Product Description

Theater of BloodVincent Price delivers a thrilling "tour-de-force" (Variety) performance as a small-time actor plotting big-time revenge in inventively Shakespearean ways! Boasting a topnotch supporting cast, this dramatically "delicious concoction" (New York) delivers an "equal mixture of horror, comedy and Shakepeare [that'll] please just about everyone ? critics included" (Boxoffice) and proves that all the world really is a stage for MURDER!MadhouseMasters of macabre Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Robert Quarry give performances to die for in this "diverting little chiller" (Boxoffice)! When horror star Paul Toombes' fiancée is brutally killed, he loses more than this job he loses his mind. But twelve years later, when he returns to TV ? only to discover a fresh batch of corpses ? Paul finally begins to understand that melodrama can be murder on your career!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13677 in DVD
• Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
• Released on: 2005-02-15
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English, French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 195 minutes

Amazon.com
If your sense of humor is even moderately twisted, you'll savor Theatre of Blood, a tasty course of well-cooked ham. Directed with delectable British wit by Douglas Hickox, the comedy is decidedly dark when Vincent Price--as effete has-been thespian Richard Lionheart--wreaks poetic justice upon the snobby critics who panned his performances and drove him to a failed attempt at suicide. Reciting his poor reviews and staging murders inspired by Shakespearean tragedies, the actor and his Dickensian coterie of accomplices (including Diane Rigg, sexy as ever) dispatch their victims with shocking ingenuity, and by the time Lionheart reenacts Titus Andronicus by gorging one dog-loving critic (the hilariously poofy Robert Morley) on toy-poodle stew, Theatre of Blood reaches giddy heights of outrageous vengeance. It's all in good fun, of course, and the film's esteemed British cast plays it to the hilt, none better than Price in one of his most entertaining roles. --Jeff Shannon

Madhouse doesn't skimp on the horror-movie trimmings: Vincent Price in his campy post-Poe era, a crazy woman kept in the basement, the murder of an ex-porn star, and… Peter Cushing. All of which turns out to be barely tolerable as drive-in fodder, for this is the least of Price's run of revenge movies in the early Seventies. He plays an actor identified with his horror-movie roles (famed for playing "Dr. Death"), who attempts a comeback after a long layoff. Alas, his instability affects the production--or something does, not that you'll likely care about the explanation. Cushing has a collection of Price's old AIP movies to sit around and watch, and Adrienne Corri is the lady in the basement. Ham-handedly directed and confusingly plotted, this one's for diehard Price fans only. And their reward comes at the end, when the actor can be heard crooning "When Day Is Done" over the end credits. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

2 More Vincent Classics For The Price of 1!
I remember seeing THEATRE OF BLOOD back in 1992 on Halloween of all days. I saw the second half of it and it pretty much disturbed me and haunted my nightmares. But last night I bought this new DVD (with MADHOUSE on the other side) and watched it. And now I find it to be alternately shocking and side-splittingly funny! As for MADHOUSE, I only saw half of it but so far I am impressed.

THEATRE OF BLOOD is the ultimate wish-fulfillment movie for anybody in the movie industry or theatre that has ever had scathing reviews levied against them. Edward Lionheart is a Shakespearian actor who employs death scenes from the Bard in his vengeance against nine critics who have been really harsh on him to say the least. This movie is DR. PHIBES with a theatrical element in lieu of the Biblical plague thing, but on its own, it's very good. The highlight is the salon electricution, especially seeing Price disguised as Butch! The great music score is a precursor to what Pino Donaggio would do for Brian DePalma! And there's a great punchline!

MADHOUSE has Price as a horror movie actor doing a TV movie and getting stuck in the middle of a killing spree. Plus, there's Count Yorga as a producer and Peter Cushing as a director! A reunion from DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN! The murders are inventive and predate FRIDAY THE 13TH and its ilk. And another great music score punctuates the prodeedings. This is what makes Best Buy so awesome (and makes me happy that it finally came to Dover); they work with MGM to provide double the pleasure in horror movies!

Grossly under rated Price vehicle!
Ahh, Vincent Price the world would have been boring without his droll delivery. Without wearing any make up, Price became a horror icon in the 60's and 70's while appearing in "The Tingler", "The Last Man on Earth", "The Mask of the Red Death" and the "Dr Phibes" films. "Theater of Blood" the first film in this twofer from MGM is one of Price's finest 70's horror films. Price plays Lionheart a Shakespearean actor denied a major critics award out of spite who commits suicide. Or did he? Two years later on the anniversary of Lionheart's death the critics that snubbed him begin to die like the characters from the plays that Lionheart was performing prior to his death. Featuring British vets Jack Hawkins, Arthur Lowe and the lovely Diana Rigg as Lionheart's daughter, "Theater of Blood" ranks up there with the witty "Dr. Phibes" films one of Price's later films.

