I Watch Films: Theatre Of Blood

Theatre Of Blood

Vincent Price is a distinguished Shakespearean actor who dramatically jumps into the Thames after being snubbed for an award by the Critic’s Circle. Believed dead he later returns with a company of homeless people based in an abandoned theatre to stage murders for the critics, murders based on Shakespeare plays that the critics panned his performances in.

So far so good, an episodic themed-murder horror film. What lifts this is the enormous dramatic energy that makes it incredibly camp. The first critic to be killed is trapped in an attempt to evict squatters from a building he is part of the renovation committee for; his self-assured superiority revealed to be empty bluster as he is stabbed multiple times a la Julius Caesar. This is the simplest and least melodramatic of the murder scenes.

Price overacts excellently, his make up and mannerisms designed to be visible from the back of the theatre, the audience up in the gods. His daughter is played by Diana Rigg [SPOILERS] who as his assistant is hilariously in drag with a moustache, sunglasses and puffball wig. Many of the critics are pompous eccentrics, a couple of them presenting as gay which is taken about as seriously as everything else in the film (not much). None of them are especially nice people, all caught up in the petty world of theatre reviewing. And this is what makes the film more absurd than (say) The Abominable Dr Phibes that it’s been compared to; that the victim are almost as outrageous as the murderer, and no more sympathetic.

Having said that, the setpieces get more ridiculous and baroque. And the critics show an admirable lack of common sense, even after they know that someone is targeting them, even if the traps are perfectly designed for them. Going to a wine tasting and leaving your police escort outside? Absolutely no sense of self-preservation even if you aren’t familiar with Richard III.

Watch This: For humorous and horrific murder traps and setpieces
Don’t Watch This: The persecution of critics is not funny or exciting