 1973


The relationship between entertainers and their critics has always been a tumultuous one, and never has that been shown in more splatterific detail than in THEATER OF BLOOD, an odd British horror film with a jet-black sense of humor that manages to straddle the line between the kitschy camp value of star Vincent Price’s earlier pictures with American International Pictures, and the encroaching grand guignol gruesomeness of the then-current exploitation fare that cluttered drive-ins and grind houses in the 1970’s. Though tonally uneven, tackily outdated and at times incredibly mean-spirited, the film acts as a nice bridge between the spooky thrills of the AIP pictures and the graphic mayhem that would come to define the genre over the next decade and a half.

The story concerns the revenge plot of  “World’s Greatest Actor” Richard Lionheart (Price), who seemingly leapt to his death into the river Thames after being humiliated by a group of critics who rejected him for their Critics Circle Award for Best Actor. Unbeknownst to them he survives the fall, washing ashore some miles away and being nursed back to health by a group of alcoholic vagrants and drug addicts. Two years later he begins to enact his vengeance, taking advantage of the easily-manipulated vagrants to aid him in gruesome acts of murder on the seven members of the Critic’s Circle. One by one they are slain in increasingly awful manners, each vivisection and every disembowelment inspired by a death from one of the works of William Shakespeare. His first victim is stabbed to death by a group of tramps on the Ides of March, mimicking JULIUS CAESAR. One particularly lascivious critic is lured by a sexy young siren to the crumbling theatre occupied by Lionheart and company  to perform a revised scene from THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, ending with his heart substituting for Shylock’s pound of flesh. The effeminate glutton of the group is tricked into devouring his “children”, in this case his two beloved poodles, when they are ground up and baked into a meat pie, ala TITUS ANDRONICUS. All of it builds to a climax in which Peregrine Devlin (Hendry), the head of the Critic’s Circle and Lionheart’s, is captured and threatened with blinding by two hot daggers lest he recant his criticisms of the egocentric thespian.

Essentially this is a loose remake of THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES, with it’s vengeful anti-hero and his young female sidekick murdering a group of stuffy authority figures in gloriously inventive and increasingly elaborate scenarios, to the utter befuddlement of Scotland Yard inspectors. DR. PHIBES, while heinously gruesome in it’s sick humor at times, maintained a sense of goofy fun through it’s colorful production design  and willingness to embrace the complete and utter lunacy of it’s story, seeming to exist in a cartoonish alternate dimension. THEATER OF BLOOD, on the other hand, is very much set in the real world, and the contrast of Price’s performance, tongue planted firmly in cheek, and light-hearted tone with the gritty location photography and the general ickiness of his traveling troupe of homeless psychopaths makes for a strange, at times nauseating experience.

Which is not to say the film isn’t fun. Price is obviously having a total blast, totally devouring the scenery  while wearing a series of increasingly bizarre costumes, from a Scotland Yard inspector, to a gay hairdresser with a massive afro.  Hearing him soliloquize in the words of Shakespeare in scene after scene is quite a treat, never more so than when Lionheart attempts suicide while reciting the “To be, or not to be…” speech from HAMLET after the critics laugh derisively at him at the post-awards party, his daughter Edwina (Rigg) pleading with him the entire time. Though utterly ludicrous and melodramatic, the scene is ultimately heartbreaking in it’s poignancy. Price is able to draw real sympathy for Lionheart here, which is great because up to this point in the film he mostly comes off as an egotistical cry-baby. Aside from Devlin, the critics are all a fairly one-dimensional, thoroughly unlikable lot, though certainly undeserving of the heinous acts Lionheart inflicts upon them. This scene, however, cements the group as elitist douche bags blissfully ignorant of the symbiotic relationship between themselves and Lionheart. They need him just as much as he needs them, and their taking advantage of this fact ultimately bites them in the ass in the most gruesome way possible.

And boy, do I mean gruesome. Having grown accustomed to the more restrained nature of Price’s collaborations with Roger Corman, I was slightly taken aback by the level of malignant grisliness on display. After fairly graphic multiple stabbing inside of  what looks like a meth den, the film then segues into a particularly morbid sequence in which Lionheart and co. hide inside of a massive trunk which is delivered to one critic’s bedroom. When the man goes to sleep that night, they exit the trunk, drug him and his wife, and proceed to very slowly and surgically remove the poor bastard’s head in a prolonged sequence that includes some comical operatic music for extra surreal effect. Another gag-inducing sequence comes near the finale when, upon discovering he has been devouring the pureed corpses of his poodles, a man is held down and force fed the rest through a funnel until he suffocates. Now, I’m not easily grossed out, but this scene has pretty much put me off of pot pie for oh, let’s say, EVER! All of these scenes are fun, in theory, but without the EC comics-esque flair director Robert Fuest was able to bring to the PHIBES films they mostly just come off as incredibly mean-spirited, conveying the worldview that life is a cheap joke, with death the final humiliating punch line.

Speaking of punch lines, this flick certainly ends on a doozy, with a final line that just perfectly puts a nail in the dark heart of this admittedly silly tale. It’s enough to make up for a dumb last-minute twist involving Lionheart’s daughter that, to me at least, seemed telegraphed from the very first scene, landing with an unimpressive thud. I would be willing to bet that screenwriter Anthony Greville-Bell reverse-engineered the entire screenplay around this one line, as it so perfectly ties up everything that has transpired in a wickedly subversive bow.

THEATER OF BLOOD is certainly not among the upper echelon of my favorite Vincent Price films, due to it’s derivations from the PHIBES films and general mean-spiritidness. However, it offers enough ghastly sight gags and gallows humor to satisfy all but the most hardened of genre aficionados.

My Rating:
7/10