Theater of Blood
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Movie Reviews of Theater of Blood
Movie Review: Picture Quality Comment
Summary: 3 Stars
Many dvds these days are digitally remastered, so that picture quality is clean, sharp, pristine. This isn't one of them. The pictuire quality here is rather poor. Unusual as many other Midnight Movie prints are excellent.
Plus the ratio is NOT 1.66 as stated on the box. It is 14x9, with black borders; or, with x zoom to fill the screen, the picture is softened and some picture is lost.
Movie Review: Not quite a classic
Summary: 2 Stars
Let's face it, some of these old Vincent Price movies are fantastic (especially his work with Roger Corman), but does that make any Vincent Price horror a classic? No. This was the mid-1970's, by which time the great B-movie tradition of Hammer Horror /Roger Corman /etc. was in its death throws (see 'The Beast Must Die' for a similar case of a film's atmosphere being destroyed by 1970's filming styles). I think for example that it would take superhuman forgiveness to rate the Dr Phibes movies as actually good, rather than just dated and bizarre. They're funny to recall, but mind-bogglingly boring to wach. Although Theatre of Blood is not nearly as slow paced and cheesy, it suffers from a lack of authenticity (and creativeness) that B-rated sets and actors created in so many movies of the '50's and '60's. The acting here no longer has that 'B-rated OTT' quality (viz House of Usher), and is not yet capable of being either genuinely frighening (Texas Chainsaw Massacre of the same year), or even having the tongue in cheek self-mocking humour that so many horror films would subsequently contain. Slaughterhouse (1987) comes to mind, though the genre is full of examples of this which date back to the late '70's. This movie is therefore somewhere between the object of a satire and the satire itself, and doesn't have the real charm of either.
Robert Morley, who is generally good for a camped up laugh, seems uncomfortable playing the pink-shirted bepoodled (and coiffured) 'bachelor' role here, and basically throws the role away. Diana Rigg does the same. Price seems to enjoy the script, and in fact delivers a very touching death scene in front of his critics. His performance (those familiar with the movie will see the irony of criticising his performance!) is camp but lacks the true feeling of stature which made him excellent in so many other projects (e.g. in Tales of Terror).
Like Dr. Phibes, this film has a faded charm and a strong sense of the typical gloomy '70's resignation: hippy clothes and sad faces. If you like that sort of morbid lifelessness, or if you'll buy absolutely anything with Vincent Price in it, then you'll probably like this film. It does not, however, have much of the charm of those 'great old movies' from a little earlier on that are so fun to watch, and which are so atmospheric.
Still, it's a clever idea, a good script for what it is, and is interesting to watch - once.
The DVD transfer is fine, except for the sound, which is rather faint, making it hard to hear voices a lot of the time.
I don't mind that I bought it, but I'd be surprised if I ever watched it from start to finish again.
Movie Review: stupid
Summary: 1 Stars
I love Vincent Price and have many of his movies but this one I wish I had not bought. It is really stupid. It was one of his later movies that he probably made just to have work .