Theater of Blood Movie Download

7 / 10

Sort of like “Dr. Phibes III”
In the early 1970s, Vincent Price made two Dr. Phibes films that the fans adored. Much of the reason these films did so well were the many very creative and rather cool murders Phibes committed in the film. Phibes, who seemed to have died in a traffic accident, is actually alive and with much style and panache kills those who he thinks were responsible for his wife’s death–using each of the ten plagues as a basis for the killings in the first film (though a few were mixed up–they should have read their Bible better). In the second, he just uses an amazing array of ways to kill. During this crusade, Phibes is accompanied by a beautiful mute girl and his weird clockwork automatons.

Here, in THEATER OF BLOOD, we have just about the exact same formula once again and the film was made just a year after the last Phibes film. Instead of revenge for his wife’s death, it’s revenge on theater critics who savaged his career–saying his Shakespeare performances were unoriginal and lacked creativity. So, after appearing to die, Price returns to kill off the critics one by one in the most devilish ways–all inspired by the plays of Shakespeare. And, instead of a mute girl and automatons, he’s accompanied by his daughter (Diana Rigg) and a group of wacky homeless freaks who are his audience for each murder. In addition, just as in THE ABOMNIBLE DR. PHIBES, one of his intended victims does escape at the end–so you can tell that the writers chose to stick closely to this successful formula.

So let’s talk about the film aesthetically as well as the “cool factor”. Since the film is very derivative, it certainly can’t be see as one of Price’s best works, though the acting is quite competent and Price gets a chance to really ham it up when he creates scenes from Shakespeare. The role must have been a lot of fun for him. Now as for the “cool factor”, this isn’t the greatest horror film I’ve seen, that’s for sure, and the ending was rather poor when Miss Rigg got inexplicably bonked on the head, but because of the creativity of the murders and how funny they were (yes, it’s sort of a dark comedy), this was definitely a film that kept my interest despite its cheesiness. I also liked seeing Rigg in drag–she looked a lot like a Muppet character (you know, that guy with glasses in the Muppet band).

So for fans of horror and or Vincent Price, then this is a wonderful film. The artsy people out there that like high-brow films will most likely hate this film. Depending on which group you most likely gravitate towards will determine what you think of the film. I really liked it.Read More