Theater of Madness

What would Spooktober be without some Vincent Price. We queued Theater of Blood / Madhouse (1973), a nice theatrical double bill.

Theater of Blood starts with a theater critic being called on to visit a building of which he is part owner, to help the police evict some vagrants. Said vagrants kill said critics, and the police turn out to be actors. It was a setup by actor Edward Lionheart, Vincent Price. He was supposed to be dead, but was only in hiding, due to his humiliation at never winning a critics award. After the murder, he takes the corpse into a derelict theater and recites the "Friends, Romans, countrymen" speech from Julius Caesar. 

His plan is to kill all of his critics in a manner based on a Shakespearean play. This is a great conceit, when you remember how gruesome some of Shakespeare's murders are. For instance, Robert Morley is fed pies baked from his darling doggies, as in Titus Andronicus. 

He is aided by the vagrants, billed in the credits as Meth Drinkers (methylated spirits) and a mod young man with a horseshoe mustache and dark glasses. Ms. Spenser said "Diana Rigg" as soon as she saw him - and so he was. Ms. Rigg (who died around the week we watched this) played Price's daughter, who dressed in male drag to help her daddy.

In Madhouse, Price plays Paul Toomes, an actor who plays Doctor Death in a horror franchise. At a party where he is announcing his engagement to a a young starlet, a porno film producer reveals that she has made films for him. Price is enraged, and later, when she is alone, a figure in the costume of Dr. D murders her. Price comes to her room to apologize for flying off the handle, and finds her dead. Even he doesn't know if he did it.

He is acquitted of the crime, but commits himself to the titular madhouse.

When he is released, his friend, actor and Dr. Death screenwriter Peter Cushing takes him home. He tells him about a Dr. Death TV series in the works - produced by the porno producer from the party. Price isn't thrilled, but could use the work, and his friend needs the money. Especially because his wife has been disfigured in a car fire, gone mad and started to hang out with a collection of tarantulas. (I don't think this has anything to do with the plot, but is creepy as heck.)

As the production proceeds, people keep dying in ways inspired by Dr. Death movies. We, the audience, see the masked and caped Dr. Death, but is it Price or not? Not even he knows.

So, two theatrical thrillers with murders inspired by plays or movies. Each has a classic co-star as well. Actually, Madhouse has film clips of Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone as well. Maybe not as much fun as the Dr. Phibes movies, which are the inspiration for these, it seems, but creepy enough.