Review: Madhouse/The Revenge of Dr. Death

Horror star Paul Toombes (Vincent Price) retired from the business after his wife’s murder caused a nervous breakdown. When asked by a doctor, he doesn’t even know if he’s the one who killed her or not. Some years later he is out of the title asylum and persuaded to return to England to reprise his most famous role Dr. Death. The man who persuades Toombes to come out of retirement is the character’s co-creator Herbert Flay (Peter Cushing), who is also a failed former actor. Unfortunately, once shooting begins on the new TV series, cast and crew start getting bumped off by someone in a Dr. Death costume. Who could it be doing the killing? Robert Quarry plays an a-hole producer of the series who constantly needles Toombes, Adrienne Corri plays an insane old lady (and Flay’s wife), Linda Hayden plays a young actress, and Natasha Pyne is the PR girl who greets Toombes when he arrives back in England.

 

AIP and Amicus Films teamed up for this thoroughly disappointing 1974 mess from director Jim Clark (more prolific as an editor on the likes of “The Innocents”, “The Killing Fields”, and “The World is Not Enough”). Scripted by Ken Levison (who did uncredited work on “Sunday, Bloody Sunday”) and Greg Morrison (his sole IMDb credit) from a novel by Angus Hall, the plot is pretty transparent, I’m afraid. You’d have to be pretty inattentive not to figure this one out fairly early. A lack of credible suspects doesn’t help. Overall it’s basically cool makeup and a cool poster in search of a film. At times it seems to be playing like Vincent Price’s Greatest Hits, with elements of “Theatre of Blood” and “The Abominable Dr. Phibes” thrown in, plus allusions to Price’s Edgar Allen Poe films for Roger Corman and AIP thrown in via clips from “The Haunted Palace”, “The Raven”, and “Tales of Terror”. Shamefully, Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone are given special credit for what amounts to stock footage appearances. That’s just disgraceful.

 

The score by Douglas Gamley (“Asylum”, “Tales From the Crypt”) is fine, and Vincent Price is in jolly good form. Some of the horror elements are rather effective too, and shameless credits aside, the use of Price’s old films is certainly interesting. However, the central mystery is just too obvious to really draw your interest, so it’s all for nought really. There’s something here, it just hasn’t been successfully put together. Peter Cushing and Robert Quarry (smug and dull as he is) are woefully underused, and there’s an especially dreadful performance by Adrienne Corri that takes up too much screen time for my liking. Linda Hayden is very pretty but plays a slightly annoying part. As for chat show host Michael Parkinson, I’m not saying he’s a shit actor but…he can’t even convincingly play himself here.

 

Typically gimmicky film from Amicus/AIP is surprisingly messy and unengaging despite the fine efforts of Vincent Price in pretty much his last leading man role in a horror film. The central idea itself is interesting and the Dr. Death costume and makeup are killer, but you find yourself hardly believing how uninterested you are in most of it.

 

Rating: C

 

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