Dennis Price Movies
"I am not a star and never was. I lack that essential spark." There are precious few filmgoers who would agree with British actor Dennis Price's doleful self-assessment. The son of a military man, the Oxford-educated Price embarked upon an acting career in 1937. After several seasons in John Gielgud's acting company, Price began making films in 1944. He was often cast as handsome scoundrels, notably the charmingly homicidal heir in 1949's Kind Hearts and Coronets. A busy character actor into the 1970s, Price gained a whole new flock of fans for his appearances as Jeeves in the BBC TVer The World of Wooster. He was last seen onscreen as one of Vincent Price's victims in Theatre of Blood (1973). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1974
- PG
Freddie Francis' Son of Dracula, not to be confused with the 1943 film featuring Lon Chaney, Jr., is a minor curiosity, an attempt at a comedic, modern-day vampire story that is most notable for its eccentric casting and pop soundtrack. The title role is played by singer and songwriter Harry Nilsson, in his only leading role. Nilsson would later claim he considered the script "awful," but took the part for the chance to work with close friend Ringo Starr. Starr co-stars as Merlin the Magician, who is friend, assistant, and head astrologer to Nilsson's Count Down. The Count has recently inherited his father's title as ruler of the netherworld, and all the monsters are already arriving in London for the coronation party. Still, though, Count Down is unsatisfied; it seems he's a budding composer, more interested in music-making than evil-doing. When he falls in love, The Count considers giving up his immortality for the sake of a normal life. But first, he and Merlin will have to outsmart the nefarious Baron Frankenstein, who has his own plans for the Count. The film includes a performance of Nilsson's hit single "Daybreak." ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
Exploitation master Jess Franco directs Devil's Island Lovers, a film set in a South American prison. The story concerns a pair of innocents who are sent to serve time in the horrific prison and are confronted with some of the most barbaric behavior imaginable. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- 1974
Bill Fraser and Raymond Huntley star in the raucous British farce That's Your Funeral. Fraser and Huntley play Bullstrode and Holroyd, rival undertakers. The animosity between the two is amplified when drug traffickers attempt to use coffins and hearses to smuggle their wares. David Battley and John Ronane co-star in the sitcomish goings-on. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
This gory British horror satire features a hammy Michael Gough as Doctor Storm, the demented overseer of a bizarre health resort advertising "Hairy Holidays" for teenage hipsters -- on whom he secretly performs diabolical mind experiments, turning them into mindless automatons directed by a remote-control device. Those lucky enough to escape the doctor's operating table are invariably tracked down by a leather-clad bike gang or decapitated by the doctor's car (thanks to handy fender-mounted scythes). Into this trap falls pop music star Robin Askwith, whose quest for a stress-relieving getaway lands him in Gough's house of horrors. Oblivious, at first, to his impending fate (thanks to the diverting presence of the doctor's pretty niece, Vanessa Shaw), Askwith eventually realizes that the fellow patients look just a bit too relaxed for comfort. Ostensibly the blackest of black comedies, some aspects of the film actually presage Lindsay Anderson's far more sophisticated Britannia Hospital, though the satire here is far less intelligent. The biggest laughs are provided by the badly dated, ultra-mod '60s clothing and dialogue. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Gough, Robin Askwith, (more)
- 1973
- R
The darkly comic and sometimes quite gory Theatre of Blood is a vehicle tailor-made for its star Vincent Price, brilliantly capitalizing on his reputation as a master of period horror drawn from "literary" sources. Price portrays Shakespearean actor Edward Lionheart, who becomes enraged after losing a prominent acting award and decides to seek revenge on the critics responsible. Fittingly, he using the works of the Bard as a guide, basing his killings on violent scenes from Shakespearean plays. Price takes full advantage of his meaty role, ominously reciting classic Elizabethan monologues while rigging particularly nasty torture devices. This hilarious turn is assisted by a colorful supporting cast, including Robert Morley, Richard Coote, and Michael Hordern as critics and Diana Rigg as Lionheart's devoted daughter and partner in crime. The end result is a wonderfully evil lark that, in its own way, proves surprisingly faithful to the often bloody spirit of Shakespeare; certainly the full implications of Shylock's demand for a "pound of flesh" have rarely been made quite as explicit. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Vincent Price, Diana Rigg, (more)
