Maybe we can force some life into this one!
Theater of Blood (1973) possesses that odd quality that many British movies of the 60s and 70s are burdened with – a certain indefinable brittleness, which I find to be undiluted irritation. Much like Hitchcock’s similarly brittle Frenzy (1972), the characters show little growth, little nuance, but are defined by their grosser qualities; they do not exhibit any awareness of the dramatic tableaux, nor do they contain much beyond the lightest hint of positive character traits; they are self-absorbed, with the exception of the police, who appear to be overwhelmed chaps of dubious intelligence and insight.
The editing of the movies is erratic, spastic, even, amongst the vulnerable, given to inducing spasms of wild discomfort. Don’t get me wrong, a discomfortable movie that knows whyfore it evokes such a feeling may be of great value, but in combination of the self-absorbed, there is little to gain. The audio is erratic.
And so in Theatre of Blood, the central conceit, the murder of theater critics by a spurned leading man (Vincent Price) as guided by the occasional literary murder brought on by the dyspepsia of a certain Wm. Shakespeare, has its virtue let out much like the helium from a birthday balloon by the reckless child. For hours, he may have gamboled with this balloon, watching it hover at the ceiling, bounce obligingly at his least tug, before obsequiously finding its freedom, only to find the whine of a beebee, projected by the tyke’s gun, to be its final end; and so, this movie, too, might have presented us with hours of fun, both in the initial viewing, and then in the post-viewing meditation, as each turn of the plot was savored.
But no. (Yeah, this left me all cranky.) Even in the category of head cold movie, it is, with no possible defense, found wanting. Thrust this unwanted & unwatched back into the movie pantry, and select another.
Even if Vincent finds himself burning down a castle, yet again, at the end of the movie. The temerity is not earned.
