All right, another Vincent Price movie! It’s like every time I see the guy in a flick I like him more and more. This time, Price stars as a Shakespearean actor out for revenge in THEATRE OF BLOOD.
Price considers himself the greatest actor of his generation, but unfortunately none of the critics in London agree with him. After he’s deprived a prestigious award, Price seemingly commits suicide. A year later, the critics who kept the prize from him and plagued him throughout his career start showing up dead, one by one, each in a murder scenario inspired by the wide variety of creative deaths featured in Shakespeare’s plays.
Ian Hendry plays the most level-headed of the critics who starts to put the puzzle together, and Diana Rigg is on hand as Price’s devoted daughter. How devoted is she, you ask? Well, I can’t tell you, you have to watch the movie to find out.
THEATRE OF BLOOD is as funny as it is tragic with plenty of black comedy lightening up the otherwise dreary business of gory revenge. Price can play anything – most of his Shakespeare readings are appropriately over the top, his comic timing is dead-on and everyone knows he can be creepy. But there is one moment, in particular, where the proceedings are elevated from the run of the mill to the sublime, as Price delivers Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” speech before plummeting off of a balcony and into the Thames.
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