- 1972
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The popular Australian comic strip The Wonderful World of Barry McKenzie was first brought to the screen in this raunchy 1972 romp. Barry Crocker plays the title character, a carefree Aussie cowboy with an inordinate fondness for beer and "Sheilas". Touring England as a stand-up comic, Barry runs across several odd characters, including addlepated discipline freak Dennis Price. Also on hand is Barry McKenzie cocreator Barry Humphries, appearing in drag as Dame Edna Beveridge, a character who would bring Humphries worldwide fame and fortune in the 1990s. Director Bruce Beresford, who went on to such loftier efforts as Breaker Morant, Tender Mercies and Crimes of the Heart, breezes through his scatalogical material with the abandon of a schoolboy scribbling naughty words on the sidewalk. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Barry Crocker, Barry Humphries, (more)
This gory low-budget British outing involves a team of archaeologists landing on fog-shrouded Snape Island -- recently the site of a hideous double murder -- in search of the tomb of a Phoenician chief and subsequently falling victim to an unseen maniac. Accompanying the shore party is a private detective (Bryant Halliday), hired by the family of the young woman suspected of the crimes (Candace Glendenning), who is determined to get to the bottom of the mysterious murders. Though it is eventually determined that the real killer is still at large, the archaeologists stubbornly refuse to abort their dig...and summarily suffer the consequences. Released originally in 1972, this crass, exploitative potboiler (based on a story by horror author George Baxt) found its way to American theaters in 1981 as Beyond the Fog in an attempt to cash in on John Carpenter's 1980 film. Released later to video and cable as Tower of Evil. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- 1972
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A star-studded cast highlights this musical adaptation of the classic fantasy tales of Lewis Carroll. One day young Alice (Fiona Fullerton) takes a nasty spill down the rabbit-hole and finds herself in the bizarre kingdom of Wonderland, where she encounters a number of strange and enchanted characters, including the playful White Rabbit (Michael Crawford), the manic March Hare (Peter Sellers), the mysterious Caterpillar (Ralph Richardson), the Doormouse (Dudley Moore), the imperious Queen of Hearts (Flora Robson), and the quizzical Mad Hatter (Robert Helpmann). The cast also includes Spike Milligan, Peter Bull, Roy Kinnear, and Michael Jayston as Lewis Carroll. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland won two prizes at the 1973 British Academy of Film and Theatre Awards -- for Georfrey Unsworth's photography and Anthony Mendelson's costume design. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fiona Fullerton, Michael Crawford, (more)
A year after Get Carter (1971), director Mike Hodges and star Michael Caine reunited for this comic crime thriller. Caine stars as Mickey King, a writer of cheap paperback detective novels, living in Rome and cranking one noir book after another. King is approached by Ben Dinuccio (Lionel Stander) and offered an abnormally large sum to ghost write the autobiography of a mystery celebrity. The intrigued King agrees and is transported to a remote island where he meets his subject, Preston Gilbert (Mickey Rooney), a one-time movie star known for playing gangsters and notorious for hanging out with real-life mobsters off the set (a sly jab at Frank Sinatra and George Raft). Now dying of cancer, Gilbert wants King to jot down his life story before he dies. Although he's an abusive jerk, Gilbert's had an interesting life and King sets about getting it all down on paper, but then the star is murdered at a party, leaving King with no conclusion to his tale. Playing detective like the heroes of his stories, King pieces together a mystery involving Gilbert's past, his ex-wife, a transvestite who's supposed to be dead, and an Italian prince running for office. Though largely dismissed at the time of its release by fans and critics disappointed at its dissimilarity to Get Carter, Pulp (1972) was championed by a few and became something of a cult favorite over subsequent decades. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Caine, Mickey Rooney, (more)
