Madhouse (Analysis)

Madhouse was the final film that Vincent Price was ever the sole lead of and the last film he did for the independent studio AIP (American International Pictures) during is 14 year rein there. Vincent Price continued to be a star of stage and screen but this was his last outing as the king of horror.

Vincent Price was unhappy at the time in this career. He was feeling he was being type-cased in violent horror films with bad scripts and was on the verge of ending his relationship with AIP. Its co-star, Robert Quarry was already being groomed as Vincent Price's replacement so his memories of this film have not been kind and has added to his dismissal of the film as being it being a lesser work. The film also suffered because it come out very shortly after the Dr. Phibes series and Theater of Blood which had an art direction and budget that this film lacks. Because of all these factors, Madhouse is mostly forgotten, which is unfortunate because along with Witchfinder General, it one of his stronger films after his work with Roger Corman in the early 60's. It has one of the stronger story lines of any of his 1970's work and it avoids the slasher film episodic style of his last few horror films.

Based on the 1969 novel Devilday, it tells the story of Paul Toombes (Price) who is an aging horror star known as 'Dr. Death". He is wrongfully framed for a series of real life murders that lead to his own mental collapse. The film uses real clips of his work in the Poe/Corman series as clips from the "Dr. Death" series. Naturally this was used to help the budget of this film but it also conveniently creates the parallel of Price's actual problem at this point in his career of being type cased and "haunted" by the Poe films that made him so famous a decade earlier. Either by design or accident, this film turns out to very autobiographical to Vincent Price's career. Peter Cushing is cast as an acting friend that is basically a back-up to Price's character in case he can't play the role. In real life, Peter Cushing was good friends with Price but his career in the horror genre always cast him as a "second banana" (mostly to his Hammer Horror co-star Christopher Lee). The character of Paul Toombes is also in the strange position of being somewhat famous, with young starlets vying for him but still has to deal with the headaches of low budget films, in-experienced actors and directors – which was also a source of real life frustration of Vincent Price during this period in his career.

The film was directed by new director Jim Clark who later went on to acclaim as an editor on such highly regarded films as The Killing Fields (1984) and The Mission (1986). His directorial style has never been highly regarded here but I think he does a fine job in this picture keeping them emphasis on story and scares rather than atmosphere and art direction.

At the end of the film, Paul Toombes goes into hiding as someone else. In real life, Vincent Price also walked away from starring in horror films but turned his attention to primarily stage acting. Vincent Price was a big fan of his 1973 film Theater of Blood because of all the different types of Shakespeare roles he got to play and it generally pointed to where he wanted to go as an actor. Madhouse on the other hand addressed where he recently came from as an actor. This made it hard for Vincent Price to look at but it makes for fascinating viewing for us now.