When I say “we saw Vincent Price’s Madhouse (1974)”, I mean this in a very special way. Vincent plays a retired horror movie star, known for his portrayals of Dr. Death, broken by the horrible fate of his fiancee. A decade later, he’s enticed out of retirement, but as he begins to work on a TV version of the movie series, people begin dying – all in the style of the deaths of the previous Dr. Death movies. All of this is supported by outtakes – a restrained number – from Price’s real movies.
And so this really is Vincent Price’s Madhouse.
It’s an interesting premise for a movie, but, as noted for other movies of the era, it suffers from the 1970s British movies malady – a certain brittleness, brought on in this case by characters who might have been sympathetic, but are not. Some are merely neutral, with no effort to humanize them, while others are faintly repugnant. Even Vincent’s character fades a little towards ineffectuality, even a note of pathetic failure. The plot jumps from scene to scene, some of which seem gratuitous – the blackmailing couple, for instance, are both unbelievable and disposed of with no consideration of consequence or sentiment. While the ending has a certain element of fun in its breaking of yet another wall, frankly, questions of fantasy and reality are not brought to mind, due to the mostly insipid characters and a basic failure to care for the fates of those induced to act in this, ummmm, madhouse.
And Peter Cushing is way shorter than Vincent Price. I’m just saying there’s a monstrous plot hole there.
