Vincent Price is obviously having a lot of fun in Theatre of Blood (1973), a horror-comedy in which he plays a megalomaniacal stage actor who starts killing all the pompous critics who’ve panned him over the years. Obviously unable to resist a big dramatic flourish, the Shakespeare-specializing character, Edward, plans the murders so that each person dies just like a character in a play for which they gave him a bad review. (“Only he would have the temerity to rewrite Shakespeare,” one opponent says.) 

Edward gets help from his aggrieved daughter, Edwina (Diana Rigg), who gamely dresses up with him in garb befitting a specific homicide: surgery gowns, police uniforms, dusty groundskeeper wares, fro’d hairdresser fabulousness. They’re also followed around by a throng of unhoused people that’ve aligned themselves with the pair for reasons I won’t get into or deny are offensive, given the film’s portrayal of a homeless community as uncritically bloodthirsty and unable to communicate in much besides grunts and cheers.

Notwithstanding the latter, much of this might make Theatre of Blood sound pretty enticing. But director Douglas Hickox, working from a screenplay by Anthony Greville-Bell, never quite gets on the same page as his reliably delightful horror-icon star, whom the movie would feel interminable without. The majority of the cleverly planned murders trade suspense for an obligatory, we-need-to-move-on-to-the-next-one hurriedness. (There’s a long list of critics to get through, after all.) Though mostly delivered with glinty eyes and ticklish self-seriousness, the dialogue never rises to the occasion of being particularly funny. Theatre of Blood is nagged by a feeling that the casting and premise came first and everything else followed hastily — that it was concluded that with its delectable story idea and expensive, respected cast (Prince is supported by Ian Hendry, Harry Andrews, Robert Coote, Milo O’Shea, his wife Coral Browne, and several other celebrated names), there was no way to go wrong.

But a ready-for-anything ensemble willing to see versions of themselves beheaded and electrocuted and more can only do so much for a movie that gets bogged down by monotony. There’s never any real tension because the murders keep smoothly arriving, confronted with nearly no bumps in the road to make you question whether the unflappable Edward and Edwina will pull things off. (Anything resembling a bona fide threat emerges so late that you aren’t sure how seriously you should take it.) Yet it’s hard to have that bad of feelings — especially if you’re a fan of Price’s slithery, winking theatrics, which he never seemed to phone in throughout his long and busy career — for a movie he seems to enjoy starring in. After so many decades mostly starring in films critically dismissed as shlock, living vicariously through Edward’s demanding revenge plot probably felt good.