“It’s Lionheart alright... only he would have the temerity to re-write Shakespeare!”

I know you've probably heard it all before, how this film is sheer class, how it should be hung in the Tate as the pinnacle of British horror film making, etc etc. But please, you just have to see it to appreciate that yes, everyone is absolutely right.

It would be easy to dismiss this film as just another Abominable Doctor Phibes, but it's so much more than that. It's equally camp, but the campness is there for a reason (after all, Price is playing the world's worst actor). It's more literate, it's just as gory, and it hardly puts a step wrong.

The story, for those of you who don't know, concerns actor Edward Lionheart, who returns from the dead to exact a terrible revenge on the critics who (rightly) panned his Shakespearian performances right up to his (supposed) suicide.

All the critics, played by British film stalwarts with an impressive combined pedigree, are killed in the manner of the Shakespearian tragedies. For example:

Michael Hordern is hacked to death on the Ides Of March by a bunch of tramps, a la Julius Caesar.

Denis Price is gorily impaled on a spear and then dragged behind a horse for miles (Troillus and Cressida), which ends its (and his) journey at Hordern's funeral. "He's supposed to be one of the mourners..."

Arthur Lowe has his head chopped off in his sleep (Cymbeline).

The next critic gets his heart cut out - a pound of flesh (just like it doesn't happen in Merchant of Venice - as one critic says: "It's Lionheart alright... only he would have the temerity to re-write Shakespeare").

At this point I'd like to add that two British horror film - standard thicko policeman are cold on the trail of the killer, played by Milo O' Shea and Eric Sykes.

"How does a dead man commit three murders?"

"Perhaps he's not dead, inspector."

The next critic gets drowned in a vat of wine (Richard III), another narrowly misses death during an impromptu trampoline fencing lesson (if you knew a madman was after you, would you really start fencing with a stranger sporting a dreadful French accent?) which is supposed to be the duel from Romeo And Juliet (no trampolines usually, if I remember rightly).

Then Jack Hawkins gets put away for life after being tricked into murdering his wife (Diana Dors) - and I thought Othello was just that board game with the black and white counters.

Price camps it up (literally) as Butch the hairdresser (with tremendous afro wig) when he fries a critic Joan Of Arc style with some dodgy heated rollers (Henry VI pt I) and then an equally camp Robert Morley gets force fed his poodles (Titus Andronicus).

But for me the best death is reserved for Eric Sykes' police sergeant, who, trapped, in the boot of a car, can be heard reporting on his shortwave radio: "I can hear a train whistle... I can definitely identify it as a train... T-R-A..."

Oh, please yourselves.

The last death is from King Lear. I'll leave it up to you to find out what happens. Just track down and watch this gem of a film...