Director: Jim Clark
Year: 1974
Rating: 6.0
This is the sort of horror film that I enjoy. No
real scares. But a lot of grand theater with plenty of corpses littered about.
This was a hoot. As much as anything it feels like a gift to Vincent Price
as it allows him to go completely overboard as . . . an actor of horror films.
He has that down perfectly. The film plays to all of Price's strengths with
his voice and expressions carrying the film. It even has clips of some of
Price's classic movies - The Raven, Tales of Terror, The Haunted Palace,
The Masque of the Red Death and The Pit and the Pendulum. In one scene Price's
character is being interviewed by a TV host about what makes horror work
and you can sense that his answer is coming from Price, a fine character
actor for years until he found his forte in the horror genre.
It is produced by AIP who were behind so many of Price's classic Poe films
with Amicus co-producing and was shot in England. Though not on par with
many of his earlier films, it is a fitting goodbye because this was the last
of his AIP films and basically the end of Price's long run as a horror icon.
It wasn't until nine years later that Price was to appear in another horror
film, House of the Long Shadow with Peter Cushing who also appears in this
one. To some degree this was the end of that whole style of AIP, Amicus and
Hammer horror film as the genre was in the process of going in a more grittier
graphic direction.
Price plays the appropriately named Toombes, a famous horror star of a series
of films in which he portrays Dr. Death who murders buxom females in various
lurid ways. He throws a small party to preview his latest screen scare and
also to announce as he drolly puts it "my next victim", his fiancée.
But the night takes a turn for the bizarre when he discovers that the new
love of his life had been a porno actress. And gets worse when she loses
her head. Literally. He ends up in an asylum and isn't sure if he is guilty
or not.
Years later his old partner (Cushing) in the Dr. Death films pulls him back
from retirement to make another Dr. Death film in England and suddenly and
as rapidly as waffles are served at the Waffle House murders begin piling
up. Very overwrought and operatic playing to the cheap seats with Price in
bugged bulged eyed form and a creepy lady in the basement playing with spiders,
a blackmailing couple who should have called themselves Shish and Kebab along
with some pretty blondes who should just be labeled Future Victim make for
a fun film.
