Popular reviews

• 

  Review by Ian West ★★★★½ 7

  Imagine the thrill of getting to kill your biggest critics. Now imagine that as Vincent Price.

  Forever my favorite genre actor—I’ve seen a solid 50+ of his movies and haven’t seen a bad performance yet. He’s so deliciously devious in this I can’t help but sit here and watch with a giant shit eating grin on my face.

• 

  Review by Channing Pomeroy ★★★★½ 3

  The genius of the film is recognizing that Shakespeare’s plays are stocked with heinous and gruesome scenes; however, they always took place off stage in Jacobean times and were stagey and anemically filmed on the screen prior to 1971 (Polanski’s Macbeth.) What would it be like if Hector was really dragged tied to the tail a horse, or Caesar slashed down by a mob of amateurs, or if Iago had extracted a pound of flesh from Antonio? It’s a testimony to the infinite fungibility of Shakespeare that he can be used as the basis for a thespian gore-fest.

  Vincent Price is at his absolute best as a crazed Prospero with a cast of drunken minion Calibans and a homicidal Cordelia,…

• 

  Review by Lou (rhymes with wow!) ★★★½ 11

  Man, I once wrote a bad review for one of Edward Lionheart's Shakespeare adaptations, and not long afterwards, he let a frickin' bear loose in my house! The only reason why I didn't end up like Antigonus in The Winter's Tale was because I started flailing my arms frantically and began yelling the lyrics to Natalie Imbruglia's Torn (don't judge me, I was in an emotionally vulnerable place). Before I knew it, the bear made its exit and I was safe again. It's a real miracle I didn't end up getting mauled.

  That's actually the whole reason why I stopped writing reviews for stage plays and started posting my write-ups for movies on letterboxd; this is a much less dangerous occupation.

  ---
  I watched this awesome movie with Michelle.

• 

  Review by Josh Gillam ★★★½

  Shakespearean actor Edward Lionheart (Vincent Price) exacts revenge on the critics who humiliated him, in this horror comedy co-starring Diana Rigg and Ian Hendry.

  It’s a lot of fun, with Price having a blast in the lead role, staying just the right side of over-the-top. The film was apparently a favourite of his, and it definitely gives him a fantastic showcase. He’s backed by a whole host of names including Robert Morley, Jack Hawkins and Coral Browne (who married Price the following year), all adding to the story.

  It’s very tongue-in-cheek, although some of the earlier scenes are actually quite creepy, but it never takes itself too seriously, which adds to the enjoyment. The film starts to run out of steam a bit in the middle, as the structure becomes repetitive, but more than makes up for it with a truly epic finale.

  Overall, Theatre of Blood is an entertaining, campy horror with a lot of style.

• 

  Review by Ian West ★★★★½ 1

  Happy birthday, Vincent ♥️

• 

  Review by Steve G 🇵🇸 🇾🇪 ★★★★★ 10

  The World Is More Than Enough 2: Back To The 30 Countries (19/30 - United Kingdom)

  One of the greatest British ensembles you will ever see in a film that starts with Michael Hordern warding off a gang of murderous squatters with his umbrella. I definitely picked the perfect film for the British leg of my May 30 Countries project.

  Vincent Price was perfect for this role as well, wasn't he? If you look at his horror film career prior to Theatre Of Blood, the type of performances he almost always turned in were always of the more theatrical style. To say the very least. It almost felt as though his whole career in those kinds of films were one…

• 

  Review by Ben Hibburd ★★★★ 2

  "Theatre of Blood" is an over-the-top campy (and I guess the closest term would be) slasher. The film stars the incomparable Vincent Price as a disgruntled Shakespearean actor Edward Lionheart. Expecting to receive an award from his final performance before retiring, he's snubbed by the critics and overlooked. After a failed suicide attempt he gets the help of some homeless people to exact his vengeance upon every critic that gave him a bad review. He does this by murdering said critic in the same manner as the main character did in the Shakespearean play he starred in, and received the bad review from.

  This is one hundred percent Vincent Price's film, he owns every second of screen time he's present…

• 

  Review by Helen_S ★★★½ 1

  If this film had ended around the 50 minute mark I woulda been on here telling you how I didn't remember it being this great, this twisted and creative in its kills and that I loved it. Alas after that it just became way too comical for my tastes. If it had been like that all the way through fair enough, but for the first half to be so wonderfully dark and disturbing and then to turn so far left field I just didn't fully appreciate it. Reminds me a little of how I feel with From Dusk Till Dawn.

• 

  Review by WraithApe ★★★★ 6

  Edward Lionheart is so far over the top, the top becomes invisible to the naked eye... just kidding, he's fantastic. I don't want him cutting off my limbs and throwing them into the fire. Vincent Price really is fantastic though, relishing the lead role of Lionheart; washed-up actor, presumed dead, returning from a watery grave to wreak revenge on the Critics Circle one delectable Shakespeare re-enactment at a time. Roughly 50% of The Bard's voluminous catalogue of quietus was due to common or garden stabbings but here they seek out some of the more esoteric methods of dispatch - drowning in a barrel of wine (clearly water, but it's thought that counts), flaying by horse-dragging and decapitation.

  Not only does…

• 

  Review by Sam G ★★★★ 9

  #SLASHERSATURDAY

  I was going through my list of unwatched Slashers and this just seemed like the right choice(🤷‍♂️🤞🏼). Especially with a premise like this and Vincent Price leading it. 

  That being said, the creative kills and Vincent Price are basically the highlight of this whole movie. He delivers a wonderfully nutty performance, with each of his characters getting better & better. Plus his twisted love for Shakespeare was a fun way to set things up. It’s campy and silly, yet overall still pretty dark. Nice editing, locations, and effects too. Oh and what an epic fencing duel lol. This was dope! 7.7/10🤺

• 

  Review by RanchoTuVu ★★★★½

  This film gave Vincent Price the opportunity to portray something that always seemed to lie at the heart of his performances, that vain, melodramatic, and possessed personality that's perennially on the brink of madness that he did so exceedingly well. Price takes on a Jim Jones like persona as spurned Shakespearian actor Edward Lionheart who leads a group of filthy London street vagrants who become his devoted followers and assist him in carrying out a string of Shakespeare inspired murders of the theater critics who wrote negative reviews of his work. Lionheart has started his own revolutionary underground theater company of blood with the purpose of getting even with each of the members of the stodgy and effete Theater Critics…

• 

  Review by John ★★★½

  Not a scary film but watching vincent price in different disguises, killing critics by recreating death scenes from Shakespeare plays, in a good, grim idea. Its also funny and campy.