cast was so good that all I had to do as director was open the dressing room door and let the cameras roll." Theatre of Blood was filmed entirely on location. Lionheart's hideout, the "Burbage Theatre", was the Putney Hippodrome, which was built in 1906, but had been vacant and dilapidated for more than ten years before it was used in the film. (It was also used in Hickox's previous film, Sitting Target (1972). It was demolished in 1975 to make way for housing units.) Lionheart's tomb is a Sievier family monument in Kensal Green Cemetery, showing a seated man, one hand placed on the head of a woman kneeling in adoration, while the other holds the Bible, its pages opened to a passage from the Gospel of Luke. The monument was altered for the film by substituting plaster masks of Price and Rigg for the real faces, replacing the Bible with a volume of Shakespeare, and adding Lionheart's name and dates. Peregrine Devlin's Thames-side apartment is the penthouse flat at Alembic House (now known as Peninsula Heights) on the Albert Embankment. At the time of filming, the property belonged to the actor and film producer Stanley Baker. It is now the London home of novelist and disgraced politician Jeffrey Archer. When pre-production commenced, Coral Browne insisted that she would wear only clothing designed by Jean Muir. The film's costume designer, Michael Baldwin, informed Browne that the budget could not possibly stretch to designer clothing for any of the cast. Baldwin was surprised and angered to get a call from Douglas Hickox after he had had a meeting with Browne, telling him that she could have the dresses she requested, increasing the budget solely to accommodate her demands. Baldwin was further infuriated to discover that Browne kept all the dresses after filming wrapped. "Young Man Among Roses", the miniature featured in the introduction and used as the model for the Critics' Award Statuette, is by the Elizabethan portraitist Nicolas Hilliard. Critical reception This film was reportedly a favourite of Vincent Price's, as he had always wanted the chance to act in Shakespeare. Before or after each death in the film. Lionheart recites passages of Shakespeare, giving Price an outlet to deliver such speeches as Hamlet's third soliloquy ("To be, or not to be, that is the question..."); Mark Antony's eulogy for Caesar from Julius Caesar ("Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me