Theatre of Blood.

Review #2116: Theatre of Blood.

Cast: 

Vincent Price (Edward Lionheart), Diana Rigg (Edwina Lionheart), Ian Hendry (Peregrine Devlin), Harry Andrews (Trevor Dickman), Robert Coote (Oliver Larding), Michael Hordern (George Maxwell), Robert Morley (Meredith Merridew), Coral Browne (Chloe Moon), Jack Hawkins (Solomon Psaltery), Arthur Lowe (Horace Sprout), Dennis Price (Hector Snipe), Milo O'Shea (Inspector Boot), Eric Sykes (Sgt. Dogge), and Diana Dors (Maisie Psaltery) Directed by Douglas Hickox.

Review: 

"I think of myself as an interpretive director. I'm a narrative director, basically. An audience should become totally involved in the film, the actors and the story. They shouldn't be aware of the director at all or of how things are done."

I'm sure you are familiar with The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) or its sequel. That film was directed by Robert Fuest with Vincent Price as the star that involved deaths with a bit of a theme to them (mostly in the original, which honed familiarity to the plagues). Fuest was actually asked about doing this film but declined by saying he didn't want to be "the guy who makes Vincent Price theme killing movies" (irony, as Fuest basically doomed his career by directing The Devil's Rain two years later). Instead, the film was directed by Douglas Hickox. He had directed a variety of musical shorts and commercials before becoming a feature director at the age of 41 in 1970. He directed a handful of films that had name actors star, whether that involved John Wayne in Brannigan (1975) or Burt Lancaster in Zulu Dawn (1979) to go with a few television shows before he died in 1988. Stanley Mann and John Kohn came up with the idea for the film before Anthony Greville-Bell wrote the screenplay. Apparently, Price later listed the film as one of his favorites he ever made. The theme for this film, if you didn't already guess, involves an actor-turned-killer going around reenacting the words of William Shakespeare while trying to get revenge of a considerable group of critics that apparently denied him the honor he most wanted as an actor to the point where it looked like he killed himself years before; this all starts with a man getting stabbed by a mob of people...on March 15, the Ides of March, the same day that Julius Caesar was murdered (as also covered in the Shakespeare play of the same name). As probably guessed, the film was a British production done on location, complete with filming a decent chunk at the Putney Hippodrome Theatre (auditorium, stage area, exterior) in the last significant use of the building before it was demolished in 1975.

Now this is one that seems practically made for folks like me, or at the very least people who adore Vincent Price in his element. How could you resist the urge for a film that has him act out the words of William Shakespeare going around trying to do creative death sequences? It manages to be better than both Phibes films when it comes to great theatricality in the face of amusing horror, and I would actually argue that it is Price at his best possible moment as an actor. The fact that the film also happens to contain a few other noted names in British cinema also helps make for a diverting film of pathos and humor in the best way. The 104-minute runtime is paced pretty well when it comes to Price and the others around him, mostly because it goes from the jump on ideas before eventually settling to some exposition and then its fiery climax. Price moves along from scene to scene by also getting to do a bit of dress up, which at one point sees him act as a hairdresser. This is the kind of material he was born to play in terms of horrific charm that is more than just scene-chewery but flat-out dominance of composed elegance. He had saved a whole bunch of films before from just being blank mediocrities or just fine B-films (at least until his roles became a bit slower by the mid-1970s), here is one just for him to hold in lunacy. Of course, folks like Rigg do pretty well too, since she plays support in derangement for a semi-significant part that is fairly fun as well. Hendry is the leader among the folks trying to avoid the ax, which mostly involves tempered snobbery that lends interest for the ones who are less fortunate (such as Morley, who gets to be a bit flamboyant right before having to realize that he is being fed pies...made from his dogs), while O'Shea plays the resident authority figure trying to make head or tails of it.  The buildup for the climax does slow the film down a bit when it comes to some oddly included exposition (hey, a man looks like he jumped into the Thames, who needs explanation?), but at least the ending seems just about on point for one more enduring line about critics and the nature of performances. This was a film released in the midst of a decade that saw horror perhaps shift a bit grislier away from the stuff that made Price an attraction, but everything still mostly clicks here for enjoyment that has also not aged after a half-century because of its entertaining composure and timing that is held in check by one really damn fun actor for all it is worth. It isn't a perfect film, but it probably is up there as one of Price's best showcases, and that is a really good thing to say from a horror perspective.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

Next: Cabin Fever.

