In honor of the late Dame Diana Rigg, I decided to discuss Theater of Blood, one of my very favorite horror movies. Vincent Price as a Shakespearean actor exacting revenge on his critics through restaging scenes from Shakespeare? Yes, please!
Tagline: “It’s curtains for his critics!”
AKA: Theatre of Blood, Much Ado About Murder
WTF Factor: *** for the cheeky use of Shakespeare to create a body count
Notable Dialogue:
- Maxwell: “You! It’s you…but you’re dead!”
- Lionheart: “No, no, another critical miscalculation on your part, dear boy. I’m well. It is you who are dead.”
Synopsis: The credits roll over a montage of melodramatic scenes from silent Shakespeare films, a harbinger of things to come.
George Maxwell (Michael Hordern), a theater critic, attempts to roust squatters from a condemned building, although he was warned by his wife who had a bad dream about the Ides of March, as in Julius Caesar. He is stabbed to death by a bizarre, drunken mob led by Vincent Price, who we soon learn is Edward Lionheart, a well-known but supposedly dead Shakespearean actor. Lionheart declaims Marc Anthony’s famous “Friends, Romans, countrymen…” speech to the mob, in costume and full overdone stage makeup. His stage manager has to knock a few heads to get the mob to listen properly (they never do).
There is a Critics Circle meeting to decide on their annual acting award. Each member establishes a characteristic that will eventually be exploited in their manner of death, but they all seem quite boorish. Then they find out that Maxwell is dead. Lead critic Peregrine Devlin (Ian Hendry) meets Inspector Boot (Milo O’Shea) at the scene of the crime. He finds an old poster for Julius Caesar starring Edward Lionheart. The Inspector describes Lionheart as “a very vigorous actor,” which amuses Devlin.
Notable dialogue:
- Inspector Boot: “I take it that you didn’t like him.”
- Devlin: “No, I didn’t. I could never write anything good about him. You know, it’s a funny thing, but you begin to resent an actor if you always have to give him bad notices.”
Hector Snipe (Dennis Price) is summoned by Lionheart’s stage manager to see Lionheart in an abandoned theater. Lionheart confronts him with Snipe’s own sarcastic review of Lionheart’s acting.
In a scene from Troilus and Cressida, Snipe is impaled on a giant spear and tied to a horse’s tail, appearing at Maxwell’s funeral. Devlin sees Edwina Lionheart (Diana Rigg) at the cemetery. She is bitter about Lionheart’s suicide and blames Devlin and the other critics.
The lesser known play Cymbeline is next. Horace Sprout (Arthur Lowe) is decapitated in bed while sleeping next to his drugged wife and his head is delivered to Devlin with his morning milk.
Inspector Boot gets a list of the remaining critics from Devlin and sends out constables to warn them not to go out. However, Edwina first lures lecher Trevor Dickman (Harry Andrews) to the theater, allegedly to see a an amateur “living theater” production of The Merchant of Venice, with Dickman as Antonio.
In the meantime, Devlin and the inspector realize someone is following Lionheart’s playbill from two years ago. At that time Lionheart lost the annual Critics Circle acting award even though he expected to win. He confronted the critics, who openly mocked him, and jumped from the balcony with the trophy in front of his daughter Edwina (after delivering the soliloquy from Hamlet), plunging into the Thames.
Meanwhile Dickman’s heart (Antonio’s pound of flesh) is delivered to Devlin at the critics meeting.
Notable dialogue (after Devlin receives Dickman’s heart in a box):
- Inspector Boot: “You said there was no murder in The Merchant of Venice.”
- Devlin: “It’s Lionheart all right. Only he would have the temerity to re-write Shakespeare.”
Oliver Larding (Robert Coote), the oenophile/lush, is lured to a wine tasting and drowned in a cask of wine, as was Clarence in Richard III.
Boot takes Edwina to the police station for questioning, to Devlin’s dismay. Devlin goes fencing in an empty studio and faces up melodramatically with Lionheart. They fence without the buttons on the rapier tips.
Lionheart: “Lionheart is immortal. He can never be destroyed. Never!”
Lionheart explains that he was saved (still clutching “his” award) by the group of Sterno-drinking bums we’ve seen. The next play on the list is Romeo and Juliet, with the famous duel scene. Devlin and Lionheart facetiously fence all around the gym, with Lionheart using the equipment while fencing, including bouncing on trampolines.
Lionheart wins the duel and Devlin asks him to confess.
Lionheart: “No, Devlin, no! I did not kill Larding and the others. Punished them, my dear boy, punished them, just as you shall have to be punished.”
Although Lionheart has Devlin at his mercy, he refuses to kill him…yet.
Next up is Othello. The stage manager calls Solomon Psaltry (Jack Hawkins) and tells him his wife is having an affair and he should go keep an eye on her. Psaltry’s wife has unknowingly hired Lionheart as a masseur, and Psaltry sees him go into his wife’s bedroom and hears her comical moaning. The jealous husband bursts in and ends up smothering his wife with a pillow.
