Shocktober 2025 - Theatre of Blood (1973)

“Only Lionheart would have the temerity to rewrite Shakespeare!” – Perry Devlin

Let’s put some historical context on this. In the late sixties and early seventies, Vincent Price made a series of films in England, three of these have broadly the same type of structure. The first two are The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972) both of which are part of this year’s Shocktober. This is the unrelated third, and in my opinion, Vincent Price’s best. If I had to choose one film that perfectly showcases Price’s talents and range – this is the one.

It's a horror comedy that works its way through a range of emotions. Within its hour and forty-five -minute run time, the audience is taken from some scenes that are truly disturbing, to some over the top horror via horror comedy. Price himself effortlessly goes from his usual scenery chewing glee, to sinister, to camp to pathos. No wonder then that of all his career, this is the film he named as his favourite. It also has been favourited by co-star Diana Rigg (But then, she had the misfortune to be cast in one of the best written Bond movies, but with the worst actor to be put in the tuxedo.)

So, what’s it all about? (For those of you who have somehow managed to miss this movie for the past 52 years.) Well, it all begins on the Ides of March, (March 15th) a date associated with misfortune and the date that according to Julius Cesar by Shakespeare, the date the Roman emperor was slain. George Maxwell (Michael Hordern) is a theatre critic and chairman of a housing association who is lured to an abandoned building by the Police, and there is butchered by a grotesque crowd of meths swilling homeless people in a disturbing echo of what happened to Cesar, as one of the policemen drops his disguise and revels himself to be Edward Lionheart (Vincent Price) quoting the critic’s cruel published barbs as Maxwell dies.

This is the beginning of Lionheart’s revenge tour with all the killings based, sometimes loosely based, on the Shakespearean plays performed by Lionheart in his final season.

The second victim is Hector Snipe (Dennis Price) at the business end of a spear then tied behind a horse and dragged through Maxwell’s funeral, Horace Sprout (Arthur Lowe) is decapitated in his sleep, Trevor Dickman (Harry Andrews) has his heart removed and sent as a pound of flesh to the remaining critics at one of their meetings. Oliver Larding (Robert Coote) a man fond of a glass or three of wine, is drowned in a barrel of it as happened to Richard III. (A part which Price performed in Universal Pictures’ Tower of London in 1939, where he was drowned by Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff.)

As effective a mix as these are so far, I prefer the next three slayings, these are the really memorable ones. I’m not counting Lionheart’s luring of head critic Peregrine Devlin (Ian Hendry) to a fencing gym and wounding him viciously, because Devlin is allowed to live – Lionheart wants him to suffer some more. I’m talking about these which Price performs with manic glee, clearly enjoying the hell out of this movie. Solomon Psaltery (Jack Hawkins) is obsessively jealous of anyone who goes near his wife Maisie (Diana Dors) so Devlin disguises himself as a visiting masseur and sets Psaltery to come home while Maisie is having a massage, the sounds leading the husband to believe she’s having an affair. In an apocalyptic rage, he murders his wife there and then, while Lionheart escapes quietly and easily. Psaltery doesn’t die as such, but he won’t leave prison alive so he’s as good as dead. Chloe Moon (Coral Browne) has a private hair appointment, but her usual hairdresser isn’t available, enter the campy and flamboyant “Butch” – her new hairdresser, in reality, Price in an outrageous Afro wig and sunglasses, pouting lines like; “Hullo, I'm Butch. Hey, dishy, dishy hair. Can't wait to get my hands on it.” Miss Moon meets her end electrocuted under a hairdryer, burnt like Joan of Arc. Then there’s the flamboyant Meredith Merridew (Robert Morley) a fastidious gourmand who has his beloved pet poodles force fed to him in a pie until he chokes.

All through this killing spree, Lionheart is aided by his daughter Edwina (Diana Rigg) who misdirects the hapless police men played by Milo O’Shea and Eric Sykes, and the crowd of dispossessed homeless people, actually credited as “Meths Drinkers”- these actors even had their own choreographer.

But a horror film killing spree needs a good motive, otherwise it falls flat, does it not? Edward Lionheart was a veteran Shakespearean actor, and put on a season of plays some years previously. The members of the critics’ circle were their usual sneering, superior, entitled selves and publicly mocked and ridiculed Lionheart, culminating in refusing him an award, driving him to suicide. Broken, Lionheart jumped into the Thames but was discovered on the cusp of death by the Meths Drinkers, who took him in and looked after him, eventually becoming his audience and accomplices as he moved his base of operations into a deserted theatre.

There’s only Deviln left, and he is strapped to a chair with a device that sends two red hot blades moving inexorably toward his eyes, until the intervention of the police. But their intervention causes the blades to veer in the direction of some flammable material setting the whole place on fire. In the confusion, one of the Meths Drinkers hits Edwina on the head with a critics’ trophy, killing her. In despair, Lionheart carries her body to the roof.

He can’t be rescued, the roof caves in and he plummets to a flaming doom, still quoting Shakespeare.

If you only ever watch one Vincent Price movie, don’t even hesitate – make it this one.