The Abominable Dr. Phibes
The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a 1971 British dark comedy horror film, produced
by Ronald S. Dunas and Louis M. Heyward, directed by Robert Fuest, written by William Goldstein and James Whiton, and starring Vincent Price and Joseph Cotten. Its art deco sets, dark humour, and performance by Price have made the film and its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again cult classics. The film also features Terry-Thomas and Hugh Griffith, with an uncredited Caroline Munro appearing in still photographs as Phibes's wife.
The film follows the title character, Dr. Anton Phibes, who blames the medical team that attended to his wife's surgery four years prior, for her death and sets out to exact vengeance on each one. Phibes is inspired in his murderous spree by the Ten Plagues of Egypt from the Old Testament.
Plot
Dr. Anton Phibes, a famous concert organist and expert in theology and music, is thought to have been killed in a car crash in Switzerland in 1921, while racing home upon hearing of the death of his beloved wife, Victoria, during surgery. Phibes survived the crash, but he was horribly scarred and left unable to speak. He remakes his face with prosthetics and uses his knowledge of acoustics to regain his voice. Resurfacing secretly in London in 1925, Phibes believes that his wife was a victim of incompetence on the part of the doctors, and he begins elaborate plans to kill those who he believes are guilty for her death.Aided in his quest for vengeance by his beautiful and silent female assistant Vulnavia, Phibes uses the ten plagues of Egypt as his inspiration, wearing an amulet with Hebrew letters corresponding with each plague as he conducts the murders. After three doctors have been killed, Inspector Trout, a detective from Scotland Yard, learns that they all had worked under the direction of Dr. Vesalius, who tells him the deceased had been on his team when treating Victoria, as were four other doctors and one nurse. After the third doctor is murdered, Trout discovers one of Phibes' amulets at the scene, taking it first to the jeweler who made it and then to a rabbi to learn its meaning. Believing Phibes may still be alive, Trout and Vesalius go to the Phibes mausoleum at Highgate Cemetery and find a box of ashes in Phibes' coffin, but Trout decides they are probably the remains of Phibes' chauffeur. Victoria's coffin is found to be empty.
The police are unable to prevent Phibes from killing the remaining members of Vesalius' team and then focus their efforts on protecting the doctor himself. Phibes kidnaps Vesalius' son Lem, then calls Vesalius and tells him to come alone to his mansion on Maldene Square if he wants to save his son. Trout advises against it, but Vesalius knocks the inspector unconscious, then races to Phibes' mansion, where he confronts him. Vesalius finds his son under anesthesia and prepped for surgery. Phibes has implanted a small key near the boy's heart that will unlock his restraints and Vesalius has to surgically remove the key within six minutes to release his son before acid from a container above Lem's head is released and destroys his face. Vesalius succeeds and moves the table out of the way. However, Vulnavia, who has been ordered to destroy Phibes' mechanical creations, is surprised by Trout and his assistant; backing away, she is sprayed with the acid and apparently killed.
Convinced that he has accomplished his vendetta, Phibes retreats to the basement to inter himself in a stone sarcophagus containing the embalmed body of his wife. He drains his blood, replacing it with embalming fluid, and the coffin's inlaid stone lid slides into place, completely concealing it. Trout and the police arrive and realise that Phibes is nowhere to be found. They recall that the "final curse" was darkness and speculate that they will encounter Phibes again.
Cast
Production
The film was shot on the "twenties era" sets at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire. The cemetery scenes were shot in Highgate Cemetery, London. The exterior of Dr. Phibes' mansion was Caldecote Towers at Immanuel College on Elstree Road. The film was followed in 1972 by a sequel, titled Dr. Phibes Rises Again. Several other sequels were planned, including Phibes Resurrectus, The Bride of Dr. Phibes, and The Seven Fates of Dr. Phibes, but none were ever produced.Critical reception
of The New York Times wrote, "The plot, buried under all the iron tinsel, isn't bad. But the tone of steamroller camp flattens the fun". Variety was generally positive, praising the "well-structured" screenplay, "outstanding" makeup for Vincent Price, and "excellent work" on the set designs. Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three-and-a-half stars, calling it a "stylish, clever, shrieking winner", though he disliked "the lack of zip in the ending". David Pirie of The Monthly Film Bulletin was negative, faulting director Robert Fuest's "flat, unimaginative visual style" and a script "contriving to be coy and tongue-in-cheek without ever being witty".Critic Christopher Null wrote of the film, "One of the '70s juiciest entries into the horror genre, The Abominable Dr. Phibes is Vincent Price at his campy best, a famous concert organist who is exacting revenge on the nine doctors he blames for botching his wife's surgery, which ended with her death. Through a series of tortuous means that would make a Bond villain green with envy, the hideous Phibes is matched by Joseph Cotten as the doc at the end of the road. A crazy script and an awesome score make this a true classic".
In the early 2010s, Time Out conducted a poll with several authors, directors, actors, and critics who have worked within the horror genre to vote for their top horror films. The Abominable Dr. Phibes placed at number 83 on their top 100 list.
At the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 88% based on 40 reviews and an average rating of 6.97/10. The site's consensus reads: "The Abominable Dr. Phibes juggles horror and humor, but under the picture's campy façade, there's genuine pathos brought poignantly to life through Price's performance". The film was not highly regarded by American International Pictures' home office until it became a box office hit.
Home media
released The Abominable Dr. Phibes on Region 1 DVD in 2001, followed by a tandem release with Dr.Phibes Rises Again in 2005. The film made its Blu-ray debut as part of Scream Factory's Vincent Price boxed set in Fall 2013.A limited edition two-disc set, The Complete Dr. Phibes, was released in Region B Blu-ray in 2014 by Arrow Films. Both films were later reissued separately by Arrow and as part of the nine-film/seven-disc Region B Blu-ray set The Vincent Price Collection on the Australian Shock label.
The TV broadcast version of the film excises some of the more grisly scenes, such as a close-up of the nurse's locust-eaten corpse.
Music
The music that Phibes plays on the organ at the beginning of the film is "War March of the Priests" from Felix Mendelssohn's incidental music to Racine's play Athalie. The organ used is the New York Paramount theater organ, now in the Century II Center in Wichita, Kansas. The organist is Dr. Robert Moore Strippy, then of Chicago.The film's incidental score was composed by Basil Kirchin and includes 1920s-era source music, most notably "Charmaine" and "Darktown Strutters' Ball".
One of several music-related errors or anachronisms within the film's storyline is the song overlaid as a recorded performance by one of the ostensibly mechanized musicians of "Dr. Phibes' Clockwork Wizards." The pianist in this simulated animatronic band "sings" "One for My Baby ". Although the film's plot is set in England in the 1920s, this particular song did not exist until 1943, when Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer wrote it as part of their film score for The Sky's the Limit. Fred Astaire sang the jazz standard for the first time in that musical comedy. Likewise, the melody of the song "You Stepped Out of a Dream", written by Nacio Herb Brown and Gus Kahn and first published in 1940, accompanies a scene depicting Dr. Phibes and Vulnavia dancing together in the ballroom of his mansion.
A soundtrack LP was released concurrently with the film's appearance, which contained few selections from the score, but rather was composed mostly of character vocalizations by Paul Frees. A proper soundtrack was released on CD in 2004 by Perseverance Records, but it is now out of print.