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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Introducing himself to the viewer, Hatchet for the Honeymoon‘s protagonist/antagonist says in voice-over, “My name is John Harrington. … I am completely mad.” He’s not joking; by the time he tells us this, he’s killed five young women already, and don’t expect that number to stay put.

Harrington (Stephen Forsyth, No Killing Without Dollars) believes that a woman should be loved once, then dead forever after. The owner of a bridal shop, he finds his victims easily and buries many of them in the greenhouse on the mansion he shares with his wife, Mildred (Laura Betti, A Bay of Blood), a much older woman who refuses to grant him a divorce.

No matter; he’s able to continue his raping/killing spree despite the martial bond. Only when the beautiful, promiscuous Helen (Dagmar Lassander, The House by the Cemetery) comes looking for her missing sister (Femi Benussi, Strip Nude for Your Killer) and cozies up to Harrington does his hobby face a credible threat.

In the hands of a lesser director, the “screemplay” (as the handwritten credits dub it) by Ricco the Mean Machine‘s Santiago Moncada would risk coming off as chop-‘n’-slop trash. With the masterful Mario Bava at work, however, the horror film not only delivers the expected shocks and gore, but a high level of visual artistry. Acting as his own DP, Bava (Black Sunday) treats the screen as a big, colorful canvas, and no corner escapes his eye for composition.

Forsyth excels at playing a psycho audiences nonetheless will have a smidge of sympathy for, delicately balancing the role’s mix of mental illness and black comedy. It’s a shame he called it quits after this Italian film, but at least he went out on a high note. For Bava newcomers, Hatchet is one of the more accessible starting points. —Rod Lott

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Bachelor journalist Alan Foster (Anthony Franciosa, Tenebre) wanders into a bar late at night where that nutball Edgar Allan Poe (played by nutball Klaus Kinski, 1979’s Nosferatu) is holding the tavern spellbound with his tales of mystery and horror. Some dude mentions to Foster that no one has survived a night in a neighboring haunted castle. Apparently not understanding his odds or unaware that the man next to him is being played Klaus freakin’ Kinski, he thinks, “What a fab idea it would be to spend a night in this neighboring haunted castle!”

After strolling about the grounds for 15 minutes getting jumpy at gusts of wind and banging out a little ditty on the organ, two separate paintings come to life in the form of corset-bound beauties. Yowsa! Art appreciation!

Almost immediately, the redhead (Michèle Mercier, Black Sabbath) announces she wants to bed him, which, seeing how Franciosa is a ringer for game-show host Bert Convy, you’d either have to be drunk or dead to do. As it turns out, the latter is true, and Foster’s just watching their deaths unfold in front of him, like a virtual-reality instant replay.

He spends the second half of Web of the Spider running from these dead people, screaming “NNNOOOOO!!!” and tripping over things. And just when you think nothing is going to happen, it doesn’t! But I will say this: It has one helluva great, ain’t-it-a-bitch ending. For the record, there are no spiders. —Rod Lott

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Try as he might, actor-turned-director John Stockwell (John Carpenter’s Christine) can’t get away from the ocean blue — Blue Crush, Into the Blue, Dark Tide, Turistas — but perhaps he should try harder, especially after that last one. If offering the continuous sight of Olivia Wilde in a bikini can’t raise moviegoers’ pulses, you’re screwed.

Made at a time where “torture porn” was briefly all the rage, Turistas follows a handful of American backpackers to Brazil, including siblings Bea and Alex, played by Wilde (TRON: Legacy) and Josh Duhamel (the Transformers franchise). When a bus wreck leaves the gringos stranded, they join forces with a fellow traveler (Melissa George, 30 Days of Night), despite her butt-ugly hair braids. Because she can speak the native tongue of Portuguese, she can help them get out of trouble.

But first: parrrrr-TAY! Livin’ it up one night on the beach, our white folks are drugged and robbed of all their possessions. Seems they’ve stumbled into a conspiracy where vital organs are harvested without consent from stupid Americans. Ironically, your interest will have waned long before this point is reached, provided you had any left after the first scene.

To the surprise of no one who’s seen Stockwell’s work before, Turistas boasts beautiful scenery and expert underwater photography — all wasted on one of the weakest horror films shat out by a major studio in the new millennium’s first decade. Looking pretty means nothing when your words bore others to tears. To borrow the movie’s own tagline, “Go home.” —Rod Lott

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Rushed out to catch a ride on that crazy Blair Witch Project mania, the soundalike-titled The St. Francisville Experiment places four young people overnight in a haunted mansion in the Louisiana town of St. Francisville: a team leader with a poor haircut, a film student with limited vocabulary skills, a busty history major and a dog-faced psychic with front teeth the size of Chiclets.

According to the found-footage film’s prologue, St. Francisville is home to more haunted houses than anywhere in America, and everything we are about to see is real. Oh, bullshit.

So that you don’t think it’s a total rip-off of Blair Witch, a few subtle differences exist:
1) There are four people instead of three.
2) Instead of a creepy basement, there’s a creepy attic.
3) Nobody says “fuck.”

Like Blair Witch, it has few shocks placed between near-excruciating stretches of shot-on-video footage. Unfortunately, its shocks are most tame: Ooh, a chandelier fell! Yikes, the chair moved! Eew, there’s a bug in my sandwich!

The finale is even more ridiculous (not to mention all the proof you need this is faked): Oh, no, the door shut! Yuck, live rats! Help, I’m trapped in a piece of carpet that’s fallen through the floor, just like Tom Hanks in The Money Pit! Directed by Ted Nicolaou (TerrorVision), this Experiment may be better than sitting through Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, but a failure is a failure. —Rod Lott

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