Theatre of Blood (1973)

Ooh-ooh! Where are my doggie-woggies?

*Theatre, for crying out loud. Two prints, divided by a common language.

For an actor whose name would become inextricably linked with the horror genre, Vincent Price didn’t actually make a proper horror movie until he was already in his forties. Prior to that, he was a go-to character actor, primarily known for supporting roles in noirs like Laura (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945) and His Kind of Woman (1951). But 1953’s House of Wax would be the beginning of a twenty-year detour into horror movies, including the Corman Poe Cycle, the first screen adaptation of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (as 1964’s The Last Man on Earth), the first of the Unholy Trinity of folk horrors Witchfinder General (1968), and peaking with Price’s finest movie: Theatre of Blood.

The film opens in fine style, with critic George Maxwell (Michael Hordern) receiving a phone call from the police, wanting him to help them remove some squatters from one of his developments. He happens to receive this phone call right next to a painting of the death of Caesar, and his wife (Renee Asherson) – unnamed, but let’s call her Calpurnia - begs him not to go: she’s had a portentous dream about his gory death. Oh, and she’s also read his horoscope: March isn’t looking too good for him. After a typically Hordernian amused grumbling about the “Ides of March”, Maxwell decides to go anyway – he’s not going to let a bunch of derelicts ruin his day. But his fusty hectoring is unsuccessful, the meths-quaffing squatters turn violent, and Maxwell is stabbed to death with broken bottles, but not before the mastermind reveals himself with a quote from Mark Antony: “O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!”

If the sledgehammer irony and grotty violence of this opening sequence appeal to you, then you have a treat in store over the next ninety minutes, in which Edward Lionheart (Price) and his daughter Edwina (Diana Rigg) exact Shakespearean revenge on the group of nine critics (now eight) who denied Lionheart the Critics’ Award and drove him to attempted suicide two years prior. They will be stabbed, decapitated, de-hearted, drowned, electrocuted and – in one particularly grotesque scene inspired by that most violent of Shakespeare plays, Titus Andronicus – force-fed their own “babies”. It’s enough to make even the hardiest of maids faint in fine style:¹

It wasn’t the first time Price had engaged in thematic homicide – The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972) had established the proto-slasher template – but Theatre of Blood excels thanks to some brilliantly staged murders, an inordinately prestigious supporting cast, and a terrific central performance from Price, who clearly relishes the opportunity to “speak the speech, I pray you” without resorting to overblown dramatics, managing to make Lionheart both the most sympathetic character in the movie (with the exception perhaps of Eric Sykes’s Sergeant Dogge, who meets an undignified end in the boot of a car)² while also giving a heartfelt masterclass in iambic pentameter.

And this is a major reason why Theatre of Blood works as well as it does. Vincent Price suffered under a reputation as a “camp” actor because of his horror work, but I maintain there is a difference between overacting and theatrical style. Had Lionheart been an incorrigible ham – as he was in the misguided 2005 National Theatre stage production³ – then the film would be an entertaining but ultimately empty experience. But both Price and the movie treat Lionheart with genuine affection. He is not a bad or failing actor, simply an unfashionable one. This is, after all, a theatrical world dominated by Peter Hall at the National on the South Bank and Trevor Nunn at the Royal Shakespeare Company, a world in which the actor-manager is a thing of the past and the Gielgud tradition of verse-speaking an anachronism. Lionheart’s Shakespeare cycle is notable not just because it’s clearly a West End production (most likely self-financed), but because it eschews many of the obvious crowd-pleasers like Macbeth or Hamlet, opting instead for the likes of Troilus and Cressida and – perhaps most perversely – Cymbeline, a play that enjoyed great popularity in the eighteenth century, but which was largely seen as self-parody on Shakespeare’s part when it wasn’t being eviscerated by George Bernard Shaw.⁴ And yet, there is no room for Lionheart in this world, despite his thirty years of public adoration, because the “overweening malice” of the critics mean they’d rather give the Critics’ Award to a “twitching, mumbling boy who can barely grunt his way through an incomprehensible performance” – a reference, no doubt, to the new wave of method-adjacent British actors in the late ‘60s.⁵

