 Welcome to another episode of Frightfully Forgotten Horror Movies, but before we get started, what are we drinking? Today we are drinking Tommy Doyle's Crushed Pumpkin Ale. Boogie Man, Boogie Man! Today we're going to bring to you 1973's Theatre of Blood. Directed by Douglas Hickox. And the movie stars the master Vincent Price. Diana Rigg is in this, she sadly just passed away, but she was in the Avengers as Immapio. A Bond Girl in Under Majesty's Secret Service. That's right. Ian Hendry is in this, he's another Avengers guy. Alumni. Yeah, he was in a very notable horror movie which we had covered, Tales from the Crypt. The movie starts off with George Maxwell getting a phone call. The cops on the other end saying there's a bunch of squatters at one of your pieces of property. A couple of policemen together, lo and behold he comes in, there's all these bums, he's drunk, he's drinking, and some of them are like kind of having sex. And they start stabbing the hell out of him. The policeman isn't doing nothing and takes off his helmet. I thought you were dead. I am well. You are dead. Starts reciting all this Shakespeare. A friend of Maxwell, Devlin, is brought in to identify the body. Devlin notices a theater poster, Edward Lionheart here, yeah I had to give him a lot of bad reviews over the years, but sadly he's passed away since. Then it comes to another theater critic, Hector Snipe being led to this abandoned theater saying that Edward Lionheart's still alive. Oh, Lionheart's still alive? He wants to see you, so he gets brought into this theater and... I thought the theater burned down. Snipe is sat down and he's at this book with all these bad reviews that he has written. Lionheart shows up and starts reciting all this Shakespeare again. And then all these bums, they take the guy and they hold him up and pails him right through the chest with his big spear. It cuts to the guy's funeral and Lionheart is there in disguise again as a grave digger. No, not only did he kill the guy, he's also fucking putting him in the ground and reciting Shakespeare. And suddenly they hear this kind of horse coming up and then lo and behold, the guy who they just buried is tied to this Horus Sprout trying to sleep with his wife in bed and, oh, you're snoring. Oh, okay, so he rolls over. You see Vincent Price's character with an assistant, they come in, stabs Horus, puts him to sleep, saw, this just starts to get like cut in the fucking guy's head off. You're snoring again. Hypodermic, stabs her in the ass. It's not snoring, it's sighing. The maid comes into the room, she passes out, then she wakes up and the head's there, then she passes out again. One of the lead detectives and Devlin, mostly Devlin, realizes that these kills are happening according to the deaths that occur in some of Shakespeare's plays. Get introduced to Trevor Dickman, kind of sitting outside having a brandy. And Diana Riggs' character, Edwina, struts up with her go-go boots and a short skirt and everything. She lures Trevor to an abandoned theater where he's supposed to be involved in this new style of theater acting where he's supposed to participate. Sure he participates, he gets his fucking heart cut out and put on the scale. Devlin realizes at this point that all of these deaths are centered around all of the plays that Lionheart did, like in one circuit. And all the critics that are kicking the bucket here are ones that gave Lionheart bad reviews. It cuts to a flashback where all these fucking critics are sitting around, for Lionheart comes in and he's not the recipient of the award that he feels he should have got. So if you want to find out what happens with Edwina and Edward and Devlin, keep watching Theater of Blood. The biggest thing that sets this movie apart from a lot of others are the kills. And how fun and extravagant and over the top they are. Slashers in the 80s are known for being like over the top and silly and fun with the kills. It's kind of really ahead of it's time of being like, yeah go get em, I want to see the next guy bite the bullet. The barbershop one is really good and funny. My name is Butch. Oh don't worry about it, come on baby. He's not trying to be like hip and with it. And he puts that woman in that chair with that hair dryer, big dial and like dials it in and just like shoots her. There's another really good kill where he actually doesn't do the killing. Massaging this woman and the husband comes home and hears all this moaning and Oh yeah, oh that's the right spot. The bed's all squeaky. He thinks that his wife is cheating on him and he barges in and starts like pushes Vincent Price aside and starts choking the wife to death and Vincent Price walks away and tells the cop, oh I think he's killing his wife over there. Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, and that's great. And they arrest the guy and yeah, he doesn't kill him but he goes to jail for life. So in essence, his life is over. Then there's the guy with the dogs. Oh, where are my little babies? My doggy woggies. It's actually quite elaborate. Like he creates like this whole sort of TV food show. Fake TV. And they start feeding him like a baked pie and it turns out that it's fucking dogs in the pie that they're feeding him. And then they kill him by like putting this funnel in his face and like suffocating him by shoving all this dog meat down his throat in the shovel. In fact, they're all based off of a Shakespearean play. It just all rounds itself out and ties in together so well. Movies before this were more story based too, right? And you'd have a kill here and there and they wouldn't be anywhere near as gory as this too. Or as plentiful. The body count in this film is super high. There's a really good sort of backstory to the movie and the movie itself, right? The main plot. The motive, you know. Who doesn't want to fucking kill off a critic that has written something bad about you in the press? Like anyone who's done anything artistic and has been critiqued in a poor way can live vicariously through this movie like fuck you. Exactly, yeah. The critics too, right? You know, they're out of touch. They're old. They're stuffy. They're stuck up. They just hate them. Yeah, you do, yeah. It also deals with the idea of like how a bad review or a bad critique can affect a person or an actor or an artist. Like in this case, like poor Lionheart, he's driven to suicide by bad reviews. It's his whole life, right? It's his career. It's what he loves to do. And then it's shit on. You're told you're no good. Yeah, so it's pretty deep in that way. I think a lot of people could relate to that. Right. Also could easily be missed though too because there's that comedic side to this movie. This movie is probably more comedy than it is horror. It's like a comedy disguised as a horror. Yeah, for sure. Theater of Blood sounds like a great horror movie. But in fact, this is a great horror comedy. Right. And Vincent Price in this is so good. He was always a fan of Shakespeare. So this movie apparently gave him a chance to finally not do a whole play but recite some Shakespeare and the way he would do it if he was on stage. Breath of Fresh Air I think to see Vincent Price doing this role. Not too many people I could see doing his part in this. No. Like then pull off the comedy the way he did. It kind of reminds me of like a bit of a Peter Sellers performance. A lot of action in this movie too. You know like there's a really fun fencing scene. And it's super not them. Which is a good you know fencing is a great way to disguise the fact it's not the actors. Because they got the helmet on. They're on the trampoline and fencing on the trampoline. They're all flipping around and everything. And they're both old. Yeah, they could never pull it off for real. So if you're in the mood for like a real fun. 70's Slasher. Yeah 70's Slasher really way ahead of its time. And want to see Vincent Price out of his element doing something really fun and different. You definitely have to check out Theater of Blood. It's probably one of the better horror comedies. And until then keep drinking.