This 1971 feature from the American International Pictures fun factory is a work at odds with itself. It wants to be campy, but it is never that funny. It wants to be a horror film, but poor direction dilutes the effectiveness of the chills. And while it succeeds as a Vincent Price vehicle, it fails to bring along the rest of the cast for the ride.
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Set in 1920s London, the local constabulary are baffled by a series of odd and extreme murders of prominent physicians. It is determined that the victims were part of a medical team who were part of a failed surgery on the wife of Dr. Anton Phibes, a Swiss biblical scholar and organist who was believed to have been killed in a fiery car crash. But Phibes is alive \u2013 albeit badly disfigured from his accident, requiring elaborate prosthetic make-up while an electronic cord attached from his neck to a victrola speaker enables him to speak.<\/p>\n
The dense police officers manage to figure out the murders are tied to the Ten Curses of Pharoah, but their efforts to protect the targeted medical professionals are mostly in vain. The chief surgeon of the ill-fated operation, Dr. Versalius (Joseph Cotten), is the final victim \u2013 or actually, his young son is in Phibes\u2019 crosshairs for an extreme \u201cSaw\u201d-worthy finale involving emergency surgery under the threat of an acid drowning.<\/p>\n
The best part of the film is Price, who provides a wonderful pantomime throughout the film as the madman who enacts this elaborate and grotesque revenge. With effective make-up created by Trevor Crole-Rees, Price is fearsome in the casually unemotional execution his crimes while also providing an expert level of tongue-in-cheek absurdity in his emoting that his fans expected.<\/p>\n
However, \u201cThe Abominable Dr. Phibes\u201d never quite decides whether it should be played for laughs or chills. Some of the chills are morbidly satisfying, most notably a scene where one of the victims has his head locked in a frog mask that slowly crushes his skull. But the laughs are weak and ponderous, particularly the clockwork band of mannequin musicians in Phibes\u2019 mansion and the painfully dimwitted antics of the none-too-bright police force. <\/p>\n
And except for Welsh character Hugh Griffith as a rabbi who patiently deciphers Phibes\u2019 actions, none of the other actors give anything that resembles a decent performance. Virginia North as Phibes\u2019 silent and melodramatic accomplice Vulvania looks great in fancy costumes and performs some nicely choreographed movements, but whether she is acting or posing can be debated; equally lovely Caroline Munro is unbilled in the photographs and denouement appearance as Phibes\u2019 wife \u2013 and it is easy to see why any man would be willing to kill for her.<\/p>\n
Director Robert Fuest gained fame for helming episodes of \u201cThe Avengers\u201d and AIP\u2019s well-intended remake of \u201cWuthering Heights,\u201d but his flat staging and lethargic pacing of too many sequences in \u201cThe Abominable Dr. Phibes\u201d resulted in a mostly enervated experience. It\u2019s a shame a director like Douglas Hickox wasn\u2019t put in charge \u2013 he directed Price two years later in \u201cTheatre of Blood,\u201d which had a very similar plot of a mad genius aided by a lovely young woman who picks off his enemies with murders based on classic texts \u2013 in the case of the latter film, Shakespeare\u2019s plays. \u201cTheatre of Blood\u201d had everything \u201cThe Abominable Dr. Phibes\u201d lacked \u2013 the proper balance of horror and camp, a great ensemble cast and a fast-paced story under expert direction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This 1971 feature from the American International Pictures fun factory is a work at odds with itself. It wants to be campy, but it is never that funny. It wants to be a horror film, but poor direction dilutes the effectiveness of the chills. And while it succeeds as a Vincent Price vehicle, it fails […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":45466,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1369],"tags":[3519,2488,477,3518,1163],"class_list":["post-45465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-retro-cinema","tag-american-international-pictures","tag-camp","tag-horror","tag-the-abominable-dr-phibes","tag-vincent-price"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45467,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45465\/revisions\/45467"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}