The Horror of Frankenstein.

Review #2107: The Horror of Frankenstein.

Cast: 

Ralph Bates (Baron Victor Frankenstein), Kate O'Mara (Alys), Veronica Carlson (Elizabeth Heiss), Dennis Price (the Graverobber), Jon Finch (Lieutenant Henry Becker), Bernard Archard (Professor Heiss), Graham James (Wilhelm Kassner), James Hayter (Bailiff), Joan Rice (the Graverobber's Wife), and David Prowse (The Monster) Produced and Directed by Jimmy Sangster.

Review: 

...I'm sure you remember the Frankenstein series as set by Hammer. It had started with The Curse of Frankenstein in 1957 as directed by Terence Fisher with Jimmy Sangster (a production manager who did not particularly like working as one and had never thought about being a writer before, well, becoming one with his debut X the Unknown from the previous year) providing the script. A sequel followed one year later with Revenge (which featured Fisher as director and Sangster as writer) before the 1960s saw three further films in The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969). All of those films starred Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein with their own distinct levels of villainy to the character, whether that involved using hypnotists to bring back the monster, soul catching of recently deceased people, or trying to take advantage of the secrets of an insane man that sees the doctor being carried into a burning building (and, for some sick reason by a producer, a rape scene). I think you can see where the series felt the need to do something a bit familiar but with a "younger push" with Ralph Bates instead of Peter Cushing. This was the first film Sangster directed and one of just three in total, with the others being Lust for a Vampire (1971) and Fear in the Night (1972). Sangster was first approached to do rewrites on a script that had been done by Jeremy Burnham, an actor-turned-writer (in his first and only script for films). Apparently, Sangster was not particularly interested in what seemed like to just be a remake of his 1957 script until Hammer offered him a deal to do a re-write along with produce and direct the film, which opened the door for him to inject a good deal of dark comedy in it. Hammer would make one further film involving Frankenstein (with Cushing returning) in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974).

The film is okay in some respects, but you can really see the seams and limits of where the series could go in the eyes of Hammer. It is a bit of light fun, but one already had a pretty good Frankenstein film three years before that, one a couple years before that, and so on. It is the law of diminishing returns with this film, which isn't nearly as compelling with its lead actor despite the best efforts to do so to go with a middling climax that doesn't have the energy or the timing to make it matter for anything. Bates had his first prominent film role with Taste the Blood of Dracula, released just a few months earlier in 1970, and he would appear in various other Hammer productions the following year in Lust for a Vampire and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. He does make a curious Frankenstein here and there, but the script seemingly forgets whether to treat him as a heel that one awaits to see their comeuppance or a tragic figure, which makes for a curious observation that deserved better. He seems ripe for either a really deranged role or something with a semblance of interesting dignity, and it is a shame he never became the successor actor that Hammer would probably have preferred to see in the 1970s when the company was in need of something to counter the diminishing interest of American funding. His best sequence might be the one where he is confronted with someone who doesn't want to go through with retrieving body parts, and he pretends to go along with quitting only to almost immediately electrocute them without saying a word. Carlson was actually in the last Frankenstein film, but she isn't exactly given that much to do that proves interesting, which is amusing when the only other feminine contrast is O'Mara that plays it with the hinges of a cheesy soap opera. Price is at least semi-funny when it comes to graverobbing for those small moments. In general, though, the movie lacks a true center when it comes to a lack of things for the creature (as portrayed by Prowse, who returned for the aforementioned next Frankenstein film) to really do, which is quite unfortunate. Like the first film, the monster is dissolved in acid, albeit without the plot device of it being told as a long flashback but because a kid haphazardly presses something to have it happen (in theory it would set up a sequel, but, well, these films only loosely follow any sort of rules anyway). In the end, neither of Hammer's attempts at reinventing Dracula or Frankenstein for 1970 are particularly any good, but those familiar with the series (whether as an admirer or as a completionist) will surely stick through with it and let it pass at least once without rolling their eyes too many times.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

A Canterbury Tale.