- 1972
Expert Brtish farceurs Reg Varney and Norman Rossington carry the weight of Double Take on their bony shoulders. Our heroes are a pair of waiters, who enter into a financial agreement with a gang of crooks. When the boys can't pay off, they're dead men walking. So they stop walking and start running-directly to a movie studio, where sexy film star Sue Lloyd helps them hide out. Needless to say, Varney and Rossington upset the studio's decorum in record time. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1971
This entry in Hammer Films' long-running vampire series of the '60s and '70s is one of the most evocative and original. The story features voluptuous twin Playboy centerfolds Madeleine and Mary Collinson as sisters who, without parents, are sent to stay with their oppressive uncle (Peter Cushing, looking more emaciated than ever), who happens to live near the sinister Karnstein Castle, the locale of countless vampiric happenings in two prequels (The Vampire Lovers and Lust for a Vampire). One of the twins wanders over and meets the dashing Count Karstein (Damien Thomas), a vampire who later uses the girl's blood to awaken his long-lost ancestor from the dead. Of course, the uncle predictably gives chase once trouble starts, but there is a clever plot twist as the count switches the twins before one is about to be burned at the stake for her supposed satanic involvements. Twins of Evil unabashedly exploits the twins' assets to pump up the film's sex appeal; it also seems to cater to viewers with a vampire fetish. Still, neither is necessarily a bad thing in a vampire film; Twins of Evil does create an effectively sensuous mood while also managing to sustain a fair amount of tension throughout the picture. Although Universal Pictures, the U.S. distributor, extracted nearly all of the flesh and bloodletting from its release, the original British cut retains everything and is the usual copy found on video. Like its predecessors, the script for Twins of Evil is loosely based on LeFanu's classic vampire story Carmilla. ~ Jeremy Beday, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Cushing, Madeleine Collinson, (more)
- 1970
In this farce, four people go to extremes to inherit the giant fortune of a wealthy practical joker. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1970
- R
Like Socrates of ancient Athens, Michael Rimmer (Peter Cook) of modern England believes the key to success is to ask the right questions. Lots of questions. So he gets a job with an advertising agency that conducts polls, rises swiftly through the ranks, and eventually runs the agency. Then he bombards England with questions. His ingenious system enables him to predict the outcome of a general election. (Every voter in England had received a questionnaire.) So accomplished is Rimmer at asking questions that he finds his future wife through market research. To insure that he gets the right answers, Rimmer is not above manipulating the polls. For example, when he asks residents of Coventry their religion, 95 percent identify themselves as Buddhists, thanks to an influx of Rimmer stooges. Then he enters politics. In a short time, he gets himself elected to Parliament, becomes a cabinet minister and eventually moves into Ten Downing Street as prime minister after pushing the incumbent prime minister off an oil platform. By this time, every eligible voter in Britain can cast ballots with a television remote control. Alas, the electorate tires of the endless referendum questions that they must answer as part of their daily routine. This development serves only to catapult Rimmer to further success, for the people decide to place all decisions in his hands as dictator of England. So Rimmer keeps rising and rising and rising. And asking questions. ~ Mike Cummings, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Cook, Denholm Elliott, (more)
Victor Frankenstein (Ralph Bates) is the son of the Count who plans his father's demise. He inherits the castle and the comely housekeeper (Kate O'Mara) who doubles as his mistress. Soon Victor is busy murdering people to build his monster (David Prowse). His victims include his neighbor, his housekeeper, a gravedigger, a professor and his best friend. He patches the various body parts together to make his horrible creation in this horror story with a good dose of comedy. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ralph Bates, Kate O'Mara, (more)
- 1970