That Lionheart is not only critically eviscerated by the group, but also personally humiliated, is the real tragedy here. Sure, Lionheart may be full of himself, but his suicide attempt is certainly intentional even if it is unsuccessful, and his denial of the award is more than a rejection of his work; it is a rejection of Shakespeare, the one thing outside of his daughter that he unequivocally loves. And which of the critics has the capacity for love? Peregrine Devlin (Ian Hendry) is a balding penthouse playboy⁶ nipping around London in his vintage Jaguar XK 140, the priapic Trevor Dickman (Harry Andrews) is more interested in free love than theatre, Oliver Larding (Robert Coote) loves his wine but that’s about it, and Horace Sprout (Arthur Lowe) and Solomon Psaltery (Jack Hawkins, voiced by Charles Gray) are both trapped in loveless marriages, the latter so consumed with jealousy he smothers poor old Diana Dors after her visit by a excruciatingly Scottish-accented Lionheart. Only Meredith Merridew (Robert Morley)⁷ appears to have any lasting affection for another creature – a couple of toy poodles, his “doggie-woggies” – but that affection is so buffoonish as to be risible. In short, the critics are as superficial as the performances they apparently laud, elitists quick to dismiss popularity as a sin, even if it’s Shakespeare that’s putting bums on seats. Lionheart may have bloody thoughts, but they are at least steeped in culture and tradition – even his dilapidated theatre is named after Richard Burbage, the first actor to play Hamlet. The critics have nothing but trendy ovine group-think.

Because of this, the drama of Theatre of Blood has more weight than it should. Lionheart’s final Lear-like howl and Kong-like plunge from the top of the burning theatre even elicits a compliment from Devlin – “you must admit, he did know how to make an exit” – even if it’s supposed to ironically back-handed. But this isn’t to say that Theatre of Blood is some grim polemic against critics. For all its tragedy and murder, it’s still an incredibly funny film, albeit one with its tongue firmly in its cheek. While the opening murder is a grimy tour-de-force, the others tend to be leavened either through the buffoonery of the critics (the wine tasting), the audacity of the stagecraft (Lionheart’s bizarre disguises and convoluted death traps), or even – in the Cymbeline sequence – the score itself, which drifts into a swooning Dr Kildare theme – actually titled “Edwina’s Theme” - as Lionheart carefully saws the head off a sleeping Arthur Lowe.⁸

Lionheart’s gang of vagrants – known simply as the “meths drinkers” – also function as both comic relief (swigging the purple stuff as they pretend to film Merridew) and genuine threat (not least when they’re hacking Hordern to death). This merry band of hobos were all physical theatre veterans, headed by Tutte Lemkow,⁹ a Norwegian dancer and choreographer who not only played the eponymous Fiddler in Fiddler on the Roof (1971) but also the fella who decrypted the headpiece of the Staff of Ra in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). Other meths drinkers include Stanley Bates, who played – brace yourselves – Bungle in children’s TV show Rainbow (I know, I know), Eric Francis, who would pop up as one of the pirate clerks in “The Crimson Permanent Assurance” segment of The Meaning of Life (1983), and Declan Mulholland, who would have a long career in television, appearing in (of course) The Bill and Casualty as well as one of the shouting priests in Father Ted.

If this all sounds tonally wild, then rest assured that director Douglas Hickox keeps everything in order. Hickox was a remarkable journeyman director with a touch of the auteur: he had made his auspicious debut with the 1970 film adaptation of Joe Orton’s scurrilous little play Entertaining Mr Sloane and followed it with the nasty Alexander Jacobs-written Sitting Target (1972). He insisted that he was an “interpretive director”, one whose presence shouldn’t be immediately obvious to the audience, and yet his work in Theatre of Blood is a carousel of low angles, deep focus, and tight – almost fish-eye – close-ups. Despite Madeline Smith’s assertion that Hickox didn’t have much of a sense of humour, his capacity for theatrical framing allows room for most of the bigger gags (again, I point you to the fainting maid), and he was smart enough to let his outstanding cast go to work with minimal interference: “The cast was so good that I all I had to do as a director was open the dressing room door and let the cameras roll.” If only more directors would be as trusting.

