Diana Rigg & Oliver Reed: The Shocking Truth!

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It occurs to me I’ve slowly turned into one of those people who claims to be a Doctor Who fan but really does nothing but whinge and pick holes in the current version of the programme.

While it was The Avengers that brought Rigg to fame, it was really only a relatively small part of a tremendously distinguished and successful career, ranging from doing Chekhov on stage to being (briefly) the first Mrs James Bond. Though his Athos, in Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers (1973), genuinely suggested a considerable leader with a dark past; certainly nobody ever practised with more gusto fight director William Hobbs's style of duelling dirtily with sword (or boot to groin) when the opponent was distracted. Reed was then in The Bulldog Breed (1960), another Wisdom film, playing the leader of a gang of Teddy Boys roughing up Wisdom in a cinema. I suppose some people might say that Theatre of Blood isn’t really a horror film because it’s not actually scary – and it is true that it functions as a knowing, grand guignol comedy more than anything else.

Born in Wimbledon, south London, to warring parents, he knew about trouble from the outset, and was sent away to boarding school - the first of 14 - at the age of four. His next project with Ken Russell was Tommy, where he plays Tommy's stepfather, based on The Who's 1969 concept album, Tommy, and starring its lead singer Roger Daltrey. As you mentioned, he had relatives who were involved in the dramatic arts including his uncle Carol Reed who was one of Britain’s most prominent filmmakers and directed Reed in OLIVER! On the other hand, Patrick Cargill plays the villain (again) with his usual aplomb, while there’s a nicely underplayed turn as his henchman from Garfield Morgan (resembling a young Eric Morecambe somewhat).

Clash of Loyalties) (1983), which dealt with Leachman's exploits during the 1920 revolution in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq).

Wright is one of those directors who can be rather tricky to read: he bounces around across all kinds of genres, usually managing to make each his own in a rather quirky way – so far his CV includes a zombie rom com, a buddy action movie set in rural England, an offbeat comic book adaptation, an alien invasion movie, a diegetic musical car chase thriller, and a documentary about one of the world’s weirdest bands. In 1964, Reed was in the Crazy Elephant nightclub in Leicester Square and got into a dispute at the bar with a couple of men that ended with Reed walking away with a dismissive remark. When wonderful Ann passed away, she bequeathed her entire gun collection, NRA membership card, and favorite book Life Without Fear – Hand Guns and Self Defense to me, so now I have an arsenal to choose from and the little . It’s almost remarkable, in fact, that a film with so much talent attached to it should end up so extremely undistinguished.

I was amused to hear two very earnest patrons at the showing I attended intently persuading each other, as the final credits rolled, that – despite its legions of genuine alarming spectres and some rather gory revelations in the third act – this couldn’t possibly be a horror film as it dealt with some serious issues. By modern standards the episode is pretty tame stuff, but even to this day one can’t deny a certain frisson when Mrs Peel makes her spiked-heeled-and-collared, corseted appearance as the Queen of Sin (Dame Diana apparently designed this, dare I say it, iconic ensemble herself), and in any case it’s hard to shake the impression that this sort of big set-piece moment is the episode’s raison d’etre – the rest of the plot is frankly pretty thin and spurious. Reed was in Spasms (1983), Two of a Kind (1983), Masquerade (1984), Christopher Columbus (1985), Black Arrow (1985) and Captive (1986).

But even here the film has a few surprises to offer: in places it actually becomes genuinely moving to watch. Reed died from a heart attack during a break from filming Gladiator in Valletta, Malta, on the afternoon of 2 May 1999.

He went back to small roles for His and Hers (1961), a Terry-Thomas comedy; No Love for Johnnie (1961) for Ralph Thomas; and The Rebel (1961) with Tony Hancock. In the case of The Crimson Horror I think it was just because this was a rattling good yarn where the basic plot came first, didn’t feel over-squashed by other considerations, and didn’t seem to exist mainly to articulate some sort of hackneyed and overwrought emotional story. Nevertheless, this is up there with the very best of Wright’s other films, taking you on a journey into another world (more than one, in this case). The story opens with, we are assured, the British government thrown into turmoil by a series of bizarre and sinister practical jokes – Russian diplomats are given exploding cigars live on TV, whoopee cushions are snuck into the House of Lords, and so on. This led to a lot of critics and film journalists spending more time analyzing his behavior instead of his body of work.Robert Oliver Reed was born on 13 February 1938 at 9 Durrington Park Road, [3] Wimbledon, southwest London, to Peter Reed, a sports journalist, and Marcia (née Napier-Andrews).