Rent The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Wonderful macabre fun - The Abominable Dr. Phibes review by CP Customer

Vincent Price was always one with a tendency to ham things up a bit too much so his best work is always the more tongue in cheek horror rather than the po-faced stuff. Here he gets to play a sly, deranged genius bumping people off in various gruesome ways. An all star supporting cast including Terry Thomas. This DVD version is really nicely remastered too, with upscaling, it looks like a blu-ray

Time out of Joint - The Abominable Dr. Phibes review by CH

At first glance, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, released in 1971, appears the very embodiment of the late-Sixties. A smart Victorian terrace house which, inside, is fashionably decorated in a style akin to the first interior scene of Help!

And so it continues with a strange-faced man (Vincent Price) at the keyboard of a theatre organ while the rest of a band turn out to be puppets. Very strange. And even stranger is that all this turns out to be taking place in the later-Twenties, a fact mostly evinced by a few carriage-like motor cars in the exterior scenes which are also graced by Virginia North whose hooded fur-coat could be something sported by Diana Rigg in The Avengers. This film in fact shares a director and writer of that series.

Nothing is real, and there is a gloss to the horror as Dr. Phibes sets to work, turn by turn, to enact deadly revenge upon the nine surgeons (Terry-Thomas soon vanishes; Joseph Cotten hangs on longer). Phibes deems them all to have conspired in killed his wife upon the operating table when in fact they were battling to save her.

His means of now disposing of them is to re-create the series of fatal Biblical curses, such as frogs and locusts. If this sounds familiar, such a method – deaths in Shakespeare – was the inspiration for a film in which Price starred two years later, after a Phibes sequel. Theatre of Blood is far better.

More slick than sick, The Abominable Dr. Phibes is diverting enough when the wind is rattling the windows and a glass of wine is to hand.

Very late 60s, very OTT camp serial killer Britflick fun - The Abominable Dr. Phibes review by PV

I love these old horror films, many by Hammer, often with great casts of British character actors and an arch sense of fun. very camp and weird.

They often have portmanteau structures, lots of small stories with an over-riding theme - here it is the plagues of Egypt, Done MUCH later with US movies like SE7EN of course.

I enjoyed this, but the ending does let it down (no spoilers) so 4 stars.