Madhouse [1974] Vincent Price

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Madhouse (1974)


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071790/

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Madhouse is a 1973 British horror film directed by Jim Clark for Amicus Productions. It stars Vincent Price, Natasha Pyne, Peter Cushing, Robert Quarry, Adrienne Corri and Linda Hayden.


Vincent Price ... Paul Toombes
Peter Cushing ... Herbert Flay
Robert Quarry ... Oliver Quayle
Adrienne Corri ... Faye Carstairs Flay
Natasha Pyne ... Julia Wilson
Michael Parkinson ... T.V. Interviewer
Linda Hayden ... Elizabeth Peters
Barry Dennen ... Gerry Blount
Ellis Dayle ... Alfred Peters (as Ellis Dale)
Catherine Willmer ... Louise Peters
John Garrie ... Inspector Harper
Ian Thompson ... Bradshaw
Jenny Lee Wright ... Carol Clayton
Julie Crosthwaite ... Ellen Mason
Peter Halliday ... Psychiatrist

Madhouse was the third trip to the revenge well for American International Pictures and star Vincent Price following their success with the vengeance-minded The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972), as well as Price's profitable Grand Guignol-inflected Theatre of Blood (1973), released by United Artists. The law of diminishing returns guaranteed that Madhouse would be the runt of this outré litter but, whatever its failings fright-wise, this AIP-Amicus co-production does pit Price against fellow horror icons Peter Cushing and Robert Quarry, and offers some juicy subtext concerning the dark side of the Hollywood dream.

In a throwaway supporting role, Adrienne Corri, cast as a Favershamesque ex-starlet turned scarred shut-in, delivers a chilling monologue about having been raped and disfigured while cruising for sex in Tinseltown that is more disturbing than all the rote blandishments of the Madhouse shock syllabus. (Corri had played a victim of an especially malevolent gang rape in Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange [1971] two years earlier.) If the mayhem feels paint-by-numbers, the sense of curdled expectations is painted from memory, evoking an aura of discomfiture and decay.

Film publicist Greg Morrison's script was rewritten on-set while moneyman Milton Subotsky ordered severe cuts in postproduction, making blame for the film's shortcomings difficult to assign. Nonetheless, Madhouse would have benefited from the presence of a visionary behind the camera, a more perverse sensibility that might have made a true meal out of the material.


Madhouse was adapted from the 1969 novel Devilday by Angus Hall. A horror and crime writer, Hall had written the novelization for Amicus rival Hammer Studios' Scars of Dracula (1970).

Madhouse had been intended originally as a vehicle for Vincent Price and The Abominable Dr. Phibes director Robert Fuest and was announced in the trades as such as early as April of 1970.

During pre-production, Madhouse was known as Devilday and throughout principal photography as The Revenge of Dr. Death.

In an interview published in 2000, Robert Quarry maintained that his dialogue was so bad that he rewrote it and that Vincent Price asked Quarry to rewrite his dialogue, too.

Interior scenes of Herbert Flay's country home were filmed at Surrey's Pyrford Manor, a 15th century residence often used by Queen Elizabeth I.

The recording of "When Day Is Done" sung over the end credits is performed by Vincent Price and was removed from video cassettes of Madhouse due to copyright issues.

During the editing of Madhouse, producer Milton Subotsky ordered drastic cuts that greatly affected dialogue exchanges, prompting a letter of protest from director Jim Clark to star Vincent Price decrying Subotsky's "pure butchery."

In a 1949 "exposé" of Communists active in Hollywood, Vincent Price was named alongside Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Kirk Douglas, Katharine Hepburn and Frank Sinatra as one of "Stalin's Stars."

Theatrical actress Natasha Pyne got her break in films with an ingénue part in Hammer's swashbuckler The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964), starring Christopher Lee.

Jenny Lee Wright, who plays Paul Toombes' doomed leading lady, had previously been seen in John Cassavetes' Husbands (1970) and as a stock player on The Benny Hill Show.

Relegated to a minor role as the luckless director of Paul Toombes' comeback series, stage actor Barry Dennen had just reprised his Broadway role as Pontius Pilate for the film version of the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar (1973).

Madhouse director Jim Clark began his career as a film editor, assisting cutter Jack Harris on the Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (1955) and editing Jack Clayton's horror classic The Innocents (1961), as well as several films for John Schlesinger.

The birthdays of Vincent Price (born 1911) and Peter Cushing (born 1913) were only a day apart. Price made his film debut in 1938, Cushing in 1939. Price died in 1993, and Cushing the following year.

Both Peter Cushing and Robert Quarry had appeared in Price's earlier film, Dr. Phibes Rises Again.

Although he had extensive experience in theatre and film, Peter Cushing was known primarily as a television actor prior to his breakthrough success in Hammer Studios' The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958).

Newly arrived in Hollywood, aspiring actor Robert Quarry lived for a time at the Pacific Palisades home of Joseph Cotten, whom he had met while working as a bellhop in the Santa Rosa, California hotel where the cast of Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943) were quartered.