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.

Not quite a perfect marriage of camp and horror ... - The Abominable Dr. Phibes review by NP

I was put in mind when watching this, of a perverse cross between the ‘Saw’ films and particularly camp episodes of 60’s TV Series ‘The Avengers’ or even ‘Batman.’ It’s a mix that only works due to the acting, particularly Peter Jeffrey, Virginia North and Vincent Price, who manage to balance their performances between theatrical horror and knowing humour.

Phibes is an exceptional creation, but I’m not sure he’s given entirely free reign here. In many ways, this foreshadows Price’s character in the exemplary ‘Theatre of Blood’. Similarities abound – a wronged lunatic who manages to hoodwink the law, abetted by a fearsomely loyal younger relative. Whereas ‘Blood’ is a glorious, sprawling mix of continual gruesome death and gallows humour, the ‘Phibes’ story doesn’t quite command the same mood. My score is 6 out of 10.