On release, Theatre of Blood met with some cagey responses from critics, many of them reluctant to damn the film in case it looked like sour grapes, which speaks more to the insecurity of the writers than the film itself. Indeed, RH Gardner of the Baltimore Sun spends more column inches discussing criticism than the movie, ironically sounding as self-satisfied and pompous as the Terrible Nine, while others lamented a lack of subtlety¹⁰ and Valerie Jenkins of the London Evening Standard bemoaned the gore while dismissing the average horror fan, grumbling that “the Shakespeare extracts will be lost on horror film fans, and the gore will revolt the aesthetes, so either way most people will go home grumpy.”

This is of course unmitigated horseshit. Shakespeare was no stranger to horror-comedy – Titus Andronicus is full of it – and horror fans are no strangers to culture. What Theatre of Blood does best is combine the two in a way that pays tribute to both, arguably bringing an irreverent and accessible take on Shakespearean carnage to a wider audience, as well as lending gravitas and a touch of class to the standard proto-slasher. Price counted it as one of his favourite films, mostly because he got to do Shakespeare alongside an esteemed cast. Rigg also said it was her favourite - I can only assume because she had so much fun with those awful disguises. And naturally I’m inclined to agree. Theatre of Blood is one of those rare beasts: a perfect movie that does exactly what it sets out to do, earns every minute of its screentime, remains eminently rewatchable, and sports the kind of rogue’s gallery cast that makes every scene a treat. That it keeps coming up in remake discussions only to die on the vine is testament to how unimpeachable the original is, and long may it remain so.

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Next Up: “It’s four years later … What does she remember?”

1. I have watched this part so many times now trying to get the edit, and I can honestly say it never gets old. Excellent work, Brigid Erin Bates.

2. Poor Sergeant Dogge, whose last words are “I can hear a train whistle. Yes, I can definitely identify it as a train!”

3. With Jim Broadbent as Lionheart and Rachael Stirling (Diana Rigg’s daughter) as Edwina. Apparently it was about an hour longer than the film and doesn’t feature the Troilus horse-dragging, or Othello or Cymbeline murders because they happen outside the theatre. Sounds like they filled the time with meta-commentary.

4. Per Shaw, Cymbeline was “stagey trash of the lowest melodramatic order, in parts abominably written, throughout intellectually vulgar, and, judged in point of thought my modern intellectual standards, vulgar, foolish, offensive, indecent and exasperating beyond all tolerance.” It wouldn’t stop him from rewriting it in 1937, for only he “would have the temerity to rewrite Shakespeare.”

5. The Critics’ Award has no direct real-world counterpart as far as I could see. Both the Oliviers and the Critics’ Circle Theatre Awards wouldn’t be properly established until the mid-1970s and early 1980s respectively. The closest would be the Evening Standard Theatre Awards, and the 1970 Best Actor was ironically shared by those grand old theatrical knights John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson for David Storey’s Home. It may well be a wee dig at Alan Bates, who won in 1971 for Simon Gray’s Butley, but that seems a bit of a stretch, considering Bates was one of the more articulate actors of the time.

6. That penthouse happened to belong to Stanley Baker at the time. It would later be the home of former Tory MP, convicted perjurer, and bestselling writer Jeffrey Archer.

7. Let us take a short pause to appreciate the character names here. And we haven’t even mentioned Hector Snipe (Dennis Price), Chloe Moon (Coral Browne, the future Mrs Price) or Inspector Boot (Milo O’Shea). Lovely stuff. Also, I cannot pass up the opportunity to sing the praises of Robert Morley in this film - he’s such a joy and his death is one of the nastiest.

8. According to composer Michael J. Lewis, both “Main Title” and “Edwina’s Theme” were recorded by Diana Rigg with lyrics by none other than Anthony Burgess – yes, he of A Clockwork Orange – with whom Lewis had just collaborated on the Broadway adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac. Alas, these were never released, but if you want an example of the Rigg pipes, look no further than “Forget Yesterday” from Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers.

9. If you’re looking for Tutte - and who isn’t? - he’s the meths drinker with the porn-star moustache and the toothy grin. Don’t be fooled by the League of Gentlemen commentary track - Tutte Lemkow is not a lady. Otherwise, do listen to the commentary track, even if it’s just for the lads doing impressions of Arthur Lowe and Robert Morley.

10. Particularly Eric Shorter in The Daily Telegraph: “Dare I say that I found the humour thin? That John Osborne should have written the screen play?” Dare I say that John Osborne was hardly at the peak of his writing powers at the time, and Anthony Greville-Bell, former member of the SAS, does a bang-up job.