Madhouse (1974)

Overrated and overhyped

As Good As It Gets

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

As Vincent Price's career started winding down he starred in a number of British horror flicks like "Madhouse". This movie casts him basically as himself but depicts his famous character committing murders on its own. It's not any great movie but enjoyable enough for its running time. A trick that they use is to incorporate scenes from some of Vincent Price's earlier movies, so we get footage of the late Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone. Overall the plot brings to mind the blurring of reality and fiction (or even the blurring of the line between news and entertainment).So, "Madhouse" is no "House on Haunted Hill" or "Pit and the Pendulum", but it's still a fun movie. It's easy to see why Price was one of Tim Burton's idols (Burton even cast him as the inventor in "Edward Scissorhands"). The rest of the cast here includes Peter Cushing, Robert Quarry, Adrienne Corri (Mrs. Alexander in "A Clockwork Orange") and Michael Parkinson (a TV interviewer). Director Jim Clark was best known as an editor, having edited "Marathon Man" and "The Killing Fields".

I saw Madhouse as I love Vincent Price and would see anything with him in, regardless of its reputation. Madhouse is not one of his best sadly, actually of the films of his I've seen(I need to see more but I have seen enough to know of his talent and most of them are good to great films) only Story of Mankind was worse. Madhouse does have major problems, the footage was interesting but doesn't always add much to the story or the atmosphere, while the script felt rushed and cobbled together and the story, although I didn't mind the unoriginality, just didn't thrill me enough and felt obvious complete with a twist that was entirely unsurprising. The film does feel stodgily paced sometimes also. On the other hand, the production values are decent, the editing could've been crisper but the settings and such do have a nice edge to them. The music is reasonably atmospheric also, but it is the cast that really lift this film. Peter Cushing is underused but as ever he is good value, and Robert Quarry is amusingly slimy. Their scene at the costume party was a lot of fun. Best of all was Price, proving once again that no matter the state of the film or script that he can do no wrong, with his magnetic presence, distinctive voice and deadpan delivery of lines, all present here. Overall, not sure if I recommend it but for Price or Cushing completists it is at least worth a look. Not a bad film, in fact better than its rather dismissive reputation, but considering the promise of the idea it had and the cast it could have been much more at the same time. 6/10 Bethany Cox

This was one of the very last of a kind - the tail end of an era of a conventional type of horror film that had dominated since the 1950s.Hammer Studios were shutting up shop, heading for a last ditch life-preserver in the form of the TV market before slipping off the radar. AIP and Amicus similarly sliding into a terminal decline. Explicit and pioneering movies such as The Exorcist, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, were leading the new wave. Directors such as Friedkin, Hooper, Carpenter, Cronenberg were soon to see their star in the ascendant. The days of plastic fangs, Max Factor blood, Gothic castles, garish Technicolour and a flash or two of heaving bosom, were gone forever.MADHOUSE added a few melancholy notes to the swansong.As the title suggests, it is indeed mad. And there's a house in it. It succeeds in being painfully camp, eccentric, hackneyed, desperate, confused and befuddled. The narrative has no internal logic and the characters who populate it are cardboard ciphers reciting awful dialogue and carving the ham as thick as you like. Yet...Vincent Price and Peter Cushing always do their best to entertain and elevate the material they're given way beyond it's lowbrow standard of quality. Cushing, especially, always acts as if he's been given something of Shakespearean standards to deliver. Price, ever insightful, knows all about dross and attacks it as a matter of course with a sustained barrage of enthused overacting as he's fully aware that's his only way to slap some meaningful dynamic into it. It doesn't really salvage the film, granted, but both these men do what they can to give it some spark of life.When I was a kid I loved this sort of stuff. Back then it seemed to add up better. Now, the nostalgia factor is the main draw. MADHOUSE is indeed one deranged film in that nothing works or makes any sense, so much so that the more absurd it gets the more surreal and curiously engaging it becomes. The idea is relatively sound: horror movie actor Paul Toombes (Price) is implicated in a grisly murder, has a mental breakdown and quits the screen. Years later, writer friend and colleague Herbert Flay (Cushing) entices him to England to revive his Dr Death character in a TV show. Then people start dying around him in gruesome ways and he becomes the main focus of suspicion.The supporting cast are mostly cannon-fodder, window dressing waiting around to get bumped off. They might as well be china ducks in a fairground shooting gallery for all anyone cares about them. There's a crazy woman in the cellar looking after a menagerie of spiders, chat show host Michael Parkinson pops up to interview Toombes and there are lots of clips from earlier (much higher calibre) AIP horror flicks featuring Price. It meanders along in a haphazard fashion until it grinds to a halt with what was probably intended to be a creepy grand guignol conclusion that in fact leaves the viewer thinking "What?" Finally, if evidence was needed of the end of an era for a particular type of movie genre, MADHOUSE is a suitable citation for winding down. Despite everything, though, it still manages to be mildly diverting fun. But that's about as good as it gets.

"Madhouse" bears a lot of resemblance with the previous year's "Theater of Blood", and actually that movie was already some sort of multiplication of the 1971 hit "The Abominable Dr. Phibes". General conclusion: throughout the early 70's Vincent Price's successful career largely relied on playing the same flamboyant character over and over again, but who cares seriously, as all his films are hugely entertaining and worth tracking down. "Madhouse" even features another rewarding bonus, as Vincent Price shares the screen with fellow horror legend Peter Cushing. Here in this film, Price wondrously (of course) depicts a horror actor named Paul Toombes who has practically converged with his fixed movie character Dr. Death. When his future wife is found savagely beheaded on the morning after numerous house guests witnessed a verbal dispute, Paul Toombes is led to believe that years of identifying with Dr. Death has driven him to madness and actual murder. Toombes retires for twelve long years, until his good friend and manager Herbert convinces him to reprise his legendary Dr. Death role in a TV-format. As soon as the series begins filming, dead bodies start piling up again. Is Paul Toombes really a maniacal killer or is there someone, dressed in his horror movie costume, trying to make him look guilty? Director Jim Clark, usually a respectable editor, clearly intended to make an amusing and tongue-in-cheek Grand Guignol effort, rather than a serious and indigestible thriller. The film features clippings from previous Vincent Price highlights, including "The Haunted Palace", "House of Usher" and "The Raven". Perhaps Clark borrowed this idea from Peter Bogdanovich, who did something similar with Boris Karloff's career in "Targets". The murders in "Madhouse" are extremely imaginative, although incredibly over-the-top, like the crushing bed sequence. Dr. Death's outfit and make-up are deliciously macabre and there are some bonkers sub plots, like a crazy woman in a basement and the ravishing Linda Hayden as a over-enthusiast fan-girl/stalker. Recommended, but only if you're a fan of Vincent Price and his career.