Theatre of Blood

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Part 2 of the Price is Right Double Feature (and 4th movie of the day) was a little picture called Theatre of Blood... and goddamn.

I said before that Madhouse was my favorite of the 2 Price movies, and that's true, as I think it was better shot and a more consistantly entertaining. But there's something about this Theatre of Blood. It's just so fucking nuts... I mean, completely coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs. Let me explain.

This time, VP plays Edward Lionheart (good name), a Shakesperian theatre actor who is killing off all the critics who wrote bad reviews about him and humiliated him by not giving him an acting award that (he felt) he deserved. And he kills them in ways taken from (or more often loosely inspired by) Shakespeare plays. OK, so far it sounds pretty similar to Madhouse. Only this time, "the Veep" (as I call him) is straight fuckin' looney tunes; there's no mystery about who the killer is, it's him. We just follow him along on his murder spree, aided by his (get this) loyal band of muderous, hippie hobos. Also in tow is his sexy daughter, who disguises herself by wearing a fake beard and 'fro and pretends to be a man. She tends to help lure in the critics with some sort of ruse. I guess I can maybe accept that the critics couldn't tell she was a woman, but didn't, say, that one critic think it was at all odd that some hippie looking dude with a weird voice was hosting a wine tasting with a bunch of smelly homeless people dressed up in ill-fitting suits?

These critics kind of have it coming, is what I mean.

See, then what makes this flick even more bizzare is the fucked up ways they kill everybody. They don't just snuff them out, some of this shit is gross and protracted. They cut a pound of flesh off of one fellow, in a re-writing of The Merchant of Venice. Actually, they take off too much flesh, so Lionheart cuts off a piece and re-weighs it. (No word on if they put the extra flesh back). Another dude, Lionheart bakes his beloved pet poodles into a meat pie and force feeds it to him until he chokes to death.

Even worse is when Lionheart and Co. sneak into one guys house, dressed as surgeons, drug him and his sleeping wife, and then slowly cut the head off his still living body. And since Lionheart is an actor, he stays in character the whole time and pretends to be a surgeon, with an assistant that wipes his forehead and everything. His only audience being his buddies and, I guess, us. Oh and there's some really inappropriate, rather pretty music playing on the soundtrack, which makes the scene both funnier and more disturbing.

Then, each time he kills someone, he recites an appropriate quote from a Shakespeare play.

This movie has problems. The cinematography seemed a little bland, and the editing a little choppy at times. Some of this may be an issue with the DVD (the audio was also a little too quiet at times), but it still isn't always a well crafted movie. It's a little sloppy. Some of the humor (it's more of a dark comedy than anything else) is a little corny at times, too.

Damn, though. It's maybe not a well-made film always, but it's fascinating. It's just so oddball, veering from broad comedy, to really dark comedy, to full-on horror. It gets my thumbs up. You just don't see shit like this every day.