After losing the Critic's Circle Award for Best Actor, which he felt he deserved for his recent season of Shakespeare plays, enraged and mad actor Edwin Lionheart (Price) commits suicide. Unbeknownst to everyone, though, he survives and with the help of some vagrants start dealing his revenge on the critics, killing each of them in accordance to his plays' deaths.
A darkly humorous horror/thriller, performed magnificently by Vincent Price and an excellent British supporting cast (such as Milo O'Shea, Ian Hendry and Diana Rigg); this is easily Price's best role and one of his best films. Leagues above his previous 'Abominable Mr. Phibes', even if the two feel very similar concept-wise.
One of the film's main sources of profit comes from the way Price's character is set. Lionheart is a theater actor with a tendency to overact (which is acknowledged by one of the critics); this simple fact gives Price an excuse to overact as he wishes, to ham things up as he goes, and makes his performance both fun to watch and consistent with his character. Seeing him in outrageous make-up, performing for the city's bums, is priceless (excuse the pun).
The Shakespearean motifs are also very well done. Not only the killings, which are both amusing and quite consistent with the plays they are based on (including a 'rewrite' of 'The Merchant of Venice's trial), but Price actually does play Shakespeare's characters nicely: he pulls off some of the monologues (in special Hamlet's and King Lear's) better than some Shakespearean actors I've seen.
The film is quite colorful, a especially delightful trait of 50's-70's British horrors; this, coupled with the pervasive humor even in the more serious scenes, makes this work more as a comedy-horror than as a pure horror/thriller.
No matter how you wish to look at it, though, the fact is that 'Theatre of Blood' is a very entertaining and fun film.
A darkly humorous horror/thriller, performed magnificently by Vincent Price and an excellent British supporting cast (such as Milo O'Shea, Ian Hendry and Diana Rigg); this is easily Price's best role and one of his best films. Leagues above his previous 'Abominable Mr. Phibes', even if the two feel very similar concept-wise.
One of the film's main sources of profit comes from the way Price's character is set. Lionheart is a theater actor with a tendency to overact (which is acknowledged by one of the critics); this simple fact gives Price an excuse to overact as he wishes, to ham things up as he goes, and makes his performance both fun to watch and consistent with his character. Seeing him in outrageous make-up, performing for the city's bums, is priceless (excuse the pun).
The Shakespearean motifs are also very well done. Not only the killings, which are both amusing and quite consistent with the plays they are based on (including a 'rewrite' of 'The Merchant of Venice's trial), but Price actually does play Shakespeare's characters nicely: he pulls off some of the monologues (in special Hamlet's and King Lear's) better than some Shakespearean actors I've seen.
The film is quite colorful, a especially delightful trait of 50's-70's British horrors; this, coupled with the pervasive humor even in the more serious scenes, makes this work more as a comedy-horror than as a pure horror/thriller.
No matter how you wish to look at it, though, the fact is that 'Theatre of Blood' is a very entertaining and fun film.