Director Jesus Franco's surrealistic reworking of Bram Stoker's short story "Dracula's Guest" has acquired a substantial cult following due to its hallucinatory erotic imagery and a sexy performance by Soledad Miranda as vampiric Princess Nadine Korody. Ewa Stroemberg stars as Lucy Westinghouse, an American working in a Turkish legal firm. Lucy is plagued and thrilled by a series of erotic dreams concerning a mysterious vampire woman who seduces her before feeding on her blood. When she travels to an island to settle Princess Korody's inheritance, Lucy recognizes the beautiful woman as the vampire from her dreams. A poetic, arty horror film which begs comparison to the work of French director Jean Rollin and Spaniard Jose Larraz, Vampyros Lesbos is an ode to indulgent, funereal excess and is among the most peculiar, gripping films of Franco's career. Dennis Price and Paul Muller co-star, while Franco appears as a hotel porter. Various versions run 89, 82, and 78 minutes. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ewa Strömberg, Soledad Miranda, (more)
- 1970
- PG
The most horrifying part of this British spooker is seeing former clean-cut teen idol Frankie Avalon cast as Chris, a London hooligan who with his druggie friends decides to spend the night in a supposedly haunted house and hold a seance. The seance is a bust, so the buddies decide to do a little exploration and split up. Unfortunately, one of them gets brutally killed, leaving Chris and his surviving pals to wonder who did the deed. Was it one of them, or was it a monstrous demon? Not wanting to attract undue attention, the punks decide to hide the body, zip their lips, and split from the house. Unfortunately, the cops find out and begin questioning everyone, causing Chris and his friend to return to the house and look for clues. For poor Chris, it is a fatal mistake. Just for the record, though he plays a teen, Avalon was 30 years old when this film was made. In Britain the film was released as The Haunted House of Horror. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Frankie Avalon, Jill Haworth, (more)
In this comedic horror film from cult director Jesus Franco, Jonathan Seward (Alberto Dalbes) tracks the evil vampire Count Dracula (Howard Vernon) to his castle and kills him with a stake through the heart. The nightmare has hardly begun, however, as the mad Dr. Frankenstein (Dennis Price) revives the vampire using the blood of a nightclub singer (Josiane Gibert). The pair then join forces, along with Frankenstein's monster (Fernando Bilbao) and a mutant assistant named Morpho (Luis Barboo), in an attempt to create a vampire army to rule the world. This parody manages to deconstruct traditional legend without saying anything remotely interesting or clever, and the special-effects are strictly of the bargain-basement variety. Paca Gabaldon (appearing as "Mary Francis"), Britt Nichols, and Anne Libert co-star. Franco returned to the Frankenstein theme the following year with La Maldicion de Frankenstein. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Howard Vernon, Dennis Price, (more)
Not to be confused with Massimo Dallamano's contemporaneous treatment of the Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch classic, this unrelated (but quite entertaining) thriller from cult director Jesus Franco was originally known as Black Angel. James Darren stars as Jimmy Logan, an American jazz musician in Turkey who finds the body of a dead girl washed ashore while coming down from an LSD trip on the beach. The woman, Wanda Reed (Maria Rohm), had been murdered by the sadistic Ahmed Kortobawi (Klaus Kinski) Percival Kapp (Dennis Price), and a lesbian fashion-photographer named Olga (Margaret Lee). Some time later, Jimmy goes to work in a Rio de Janeiro nightclub and moves in with Rita (Barbara McNair), a beautiful black singer. One day, a woman named Venus enters the club, and is a dead ringer for Wanda Reed. When the murders begin, the only motive seems to be revenge from beyond the grave. This well-made shocker contains some enjoyable songs and cameo appearances by the director and Manfred Mann as jazz musicians, as well as being the best of numerous collaborations between Franco and British producer Harry Alan Towers. Prints run 90 and 86 minutes. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Darren, Barbara McNair, (more)
