Product Details

• Actors: Vincent Price, Keith Michell, John Treleaven, Donald Adams, Sandra Dugdale
• Directors: Barrie Gavin
• Writers: William S. Gilbert
• Producers: George Walker, Judith de Paul
• Format: Classical, Digital Sound, DTS Surround Sound, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Image Entertainment
• VHS Release Date: January 1, 1997
• Run Time: 115 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 1578900085
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #295,239 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Ruddigore, a pseudo-melodramatic ghost story, became most famous for the moment when the portraits of Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd's ancestors spring to life and demand that he uphold the family curse of performing a crime every day. Less flawlessly balanced between score and libretto than some of Gilbert & Sullivan's works, it's a pleasurable trifle set to gorgeous music. Since this is the only version widely available on video, we're lucky it's so good. Vincent Price is wonderfully typecast as Despard Murgatroyd, the brother who hands over the title and the curse when Ruthven gives up hiding from his evil fate. Price can't sing--and he has a good 15 years on Keith Michell, who plays his older brother--but it really doesn't matter. He carries off his performance with supreme deftness.

Unlike many G&S productions, this one is admirably free of mugging; the actors don't condescend to their material. The staging is as beautifully absurd as the plot. The chorus of professional bridesmaids are an indistinguishable unit out of a fractured fairy tale, sleeping in one bed and showing up in the middle of other people's scenes; and during a lovely but dramatically static madrigal, the cast plays croquet.

This video is one of the Opera World series of 12 Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, produced in the early 1980s. Ruddigore is among the best in an uneven project. The series is unique in that many of its videos include subtitled lyrics, which make it infinitely easier to follow Gilbert's breakneck words. --David Olivenbaum

Product Description

A witch's curse binds each Lord of Ruddigore to commit a crime a day... or die. Meantime, in the local fishing village, all the young men are in love with pretty Rose Maybud. Her secret favorite is Robin who, unfortunately, is really the Lord of Ruddigore living incognito to avoid the family curse. He is exposed and forced into a life of crime, until faultless logic offers an ingenious solution and a blissful reunion with Rose.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent production, August 3, 2005

By 

David M. Wagner (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gilbert & Sullivan - Ruddigore / Michell, Price, Trevelyan, Opera World (DVD)

As a veteran of a wonderful college production of RUDDIGORE (I was one of the ghosts in the portraits, and one of the "bucks and blades" in Act I), I think the previous reviewers are all wrong.

While some of the productions in this series show serious miscasting (e.g. Joel Grey attempting Jack Point in YEOMEN), this one makes a success of the difficult business of mixing operatic singers with singing actors. Mezzo-soprano Ann Howard's Mad Margaret would be enough to make this dvd worth owning; when she's partnered in the great "It Really Doesn't Matter" patter trio with singing-actor Keith Michell and non-singing-actor Vincent Price, the result is surprisingly smooth and completely delightful.

Michell and Price are totally charming in their portrayals, and it's a treat seeing John Treleaven, who is now a prominent Wagnerian tenor, in the oily role of Dick Dauntless. Donald Adams is a little under-powered as Sir Roderic, and the contralto who sings Dame Hannah is a better actress than singer; yet when they come together for the "Little Flower, Great Oak Tree" duet, the music carries them through it successfully.

The staging of the Ghost Scene is superb: not only do the ancestors emerge from paintings (we managed this effect on the live stage in college), but statues and suits of armor also come to life.

The production is full of semi-fantasy cutaways during the musical numbers; e.g. when Robin, Rose, and Dick sing "When Sailing O'er Life's Ocean Wide," suddenly they're in a skiff out on the ocean. Some viewers find this contrived, but it's arguably better for video purposes than simply filming a set of traditional D'Oyle Carte dance moves.

Why four stars rather than five? Only because of the (minor) cuts: the overture is severely curtailed, and Dick's "I Shipped D'Ye See in a Revenue Sloop" is omitted.

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vincent Price born to the role!, May 16, 2000

By 

"[e-mail]" (Lincoln, NE) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gilbert & Sullivan - Ruddigore / Michell, Price, Trevelyan, Opera World [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is by far the best of the 1982 Brent Walker Gilbert & Sullivan series produced for world-wide television distribution. You may recall the late Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. narrating the series for American PBS. A spoof on British Gothic mellodrama, Gilbert wrote a typically clever book with some colorful characters, and Sullivan's music is very evocative of everything from sea songs, hornpipe dances, English madrigals, pastoral love songs, rousing choruses, sweet ballads and good old mustache-twirling mellerdrammer-type music. Although not considered a success by the author/composer in its day, Ruddigore still had a long, respectable run. The problem was it followed their great light opera The Mikado, a tough act to follow. Vincent Price is virtually type-cast here in the spooky role of Sir Despard Murgatroyd, and he plays it to the hilt. His singing is rudimentary, but, who cares? He's great in the part, and worth the price of the video alone. Keith Michel (PBS's Henry VIII in the early 1970's) is fine as Robin Oakapple, Sandra Dugdale a lovely Rose Maybud and we get to see the great Donald Adams of D'Oyly Carte fame do his stuff as Roderick Murgatroyd. There are some cuts, as this series was wont to do. The costumes are fantastic, the sets and special effects just right. This is also the only Ruddigore available, at this writing. Don't miss this one if you like period operetta or musical comedy. A winner!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Horribly Good Time, July 11, 2007

By 

Daisy Brambletoes (the Shire) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Gilbert & Sullivan - Ruddigore / Michell, Price, Trevelyan, Opera World (DVD)

I have mixed feelings about this film. On the positive side, it was kind of fun to see this send-up of hammer films, complete with Vincent Price (who surprisingly holds his own in the G&S environment). In this respect, it is an amusing halloween treat that I admittedly enjoy watching every October. On the negative side, like so many other incomplete films in this "complete G&S" series, several favorite songs are missing and some of the attempts at horrific humor fall very flat. The chorus was rather annoying to watch, and the ghosts tried to be funny instead of ghostly, which made them almost as annoying as the chorus. And yet for all of that, it is a highly enjoyable film to watch. The best scene? The opening of Act Two with the banter between Ruthven Murgatroyd and Old Adam.