One of the finest moments is a fencing scene where the two opponents face off on the floor, on a trampoline and various gym equipment. It's quite well staged and entertaining.

"Madhouse" the flipside of this twofer is a lesser film but features a stellar cast. The predictable plot focuses on an actor Paul Toombes (Price again naturally) who returns to acting after suffering a nervous breakdown as a result of his the murder of his fiance. Twelve years have passed and now Toombes returns to acting only to find that those around him are now being murdered! Toombes wonders if he is the cause of it all or if someone is out to incriminate him. The marvelous cast of Price, Peter Cushing ("Horror of Dracula", "Curse of Frankenstein", "Star Wars", "She") Robert Quarry ("Count Yorga Vampire", "Dr. Phibes Rises Again")makes the film memorable. Director James Clark (editor of "Vera Drake", "Copycat", "The World is Not Enough")does a stylish job with the predictable screenplay by Ken Levison and Greg Morrison. It's a blast to see Cushing, Price and Quarry together (along with archieval footage of Boris Karloff). A pity there was no way to fit Christopher Lee into the mix (he was busy shooting "The Man with the Golden Gun" and "The Wicker Man").

As usual the transfer look pretty good given the age of the negatives although "Theater of Blood" looks a bit washed out. Then again, it's always looked like that as long as I can remember. A pity that Clark wasn't asked to do a commentary track. It's one of only three or four movies he directed. The late Hickox who directed "Theater of Blood" primarily directed mini-series for TV after the film. The first film deserves a strong four stars while "Madhouse" deserves 2 1/2 for effort and performances. Theatrical trailers for both films are included.

Vincent Price's magnum opus plus one
If "Theatre of Blood" were the only film on this DVD it would still be worth the price. Make that the Price. Made more than a decade before the legendary actor's graceful last act, which began with "The Whales of August" and culminated in "Edward Scissorhands," this was by far Vincent Price's best film. Playing the demented (and supposedly dead) dreadful classical actor Edward Lionheart, Price gets a chance to strut his stuff like never before in a host of Shakespearean snippets (and his Shylock and Richard III are gems). In addition, he gets to gruesomely murder the critics who have assailed him over the years -- dead critics...what's not to love? Even more fun is the fact that the smarmy critics are played by a host of some of the best supporting actors Britain then had to offer.

"Madhouse," made only a year later, doesn't exactly try to copy the format of "Theatre of Blood," but it has certain elements of it in its story of horror film actor Paul Toombes (Price) who may or may not delve too deeply into his signature character "Dr. Death" and kill young women. "Madhouse" is basically a murder mystery disguised as a horror film, and not a bad one, but it suffers from a few too many ingredients. The character of Dr. Death (Price in rather simple, but very effective skull-face makeup) is clearly patterned after "Dr. Phibes," the two-film series that had been hugely successful a few years earlier, while Paul Toombes (who is nothing like the character from the source novel, "Devilday," by Angus Hall) is slightly reminiscent of the character Jon Pertwee played in "The House That Dripped Blood" -- a role for which Price had been sought. In structure, the film is also a bit reminiscent of the 1969 oddball film "Scream and Scream Again," which involed a serial killer stalking young girls in London, and there is a very peculiar subplot with Adrienne Corri as a burn-scarred and crazy former actress hiding in Peter Cushing's cellar, which seems like something out of a mid-1960s Italian horror film. It's quite a stew. Where the picture really drops the ball, though, is as a conscious effort to do for Price what Peter Bogdanovich's "Targets" did for Boris Karloff: present him with a canny career summation role in which he more or less plays himself. Price does more or less play himself -- an affable, good natured man who has managed to retain his professional integrity even after years of questionable films, which he gamely continues to make even as he believes himself to be unfairly exploited -- but the use of old film clips from past AIP epics (including "House of Usher," "Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Raven") does not have the resonance that "Targets"' employment of old clips from "The Terror" did. A prolonged sequence of Toombes appearing on Michael Parkinson's chat show is more dull than illuminating. "Madhouse" does at least offer Peter Cushing a decent role, after years of wasteful cameos in AIP's British productions, and a good one for Robert Quarry, who AIP was then grooming as a horror man for the 70s, as a shady producer. Director Jim Clark stages some very effective, atmospheric scenes of Dr. Death stalking the countryside, but it must be said that the identity of the killer is not a big shock to anyone paying attention. "Madhouse" was not widely released in the US and for years was something of an "unknown" Price movie, which makes its availability doubly attractive. It's no "Theatre of Blood," but it's fun.