Madhouse

It delivers a Cushing/Price showdown, but it's meh & comes too late in a movie w/ too many flaws. The biggest is that you can guess the killer immediately & the film never makes you believe otherwise. It also spends too much time showing clips of old Price movies, & mostly does little w/ those clips either in subtext or to heighten suspense. Still, there's lots of kills, an interesting spider lady & arguably Price's best role. He usually plays polite but he makes a fantastic irritable crank.

With its cast, premise, & rather clever self-aware undertones- an aging horror movie icon playing an exaggerated version of one- this should be really good. But it's not. Despite the always enjoyable Vincent Price in the lead & horror alumni like Cushing & the underrated Linda Hayden in supporting roles, this is still quite a mess. The plot goes off the rails fast, the big twist is super predictable, & the pacing drags often. There's much worse, but this still isn't anything worth seeking out.

Cushing is almost entirely wasted.

Passes the time, slowly.

It's Price at maybe his best for this kind of thing. Cushing also holds his own. Plus it deconstructs what horror is and does to people and society. The good shit

Miscellanea '74: Monty Python Flying Circus. It seems to me that this one was a sort of inspiration for «Halloween».

Miscellanea '74: Monty Python Flying Circus. It seems to me that this one was a sort of inspiration for «Halloween».

Pretty long and lackluster and not as witty as it tries to be. Vincent Price seems to be sleep walking through this one. Peter Cushing is so underused in this film that while watching I would sometimes forget he was even in it. The finale and reveal are pretty weak.

watched: 2015, 2024

Enjoyable meta commentary on the old cheesy sorts of films that were Price's bread and butter.

Peter Cushing and his discontents

Price, Cushing and Quarry seem to all have a lot of fun hamming it up in this one. Enjoyable.