This zany British comedy finds a homeless hobo (Ringo Starr) being adopted by the world's richest man, Sir Guy Grand (Peter Sellers). Setting sail on the luxury liner The Magic Christian, Sir Grand tests the limit of human avarice. With money to motivate the greedy, Laurence Harvey combines his Hamlet soliloquy with a striptease. A vile cesspool of excrement is seeded with cash and the money-hungry dive right in. Wilfred Hyde White is the drunken captain, Yul Brynner is uncredited in his performance as a chanteuse transvestite, and John Cleese is the director of Sotheby's auction house. Roman Polanski, Richard Attenborough and Raquel Welch also appear in this offbeat comedy. Paul McCartney wrote and produced "Come and Get It," the first international hit from the power-pop group Badfinger. John "Speedy" Keene wrote "Something In The Air" and performed the track with his group Thunderclap Newman. Sellers, Cleese, Graham Chapman and Terry Southern co-authored the screenplay taken from Southern's novel. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, (more)
- 1969
This exotically titled Avengers episode is a working of the 1962 "Cathy Gale" installment "The Big Thinker." The title character is a highly advanced computer that is "murdered" by a shotgun blast. The perpetrator of this outrage would seem to be the creator of the computer, but Steed thinks otherwise; as a result, Tara poses as the creator's American niece, in hopes of rooting out the actual culprit. Written by Tony Williamson, "Whoever Shot Poor George Oblique Stroke XR40?" made its TV debut in America on October 30, 1968, followed by its British TV bow on December 9 of that same year. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Patrick Macnee, Linda Thorson, (more)
Produced in the wake of the all-star "comedy spectacular" Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Fantastic Flying Fools (originally titled Blast-Off, and also released as Those Fantastic Flying Fools) is based very loosely on a Jules Verne novel. A 19th century British newspaper offers a prize to the first scientist who is able to construct and launch a rocket to the moon. Contestants from all over the world compete for the prize, including Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines cast members Terry-Thomas and Gert Frobe. Much of the slapstick is tiresome and derivative, but there is one cute closing gag involving villains Terry-Thomas and Lionel Jeffries and a Siberian chain gang. There's precious little of the spirit of Jules Verne in Fantastic Flying Fools, save for the woodcut illustrations which decorate the opening credits. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Burl Ives, Troy Donahue, (more)
- 1967
In this drama, a singer on her husband's weekly television show suddenly decides to begin a new life without him. She then quits her job and moves into the house of another man, a good friend, not a lover. When she learns that her husband is looking for a replacement singer, she does her best to stop him. The couple eventually reunites after the husband saves her from the attack of a lascivious drunken Australian during a wild party. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Wendy Craig, Francis Matthews, (more)
- 1965
Lion hunters beware! Chief M'Gobo is watching and waiting to throw a deadly voodoo curse upon anyone who harms his sacred cats. Don't believe us? Just watch what happens to a thoughtless British big game hunter in this horror outing. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dennis Price, Lisa Daniely, (more)
The third of many film and TV adaptations of the popular Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None (Ten Little Indians is the title of the American edition, the hit play, and most of the movies), this 1965 version moves the action from a remote island to an isolated ski resort and otherwise rearranges the plot. The basic premise, however, remains the same. Ten strangers, eight of them guests and two of them servants, are lured to a dinner party and then trapped there to be killed one at a time by an unseen host who wishes to punish them for their disparate perceived crimes. The old nursery rhyme provides both the framing device, and, in the source material, the method of execution for each victim. In this version, however, the revised murder scenes include a hapless servant (Marianne Hoppe) falling to her death from a booby-trapped ski lift. Ten Little Indians features a varied cast that ranges from future Bond girls Shirley Eaton and Daliah Lavi to former teen idol Fabian and former Wyatt Earp TV star Hugh O'Brian. It also reunites My Fair Lady co-stars Stanley Holloway and Wilfrid Hyde-White. The film was the final directorial effort of George Pollock, who had previously helmed several adaptations of Christie's popular Miss Marple mysteries, starting with 1962's Murder, She Said. Christopher Lee makes an uncredited appearance as the recorded voice of absentee host/villain Mr. Owen. Despite its mountain setting, the picture was filmed in Ireland. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hugh O'Brian, Shirley Eaton, (more)
