On its surface, it may be easy to confuse Theatre of Blood for just another early ’70s British horror movie; a natural follow-up to star Vincent Price’s pair of Dr. Phibes films, in which an aggrieved maniac wreaks revenge on a group of people in a very specific and entertaining manner. But then as you watch, it quickly becomes clear that Theater plays by its own bizarre rules, making it an utterly unique, darkly comic horror classic.

Price stars as Edward Lionheart, a campy Shakespearian actor whose entire career has been ridiculed in print by London’s elitist circle of theatrical critics. When they deny him the annual acting trophy he’s convinced he deserves, he appears to commit suicide in front of them. But when they all start dying in murderous scenarios inspired by the plays of Lionheart’s beloved Bard, it’s clear that he’s not quite as deceased as he originally appeared.

You first know something is a bit off here when Diana Rigg (five years after TV’s The Avengers and looking amazing), playing Lionheart’s daughter, Edwina, first shows up in drag, complete with beard and enormous blond afro. Then there’s the film’s complete lack of a protagonist. Unable to bring themselves to make a critic a sympathetic hero, director Douglas Hickox and screenwriter Anthony Grenville-Bell instead allow Ian Hendry’s arrogant Peregrine Devlin to finally defeat Lionheart, but in such a way that makes the murderer seem more like a tragic hero than despicable villain.

But the real reason to watch Theatre of Blood is the opportunity to see Price sink his teeth into some of the best speeches Shakespeare ever wrote. Despite being given the excuse of playing an untalented “ham” actor, his performance leaves you wishing he had the opportunity to play those same roles in real life. Ultimately, this makes his character far more sympathetic than the assholes he slaughters throughout. —Allan Mott

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It seems appropriate that what ultimately saves this obscure late-’70s proto-slasher is a memorably theatrical performance by T.G. Finkbinder as the title character. That’s right: The Redeemer redeems The Redeemer, but it’s a close call, because one-time director Constantine S. Gochis commits more than his fair share of cinematic sin before the end credits roll.

In a plot that predates the similar Slaughter High by eight years, six assholes are tricked into attending their 10-year high school reunion, only to discover that they have actually been gathered to be fatally punished for their supposed sins against humanity: specifically, their avarice, vanity, gluttony, haughtiness, licentiousness and perversion.

Unfortunately, as written, the victims are all so clearly guilty of their “sins,” it’s hard not to assume the filmmakers are on the killer’s side, which is especially disturbing when you consider that the “pervert” The Redeemer punishes is simply a woman in a normal (albeit clandestine) lesbian relationship.

But what confuses the potentially ugly moral stance is the revelation that the killer is actually a priest working as the personal hand of the subtitular Son of Satan. What are we supposed to make of this? Is organized religion really a front for the devil? Is the idea that the victims’ supposed “sins” are so minor and commonplace that any one of us could find ourselves at the mercy of The Redeemer? And why is the adolescent Antichrist busy punishing earthly sinners, instead of encouraging them like a more typical Antichrist would?

Thinking about it all makes my head hurt, but — as mentioned above — the movie’s confused themes are made bearable by the presence of its antagonist, who manages to walk that fine line between campy fun and genuine creepiness. Both ahead of its time and unfortunately retrograde, The Redeemer is a highly flawed, but interesting film that deserves a place in the slasher canon its obscurity heretofore has denied it. —Allan Mott

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Primal Rage is a rare example of a horror movie that manages to create some degree of tension due entirely to a pre-production fuck-up. When the filmmakers decided not to cast the highly appealing soap star Sarah Buxton as their female lead, but instead as the female lead’s doomed roommate, they made it impossible for viewers not to agonize over the likelihood of her eventual fate — if only because she’s the only remotely sympathetic person in the entire picture. That her painful descent into madness and violent death is suggested to be an indirect punishment for a previous abortion only makes Rage that much more infuriating.

An Italian production shot in the States, the movie is about what happens when university professor Bo Svenson (sporting the most pathetic ponytail in the entire history of mad science) experiments on a monkey, which then goes on to bite a muckracking student journalist who contracts a contagious disease that turns all of its victims (all five of them) into zombie-like homicidal maniacs.

Written by Umberto Lenzi, the auteur responsible for the infamous Cannibal Ferox, and directed by Vittorio Rambaldi, the son of Oscar-winning E.T. FX artist Carlo Rambaldi, Primal Rage is — with the exception of one decapitation near the end — virtually gore-free and filled with cheap-looking effects.

Despite the film being ineffective even as unintentional camp, horror completists might want to watch it as a double feature with Slumber Party Massacre II, if only to make their way through star Patrick Lowe’s entire filmography in just one sitting. —Allan Mott

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