Although Theater of Blood is not so much a horror film as a suspense/black comedy, it keeps getting cited in horror film references. This is probably due to the presence of Vincent Price. If Theater of Blood had nothing else going for it, Price's performance alone would make it worthwhile.
But Theater of Blood also has ... blood. Blood aplenty. And class, and style, and pathos, and hilarious black comedy, and ... Vincent Price.
In the film, Price portrays Edward Lionheart, a hammy, egomaniacal Shakespearean actor who fails in a suicide attempt after being passed over for a Critic's Circle award, then uses his second chance at life to kill his critics by methods drawn from Shakespeare's plays.
Opening credits play over old silent film footage of Shakespearean actors. While nothing in Theater of Blood indicates that Lionheart ever worked in film (it's stated he never performed anything other than Shakespeare), Lionheart, like Norma Desmond, belongs to an earlier era. Lionheart predates the rise of The Method in the 1950s, with its "naturalistic" acting style often derided by practitioners of "classical theatrical style" as producing actors who dressed dirty and mumbled incoherently. (Marlon Brando and James Dean were accused of such). Lionheart accuses his critics of denying him the award to give it to a youth "who can barely grunt his way through an incomprehensible performance."
Lionheart's egomania shows when he kills one critic by cutting out his heart, thereby altering The Merchant of Venice. Lionheart's arch-foe, critic Peregrine Devlin (Ian Hendry), remarks, "Only Lionheart would have the temerity to rewrite Shakespeare." Not having a son to christen Edward Jr, Lionheart names his daughter Edwina (Diana Rigg). That Lionheart wanted a son is implied by Edwina's usual disguise of male clothing and mustache, by her incessant (insecure) desire to please him, and by finally dying happily in his appreciative arms, happy to have served him well.
A darkly comic commentary on the shared egomaniacal roots of artists and political activists is drawn when Lionheart concludes a thunderous oratory to his ragged street devotees, followed by a recording of a speech by Hitler (a former artist) inadvertently played on Lionheart's applause machine.
Article comments
1 - DrPat
This movie has long been a favorite of mine, as well, making my list of guilty pleasures on DVD. I didn't read as much into Edwina's obvious Daddy-worship as you did, otherwise I might not have been so guilty about watching it!