A super surprise! I think I have rather dismissed this in the past either confusing it with the Vincent Price classic, Theatre of Blood or taking average reviews at face value. This is great fun and really creepy. Borrowing a little from giallo, this relishes in setting scenes up and then confounding one's expectations by lurching off somewhere else. Quirky and exotic (loved the risqué voodoo dance towards the end- great bra!) this has a great atmosphere throughout and with super cinematography is always good to look at. Lee is fiendishly good and probably at his very best looking. Set in a Paris within a sensational theatre depicting ghoulish and bloodthirsty pieces we get Lee getting involved with hypnotism and the ladies to great effect. Very often such films, whilst pleasant enough, can slow a little but here we just keep going from one surprise to another. There is one particular scene where Lee wants a young women out of his house and he brings her to tears, rubs her mascara about her face and virtually throws her out leaving us reeling because we rather thought he might take her to one side, as it were! Must see.
Review of Theatre of Death
