One of the flicks on my mental “to view” list for some time now was today’s feature, The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971; that’s an Amazon Affiliate link; I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you). It’s been wickedly hard to track down online, although I’ve seen its sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again (same affiliate link as above) available on a number of platforms. For whatever reason, I never cared enough to find the DVD (ibid.)—or to even consider looking for it!
So when the sequel popped up on YouTube a couple of weeks ago, I decided to hunt down the original. Surely YouTube would have it as one of their free (with ads) flicks, yes?
Well, no. But someone—or two someones—had uploaded it to YouTube. I can’t vouch for how legit it is that they’ve done so, but they’ve head the film uploaded for seven years, so I imagine American International Pictures or the copyright holders of the various Great American Songbook tunes in the film don’t care or don’t know about the upload (hopefully I’m not outing them with this review). Regardless, two gentlemen in New Castle, Pennsylvania, have a little horror show called New Castle After Dark (website) in which they dress in the kind of tuxedos nerds wear to the prom. They also smoke lots of cigarettes and drink dark beer while they make some general comments about the flick.
It’s a charming setup, and I appreciated that they didn’t cut into the film too frequently. From what I recall, they do an intro, then host a segment midway through the film, and finally close with some concluding remarks. It’s just the right about of interstitial commentary, and I think it’s super cool that they’re trying to capture the spirit (no pun intended) of late-night horror hosts.
Here’s the flick with their commentary if you want to check it out yourself:
The premise for Dr. Phibes is insanely fun and campy: the titular doctor, who holds dual doctorates in music and theology, seeks revenge on the surgeons who he believes botched his wife’s surgery some years earlier. He methodically murders each doctor according to the Ten Plagues of Egypt from Exodus.
Phibes himself is a gruesome character. While his wife was going into surgery, he attempted to rush back to England from Switzerland. In the process he crashed his car, sustaining injuries that made it impossible for him to talk. To do so, he used his knowledge of music and acoustics to create a voice box (through which he comically drinks some champagne at one point). He also has a full, automaton band that plays jazz and pop standards from the 1920s (the setting of the film) and, anachronistically, the 1930s and 1940s.
Vincent Price portrays the devilishly ingenious doctor, so imagine Price’s stentorian voice filtered through an old landline telephone wire. It’s so goofy and awesome.
The film itself is a horror comedy, but it doesn’t get so zany that it loses the horror edge (as I read or heard someone—sorry, I can’t remember who!—write/say recently, so much of “horror comedy” now is just comedy with gore). There are plenty of humorous moments, such as the aforementioned wine drinking through Dr. Phibes’s neck voice box, but it’s often in the form of dry British wit. Part of the darkly comedic side of the story is that Scotland Yard is constantly bumbling its way around, failing to protect the surgeons whose lives Phibes seeks to claim. One memorable kill includes a statue of a unicorn’s head being catapulted into a doctor while he’s under heavy police escort. It’s ridiculous, but in the best way possible!
Dr. Phibes is a tragic figure, of sorts. It is revealed later in the film that he is still horribly disfigured from his accident, and he seeks to commit suicide so that he can rest eternally with his late wife in a lavish sepulcher of his own design (although his “death” is not so final, as he apparently “rises again” in the sequel). It’s clear that he’s been driven mad with grief and revenge. It’s unfortunate, because his ingenuity and his skill as musician (he’s an organist) could have enriched the world, instead of removing talented surgeons from it (it’s fairly clear that the surgeons did all they could to save Phibes’s wife).
As noted, the setting is England in the 1920s, filtered through a late 1960s/early 1970s lens. The film opens with Phibes playing Felix Mendelssohn’s “War March of the Priests,” which I associate with the recessional music for my students’ graduation ceremony each year:
Phibes’s organ is a glorious contraption made of red-lit plastic, and Price really hams it up playing the overwrought organist, slamming on the keys in a diabolical fashion (unlike the gentleman in the video above, who plays beautifully without flailing around like a revenge-obsessed audio engineer). My first thought was, “This is Phantom of the Opera with a different plot.” The New Castle After Dark gents make a similar observation near the end of their film. The 1920s setting seems fitting, as the classic film version of Phantom was released in 1925; I wonder if that is mere coincidence, or an intentional choice.
Regardless, the 1920s setting is great, as it gives this supremely Gothic horror a slightly modern edge to it. Phibes isn’t using magic or convening with the devil to gain his powers; he’s using science to seek revenge against men who failed to, in his view, practice science properly in treating his wife. But he’s also invoking the supernatural in his Ten-Plagues-themed slayings. Essentially, Phibes is casting himself as the superior, scientific angel of death.
That’s all to say that I can heartily recommend this film, especially to those of you who love campy horror flicks that don’t get so campy that they devolve into nonsense. There’s a lot of nonsense in The Abominable Dr. Phibes, but it’s the fun kind.
Check it out!