Theatre of Blood

Released in 1973 Theatre of Blood stars Vincent Price as Edward Lionheart a hammy actor exacting Shakespeare inspired revenge on the theatre critics he blames for ruining his career.

With a line-up that includes the cream of British character actors of the likes of Michael Hordern, Robert Morley, Arthur Lowe, Dennis Price, Diana Dors, Joan Hickson, Eric Sykes & Jack Hawkins and with Vincent Price and Diana Rigg in the lead Theatre of Blood is a gloriously over-casted extravaganza of ghoulish camp.

Theatre of Blood was the third movie in three years that saw Price taking revenge for perceived wrongs and indeed it bears a very strong resemblance to the first of these, 1971's 'The Abominable Dr Phibes', but for all Theatre of Blood's many charms for me it lacks something of it's predecessors gleefully macabre charms.

Vincent Price is of course Vincent Price, here revelling in the chance to deliver key Shakespearean soliloquies as only he (and possibly William Shatner) can and surely thoroughly enjoying the chance to dish out gruesome retribution to an array of critics.  Diana Rigg is, as always, effortlessly wonderful and the menagerie of faces I mentioned earlier are all blatantly having a ball in a movie that is ridiculously good fun.

Buy it here - Theatre Of Blood [DVD] - or watch it below.

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Splendid in Ash

Charles Wikinson
Egaeus Press

Charles Wilkinson's SPLENDID IN ASH contains seventeen previously uncollected stories from a writer whose seemingly effortless ability to turn the ordinary, the everyday, the outwardly mundane volte-face into regions of feverish weirdness is unrivalled.

I first came across one of Wilkinson's stories - 'Absolute Possession' - in a copy of 'Supernatural Tales', it was a wonderfully odd tale with a perplexing ending.  It was one of those stories that stick with you long after both because you enjoyed it and because of how much it frustrated.  The same could be said of Wilkinson's previous collection (also published by Egaeus Press) 'A Twist in the Eye' which was a wonderful collection of frustrating invention and elusive delights that seemed to revel in leaving the reader wrong footed and adrift which, you'll be usurprised to learn, continues to be the case here.

'Absolute Possession' is here and is still baffling but also still enthralling and accompanying it are stories of ghosts of retribution and guilt , bodily transformation, hellish bureaucracy and the end of the world.  All show Wilkinson's vivacious and unfettered imagination in full flight as ideas rise and crash through from unexpected directions before flying off at unlikely angles.  It most readily recalls the work of Robert Aickman with it's restless willfulness and Aickman's own preferred term of 'strange' is perfectly applicable to the stories contained in this beguiling collection.

Buy it here - http://www.egaeuspress.com/Splendid_in_Ash.html

You can read a nice little Q&A with the author here - Dark Lane Books

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much appreciate a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain