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VINCENT PRICE HAS RESERVED A SEAT FOR YOU IN THE “THEATRE OF BLOOD”

It's never been tougher to be a critic than in THEATRE OF BLOOD, one of the greatest horror comedies of all time. Vincent Price gives a career best performance as Edward Lionhart, a veteran Shakespearean actor who, when passed over for the coveted Critic's Circle award for Best Actor takes deadly revenge on the critics who snubbed him.

With one of the greatest ensemble casts ever assembled for a horror film including Diana Rigg, Harry Andrews, Jack Hawkins and Arthur Lowe, THEATRE OF BLOOD is an dementedly funny and deliciously macarbe cult classic.

SPECIAL FEATURES:
- High Definition digital transfer
- Newly created exclusive content
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork [Amaray version] / Limited Edition SteelBook packagaing featuring original artwork [SteelBook version]
- Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film, archive content and more!
- More to be announced closer to the release date

Special Edition Contents:

· High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation of the feature, transferred from original film elements by MGM
· Original uncompressed mono PCM audio
· Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
· Audio commentary with The League of Gentlemen, Jeremy Dyson, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith
· A Priceless Pot-boiler – Victoria Price discusses Theatre of Blood
· A Fearful Thespian – author and film historian David Del Valle discusses Vincent Price in Theatre of Blood
· Staged Reaction – Star Madeline Smith remembers Theatre of Blood
· A Harmony for Horror – Composer Michael J. Lewis remembers Theatre of Blood
· Original Trailer
· Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sam Smith
· Collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film by critic Cleaver Patterson and a reproduction of the original press book material, illustrated with original archive stills

Wicked excited for this, and its already been shipped! Judging by how quickly it took Sisters to get here, I should have this baby by next Friday. Stoked.

This has a such a good premise that I wish it was served by a better film. The randomly gonzo camerawork and Price's hammy set-ups hobble the strong novelty of a serial killer actor offing the critics who always ragged on him by reenacting murders from Shakespeare's works. Part of the fun of some of these set pieces is just in trying to remember what the murders were in a given play and working out how Price will reinvent them in gory excess. But the film too often slows down and dumbs things down by over-explaining, and I longed for a film that assumed knowledge of the texts. And that last-minute reveal is of course only shocking to those who never looked up at the screen during the film. A noble effort but a near miss

I think its best to see this as the unacknowledged third Dr Phibes film, in the sense that its comedic-ironic structure of horrible murders follows that template pretty closely (even down to the female muse/accomplice figure). Its not quite as callously nihilistic as the Dr Phibes films though as there is still a, slight, chance of escape! Speaking of which, I still like the fantastic twist that Theatre of Blood provides to the material in the way that:

Spoiler

the hero only seems to be able to escape from the device about to drive daggers into his eyes in the manner of the blinding of Gloucester from King Lear purely because the villain appears to have overlooked the way that particular act of violence doesn't actually kill Gloucester in the Shakespeare play! So in the final act the fates twist around in favour of the victim, as the villain, so close to achieving his goals (which Dr Phibes achieved), suddenly has to pay for his hubris!

(I still sometimes wonder if it would be worth drawing a through-line from these 'Vincent Price on a revenge mission' films to the Saw ones!)

Madhouse is often included with this and the Phibes films, but it's always seemed to me to operate more like Hammer's mini-Hitchcocks (you don't know who the killer is - it may or may not be Price) than one of the Price-enacting-gory-vengeance cycle.