Review #2062: A Canterbury Tale.

Cast: 

Eric Portman (Thomas Colpeper), John Sweet (Acting Sgt. Bob Johnson), Dennis Price (Sgt Peter Gibbs), Sheila Sim (Alison Smith), Charles Hawtrey (Thomas Duckett), Esmond Knight (Narrator/Seven-Sisters Soldier/Village Idiot), George Merritt (Ned Horton), Edward Rigby (Jim Horton), Hay Petrie (Woodcock), Freda Jackson (Mrs Prudence Honeywood), Eliot Makeham (Church Organist), and Betty Jardine (Fee Baker) Directed, Written, and Produced by Michael Powell (#400 - The Thief of Bagdad and #1367 - A Matter of Life and Death) and Emeric Pressburger (#1367)

Review: 

A Canterbury Tale was the seventh feature film made under the company of The Archers, who I'm sure you remember is the combination of two worthy talents in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger that had started collaborating with each other that took place mostly in the 1940s, with both of them first being credited as director with One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942), after Pressburger had first written for a number of previous Powell productions. They had followed that up with The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), which is often called one of the best British films made. Among the first couple of films by the two, this one was known as being just modestly successful with audiences (the next three years after 1944 were as follows: I Know Where I'm Going!, A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus). Title or not, the film did accomplish one thing more than anything else in reminding me of the varied experience I had in having to talk about the Canterbury Tales in college. If you remember, those were a collection of tales written by Geoffrey Chaucer in the late 14th century that were presented as being told by a group of pilgrims travelling from London to Canterbury on their way to a shrine. The prologue of the tales even is read for the opening of the film right before one cuts from a falcon right to a spitfire. The American release apparently had 20 minutes (of a two-hour feature) cut while including narration by Raymond Massey alongside sequences with Kim Hunter. Of course, some of the tales I remember were at least amusing such as the Miller's Tale (which involves the backside), but I'm sure you know that when it comes to films of the countryside, sometimes the past really does haunt the present.

It is a three-pronged story within people of the countryside that involves folks trying to figure out just who is spraying glue on the hair of women that isn't really a mystery or really any sort of genre film. One does, however, think more of the English landscape rather than any sort of mystery about glue or where the story really will go, which is likely a testament to Erwin Hillier and his cinematography (supposedly the only thing that bugged Powell about his cinematographer was an obsession for clouds to break up a clear sky in order to start shooting). The black-and-white photography (done because of war shortages) is quite engaging to look at when it comes to this pilgrimage of ordinary folks that involve two sergeants and a member of the Women's Land Army. In their trip of circumstance and curiosity is figuring out what really matters most when looking upon the countryside in a time of need: clarity. Portman is the uniting force between the three pilgrims in mysterious graciousness that (culprit or not) reminds one of what really matters when it comes to knowledge of history and people in the countryside. Each of the key three travelers in Sweet, Sim, and Price represent the weariness that comes with travelers that perhaps need reminding of life in the countryside rather than just passing through life. Sweet was actually not an actor but instead a sergeant in the U.S. Army during the ongoing war, for which he was selected over the original idea of Burgess Meredith (who instead served as script editor). While he did try his hand at acting with the theater after the war, Sweet eventually went back to his real passion in teaching (while donating his $2,000 salary for the film to the NAACP). As such, what comes out is what you would expect for a one-time actor in terms of stiff curiosity that is about on par for what the film is asking for anyway. This proves about right for Sim and Price (each making their film debuts) when it comes to building these people up for their eventual fate in warmth, mostly for the latter, since the sequence at the Canterbury Cathedral involving the organ is probably the highlight to listen and view to. From the battle of kids playing pretend, I'm sure you can tell that this is a local passion project. Powell was from Kent, England (specifically the village of Bekesbourne), and it is evident that he made a passion project that loves the region, even if he couldn't quite shoot in the famous Canterbury Cathedral (due to bombings and preparations made in reaction to it that saw the stained-glass windows be removed), which therefore required a mix of set-work and miniature replicas. As a whole, its attempt at morale boosting may have rung a bit hollow when it first came out, but the film has endured nonetheless because of its spirit for the countryside that makes for an intimate accomplishment.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.