The Twentieth Night of Halloween: Theatre of Blood

ON THE TWENTIETH NIGHT OF HALLOWEEN … I watched Theatre of Blood (1973), a horror comedy directed by Douglas Hickox. Vincent Price stars as a histrionic Shakespearean actor who is presumed to have leapt to his death after being snubbed for a critics’ choice award but who has now returned to exact bloody revenge on the critics responsible for his defamation, one by one. Price’s Edward Lionheart carries out each murder via an elaborate set-piece modeled on a death scene from the play that the given critic panned his performance in. So, one critic dies like Julius Caesar, stabbed twenty-three times on the Ides of March; another is dragged by a horse like Hector in Troilus and Cressida; another has a pound of flesh cut from him by Lionheart dressed as Shylock; another is provoked to strangle his wife out of a case of mistaken jealousy like Othello; and so on. The bumbling police inspector is always one step behind Lionheart, even though the savviest member of the critics circle immediately guesses what’s going on. As a result, Lionheart is allowed to carry off all but one of his expertly planned “return performances” without a hitch. 

It’s great to see the enthusiastically eloquent Vincent Price deliberately ham up a series of touchstone Shakespeare monologues. Price had always wanted to do Shakespeare on-screen but found he was typecast playing Edgar Allan Poe villains in Roger Corman movies. So, he was delighted to play this tailor-fit lead role, and this delight is visibly apparent throughout. Price made Theatre of Blood immediately after the two part saga of Dr. Phibes, The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972), which had given his career a second wind for British audiences. Like the Dr. Phibes movies, Theatre of Blood was a very British production that was filmed on location at a number of historic London sites. It closely resembles the Phibes duology in story and character as well. Like Lionheart, Phibes is a wicked mastermind who is presumed dead and returns to exact revenge on a circle of professionals (in his case, doctors), one by one. And like Lionheart, Phibes carries out his murders by elaborate means modeled on a literary source (in his case, the ten plagues from the book of Exodus), while the bumbling police are too flatfooted to stop him. Remarkably, I’m not aware of any further connection between the Phibes and the Theatre of Blood productions—the production companies, producers, screenwriters, and directors are all different. Since Price himself is the only carryover, I suppose Harbour Films just pitched Price on doing a third Phibes-like vehicle but with Shakespeare instead of medical horror-- and he was totally down. 

The humor here is both quite dry and quite broad. Wordplay is fairly sparse, mostly depending on Shakespeare references and standard theater puns. Instead, the real black comedy lies in relishing the various obnoxious posh snobs getting their comeuppances. The best instance is when a critic who moonlights as a slumlord tries to evict some squatters, realizes they will not come nicely, and turns to the police in a panic, only to find that the police are the squatters’ comrades in disguise.

But of course, this picture’s main attraction is Price’s glorious gothic campiness, so if you’re a fan of that, this is a must-see.