Theatre of Death Movie Review

Trailer here.

Theatre of Death is a 1967 horror movie directed by Samuel Gallu and starring Christopher Lee and Julian Glover.

The film begins in Paris. There is a theatre there that has horror shows. The theatre director is a man called Phillipe Darvas(Lee). He is having a party.  He tries to hypnotise a couple of the guests and then he gets them to act out a scene from a play. Things get a bit weird. A man called Charles(Glover) is there and he doesn't think that it is appropriate. He intervenes and annoys Darvas. Charles meets a friend of his called George(Ivor Dean), who happens to be an Inspector. He has three bodies on his hands. They were all murdered by the same killer. We find out that Charles was in an accident and his hands were badly damaged. He talks to George about Darvas and the party. George tells him that the bodies had no blood left in them. It is a mystery. A homeless man is murdered.

An actress, Dani(Lelia Goldoni) warns another actress, Nicole about Darvas. Darvas hypnotises Nicole.

Madam Angelique is working in the theatre and she wants to recast Nicole in the performance. Nicole  moves in with Darvas, Charles meets Darvas and asks him some questions about the recent spate of killings. Dani visits Darvas and talks to him about Nicole. He insults her and fires her. Charles sees her and she is very upset. He goes to see Darvas once again. He isn't there. He seems to have disappeared. Everyone thinks that he might have met with a bad end. George goes to the theatre and tells the cast. He asks Charles if he knows anything about Darvas. Charles tells him that he doesn't think that Darvas is dead. Dani is worried about Darvas. She finds Nicole sitting, staring at a picture of Darvas. The doctor thinks that she is in some sort of trance. More bodies turn up.

Dani discovers an underground passage and she finds tapes and Darvas' final sketch. It turns out that Nicole is the killer. There is some story about her being fed blood when she was young and she turned into a killer. She was the one who disposed of Darvas. She wants to frame Dani for it. She gets Dani to sign a suicide note she has written. Charles arrives to save the day. He chases Nicole. She runs to the theatre and she hides. She ends up getting killed as she hides under the stage. It turns out that Darvas was aware of her madness and he knew that she was the one killing people. 

This was a decent film. The cast were good and of course Christopher Lee was good as the smarmy Darvas. The ending is a little ropey but overall it is a good film. The killer was obvious, but it didn't ruin the movie. I would recommend this to fans of Christopher Lee. It isn't his best film, but it will pass the time quite nicely. I will give it a 5/10.