Madhouse
(MGM Region 1 NTSC DVD)
(1974)
review by Catwalk

Paul Toombes was a master of horror, a real icon in the genre.  Of course, that was years ago.  When his fiancee’ was murdered the night of one of his screening parties, Toombes career was finished.  He wound up in a mental institute.  That was twelve years before Toombes returned to acting.  Once he made his first appearance on-screen in over a decade, bodies began turning up as well.  Is it Paul acting as the embodiment of Dr. Death, or someone else?

After years in hiding, Paul (Price) once again takes on his old role, despite the fact that it terrifies him.  His friend, Herbert (Cushing), challenges Paul to confront his fear in order to overcome it.  It’s a bold move, but Herbert reveres Paul as an actor and as a person.  Is it to help or to destroy his old buddy?  The film balances the possibility of Toombes’ guilt and the guilt of others deep into its presentation, building to a dramatic climax.

This 1974 film features Vincent Price as Paul Toombes (get it?), a well-known veteran of the horror genre (get it?)  who is followed around by death (still don’t get it?).  To show Toombes’ career, the film uses clips from Price’s earlier films, The Pit and the Pendulum, House of Usher, and The Raven.

Price approaches horror with the smoking jacket class that defined his career.  From the radio show, The Saint, to his signature works like The House on Haunted Hill and The House of Wax, Price showed perfect poise in the face of violence and bloodshed.  Madhouse is no exception, and Price’s cool demeanor is the perfect sounding board for the other actors.  The chosen scenes feature Price being hypnotized in a number of ways, an ironic parallel to his complaint about The Saint, where he complained that he “had to come up with a new way to sound when I would inevitably be hit on the head."

Cushing’s Herbert approaches his friend with optimism and hope, an interesting shift for the actor who made Van Helsing a household name in “The Satanic Rites of Dracula” and 1958’s “Dracula”.  Linda Hayden (Expose’) is delicious as the manipulative Elizabeth Peters.  Adrienne Corri (A Clockwork Orange) plays Faye as a twisted and shattered doll of a woman.  Her scenes amplify the tension of the film through her manic actions.

The film’s set, from iron gates to fractured statues, big stone houses and tarantulas serves the mood well, allowing Price and Cushing the sort of playground they can exploit perfectly.  The use of mirrors is prevalent throughout the film, a nice visual that serves up the key sequences well.  Douglas Gamley’s original score is haunting and beautiful, another accomplice to Price’s command of the protagonist’s role.

Clips used in the film feature other screen legends, Boris Karloff (The Raven) and Sherlock Holmes, aka Basil Rathbone (Tales of Terror).  In a telling display of the past and more modern cinema, there’s a timely product placement shot featuring a bottle of Coca-Cola.

Madhouse is part of the four-disc offering, the MGM Scream Legends Collection – Vincent Price.  The collection features seven films, and an hour-long Behind the Scenes piece titled “Vincent Price Collection Disc of Horrors”.