{"id":12322,"date":"2026-07-12T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/?p=12322"},"modified":"2026-07-05T14:08:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T14:08:36","slug":"vincent-price-haunts-himself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailnewsgroup.com\/ohmr\/vincent-price-haunts-himself\/","title":{"rendered":"Vincent Price Haunts Himself"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>6 Minute, 36 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

MOVIE REVIEW
\nMadhouse<\/strong>
\n –  <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Genre: <\/strong>Horror\/Thriller
\nYear Released:<\/strong> 1974, 2026 Eureka Entertainment Blu-ray
\nRuntime: <\/strong>1h 29m
\nDirector(s):<\/strong> Jim Clark
\nWriter(s): <\/strong>Angus Hall, Ken Levison, Greg Morrison
\nCast: <\/strong>Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Robert Quarry, Adrienne Corri, Linda Hayden, Natasha Pyne, Michael Parkinson, Barry Dennen
\nWhere to Watch: <\/strong>available now, order your copy here: www.eurekavideo.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

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RAVING REVIEW: <\/strong><\/strong><\/strong>By 1974, Vincent Price didn’t need to play a horror icon; he already was one. That’s the strange, slightly sad feeling running through MADHOUSE, a film that looks at Price’s screen history, borrows from it, rearranges those pieces into a fictional legacy, and then asks what happens when a performer becomes trapped inside the monster that made him famous. The movie isn’t always as clever as it deserves to be, but the idea is strong enough to keep it moving forward.<\/p>\n

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Price stars as Paul Toombes, a celebrated horror actor best known for playing Dr. Death, a skull-faced killer who became the center of a long-running film series. Toombes’ life collapses after his fiancée is murdered by someone dressed as his famous character, leaving him institutionalized and uncertain about his own guilt. Years later, he returns to England to revive Dr. Death for television, only for new murders to begin around the production. Has Toombes lost his mind, or has someone else turned his creation into a weapon?<\/p>\n

This is a horror film partly about horror companies, horror branding, horror contracts, horror memories, and the business of bringing an old monster back because there’s still money left in him. In that sense, it plays like a ghost story about employment. Toombes is less resurrected than recalled back into the field, dragged back into makeup and publicity by people who understand the value of his image better than the cost of wearing it.<\/p>\n

Using Price’s own past as Toombes’ fictional past was a brilliant take. Clips from earlier productions are folded into the Dr. Death mythology, turning real career footage into fake franchise history. Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone appear in archival footage, and their presence lends MADHOUSE a faintly mournful quality. It’s not just name-checking horror royalty. It’s placing Price among ghosts, some literal, some created by the studios that helped build his persona.<\/p>\n

That’s also where the film becomes more compelling as a career highlight than just as a thriller. The mystery itself isn’t especially difficult to untangle, and the plotting sometimes feels like it’s being pulled along from one set piece to the next rather than unfolding with precision. Price gives the film its heartbeat. He plays Toombes with the expected theatricality, but there’s more resignation here than grandstanding. The character’s fear isn’t only that he may be a murderer; it’s that his life has become something everyone else can use. Producers need him. Fans remember him. Reporters define him. His friend pulls him back toward the role. Price understood that better than almost anyone, and even when the script falls short, he fills in the cracks.<\/p>\n

Peter Cushing’s Herbert Flay brings a colder, quieter force that works well against Price’s wounded grandeur. Their scenes together are the reason many viewers will come to MADHOUSE, and the film knows it. Cushing doesn’t overpower the material; he sits inside it with a controlled, brittle elegance he could summon so well. There’s sadness in seeing these two icons play men tied together by creation, resentment, dependency, and a history.<\/p>\n

Robert Quarry adds a unique take as the producer Oliver Quayle, an industry figure whose presence gives the film some of its bite. Quarry’s role connects MADHOUSE to a moment when the studios and genre started looking beyond Price, testing new horror faces while still relying on the old ones. That behind-the-scenes tension leaks into the movie in fascinating ways. Price and Quarry’s dynamic has an edge that goes beyond the dialogue.<\/p>\n

MADHOUSE wants to honor older horror while acknowledging that the genre has changed around them. By the mid-1970s, horror had grown rougher, crueler, and more focused. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE EXORCIST, THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, and others had shifted the audience’s appetite. Against that backdrop, MADHOUSE can feel quaint, even when it’s staging decapitations and madness. Its bloodletting is restrained, its shocks are comparatively mild, and its structure belongs to an earlier mode of backstage mystery.<\/p>\n

That doesn’t make the film irrelevant. In some ways, the dated quality becomes the point. MADHOUSE is about a legendary horror star trying to survive a new marketplace, and the film itself seems to be going through the same crisis. It’s too self-aware to be old-fashioned, but not sharp enough to become a full reinvention. It knows the walls are closing in, but it can’t always decide whether to fight back, mourn, or put on the makeup one more time.<\/p>\n

The Eureka Classics Blu-ray gives the film a welcome frame. MADHOUSE benefits from being approached not simply as a standalone Price\/Cushing film but as a late chapter in a larger horror-industrial story. The video essay, commentaries, archival featurette, and introduction help place it in conversation with Price’s legacy and the transitional state of 1970s horror. That context does real work. It doesn’t fix the film’s weaknesses, but it helps explain why they're interesting.<\/p>\n

As a mystery, MADHOUSE is functional. As a slasher-adjacent horror thriller, it’s mild compared with what was already emerging around it. As a Vincent Price reflection piece, though, it has a bittersweet pull. The film keeps circling the idea that horror stars are consumed twice. First, by the roles that make them famous, then by the industry that keeps demanding those roles after the world has moved on. Paul Toombes may be fictional, but the sadness around him feels real.<\/p>\n

MADHOUSE isn’t one of Price’s greatest horror films, and it’s not the career summation it might have been. It’s too uneven for that, too awkward in spots, and too dependent on the charisma of its stars to stand on its own. Even so, it remains oddly magnetic. There’s pleasure in watching Price and Cushing share the screen, value in the film’s self-aware use of horror history, and a lingering melancholy in its portrait of a man trapped by the character everyone else refuses to let die.<\/p>\n

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[photo courtesy of EUREKA ENTERTAINMENT]<\/em><\/p>\n

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MOVIE REVIEW Madhouse –      Genre: Horror\/Thriller Year Released: 1974, 2026 Eureka Entertainment Blu-ray Runtime: 1h 29m Director(s): Jim Clark Writer(s): Angus Hall, Ken Levison, Greg Morrison Cast: Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Robert Quarry, Adrienne Corri, Linda Hayden, Natasha Pyne, Michael Parkinson, Barry Dennen Where to Watch: available now, order your copy here: www.eurekavideo.co.uk RAVING REVIEW: By […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t