On to Henry VI, Part I! The constables take Chloe Moon (Coral Browne) to her beauty salon. The new stylist, Butch (guess who!), wires her up and electrocutes her á la Joan of Arc.
Edwina contacts Devlin and tells him that she has learned that her father is alive. She won’t tell Devlin where he is, but she says he confessed to the murders and will give himself up. Devlin offers to go with her to meet him later.
Now it’s time for Titus Andronicus (which has multiple juicy murders). The remaining critic, Meredith Merridew (Robert Morley) has been wandering through the entire movie with two miniature poodles that he calls his babies, and if you know the play, you will know where this is going. The police are decoyed away from Merridew’s place and Lionheart and gang put on a cooking show where they present Merridew with a special meat pie. This being Titus Andronicus, Merridew is being fed his own babies (dogs). He is forcefed until he suffocates.
While Edwina lures Devlin into a trap, the police attempt to follow, with a homing device in the car and an officer in the trunk. Devlin is hit on the head and Edwina removes the homing device and parks the car on the railroad tracks. Exit police officer.
Devlin wakes up strapped to a chair. King Lear is the final play and Lionheart and his assistant are re-staging the award ceremony from two years ago.
This time they want Devlin to present the award to Lionheart but Devlin is defiant, the smug bastard. The stage manager is revealed to be Edwina (presumably this was only meant to be a surprise to Devlin). Devlin will have his eyes stabbed out with hot knives, while Edwina presents Lionheart with his coveted award. Sirens sound and Lionheart sets fire to the theater.
Edwina tries to help get the mob to help Lionheart but she gets clobbered with the award. Lionheart and Edwina touchingly reenact a scene from King Lear and Edwina dies in her father’s arms.
Lionheart carries her to the roof and he falls to his death. The police rescue Devlin. Says Devlin, “You must admit, he did know how to make an exit.” And…scene.
Notable credit:
Choreographer of Meths Drinkers – Tutte Lemkow
Thoughts: As both a Shakespeare and Vincent Price fan, I have loved this movie since I first saw it. Nowhere else did Price get to execute both his slapstick skills and wit, and his facility with Shakespeare’s soliloquies. Theater of Blood obviously used The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) as a template for the theme of a wronged man seeking methodical revenge against his oppressors (in the case of Phibes, using the ten plagues of Egypt).
As presented by Price, Lionheart’s acting is not exactly bad, but his style is painfully old-fashioned; one would indeed call him overly “vigorous”/melodramatic in the manner of those silent film stars that played below the opening credits. One gets the clear sense that Price is having a marvelous time in this role.
The movie is surprisingly gory for the time, which is generally not to my taste, but there is nothing naturalistic about the murders. Everything is spun into an elaborate, quip-filled set piece and it’s hard to take any of it seriously. The movie allows you to feel smart if you can guess the manner of deaths ahead of time, but there’s something to be said about being surprised too.
The cast is a “Who’s Who” of British theater and the episodic nature of the movie is probably due to the secondary cast stopping by to film between stage performances. The Critics Circle are a nasty lot and we end up rooting for Lionheart to finish them off. Unfortunately Devlin survives until the end (I don’t buy that he is nicer than the others).
And now to Dame Diana Rigg: She is wonderfully matched here with Vincent Price, since she was a well-respected Shakespearean actor. In her best roles, Rigg naturally exuded a wicked sense of humor, and those who only know her as Lady Olenna in Game of Thrones owe it to themselves to check out her equally spirited earlier work. She first came to American audiences as the gorgeous and utterly cool Emma Peel (1965-1967) in the British television series The Avengers (1961-1969). I never met a guy who watched that show and didn’t have a mad crush on her. Theater of Blood was her only horror movie per se, but many episodes of The Avengers included horror and/or science fiction elements. Rigg was also a Bond girl in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), the only one that James Bond ever married. The woman was badass both in her roles and in real life. Godspeed, Dame Diana.
Quick bits:
- Vincent Price and Coral Browne met on the set and were married the next year. Supposedly they were introduced by Diana Rigg, who didn’t realize that Price was married at the time.
- Vincent Price and Diana Rigg remained friends throughout his life. In 1989, when Price stepped down as host of the PBS anthology series Mystery!, he recommended Rigg as a replacement. Rigg hosted until 2003.
- The movie’s gay stereotypes are offensive, to put it mildly, but they are mercifully brief.
- There was a 2005 stage version of the movie, starring Jim Broadbent as Lionheart and Rigg’s daughter, Rachael Stirling, as Edwina.
Suggested double feature: Anything by Shakespeare, or less on the nose, Forbidden Planet (1956), a re-imagining of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Tagline for Coming Attraction: “Stripping Flesh From Bone…Creeping, Multiplying, Devouring…Hungry For The Blood of a World!”
