Movies - Theatre of Blood

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	Movies - Theatre of Blood

Theatre of Blood was a 1973 horror film starring Vincent Price as vengeful actor Edward Lionheart and Diana Rigg as his daughter Edwina Lionheart.

Plot

Edward Lionheart, who sees himself as a great Shakespearean actor, is in fact an extremely hammy and over-the-top actor, much like Vincent Price who plays him. With the aid of his daughter Edwina (Diana Rigg), Lionheart sets out to murder, one by one, a group of critics who had individually ridiculed his acting throughout his career, and ultimately declined to present him with the "Critic's Circle Award" for his acting in a season he believed to be his best, which had driven him to attempt suicide. The critics are played by a distinguished cast of British actors, including Harry Andrews, Jack Hawkins, Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, Robert Morley and Dennis Price.

The manner of Lionheart's revenge on each critic is inspired by deaths of characters in the plays of Lionheart's last season of Shakespeare. The first victim is butchered by a group of tramps on the 15th of March, similar to the death of Julius Caesar. The next is speared and then dragged behind a horse, Hector's fate at the hands of Achilles in the Trojan war play, Troilus and Cressida. The Merchant of Venice is reworked so that Shylock gets his pound of flesh. Other murders include: a drowning in a butt of wine, based on the murder of the Duke of Clarence in Richard the Third; the wife of one critic awakens to find her husband decapitated, as Imogen awoke to find the headless body of Cloten in Cymbeline; quasi-cannibalism--the effeminate Meredith Merridew is tricked into eating his "babies" (his dogs) just as Queen Tamora was fed the flesh of her two sons, baked in a pie, in the climax of Titus Andronicus; one critic is tricked into believing his wife has been unfaithful, driving him to smother her in a jealous rage (like Othello); a female critic is electrocuted by hair curlers as Lionheart recites a passage in which Joan of Arc is burnt at the stake, "Spare for no fagots , let there be enough..." (from Henry VI, part 1). Many of the deaths are patterned to the weaknesses of the critics (e.g. the one drowned in wine is an alcoholic).

Somewhere in the middle of all this is an amusing "duel" scene, which features Lionheart and the chief critic Devlin bouncing around on trampolines while slashing at one another with rapiers, after the swordfight between Tybalt and Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. Lionheart uses this appearance to establish that he did indeed survive his suicide attempt (and thereby get his daughter released from police custody). Lionheart spares Devlin, who has recognized him, and who as head of the Critic's Circle, he intends to save for last anyway.

The audience and sometime-participants in the mayhem are methylated spirit (violet-colored wood alcohol) drinking tramps, who have saved Lionheart from drowning after his attempt at suicide by leaping into the river. As the cheap but toxic methylated spirits have damaged their senses, Lionheart finds them easy to manipulate to help him take his vengeance on the critics. After the principal series of murders, one of these meths-drinkers is disguised as Lionheart to lure the police away while the remaining critic Devlin is kidnapped. Police capture the drunk and using the lure of hard alcohol, get him to divulge the whereabouts of Lionheart.

The film ends following Lionheart's attempt to force the remaining critic, Peregrine Devlin, to present him with the "coveted" Critic's Circle Award for Best Actor. Taking the blinding of the Duke of Gloucester in King Lear as inspiration, Lionheart has arranged a Rube Goldberg contraption containing two red-hot daggers, which are poised to blind the critic should he fail to see things Lionheart's way. Unlike all of the other critics, however, Devlin stands his ground despite the menace and refuses to change his original choice for the award. The slow-moving contraption is released; however, police sirens are heard outside and the device becomes stuck temporarily. Lionheart sets fire to the theater to thwart the police, who save Devlin just in the nick of time. The group of tramps who helped Lionheart turn on him and one kills Edwina, hitting her over the head with the award. Lionheart retreats, carrying Edwina's body to the roof and delivering Lear's final monologue. At that point the roof caves in and he dies.

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