Review: Dr Phibes!

 

FUEST, Robert (Dir.), 1971, “The Abominable Dr. Phibes!”, American International Pictures/MGM Studios

FUEST, Robert (Dir.), 1972, “Dr. Phibes Rises Again!”, American International Pictures/MGM Studios

Dr Phibes is, like, a god to me. I even have a T-shirt with his face on it. Honest.

“Every time we build a better mousetrap sir, Phibes just builds a better mouse!”

Seriously, anyone who hasn’t watched these films, and is running a Call of Cthulhu campaign, needs their head read. This is gold; pure cinematic – horror - gold.

Dr. Anton Phibes (Vincent Price) is a master organ-player, and a clockwork genius; he’s ‘steampunk’ before the term was invented. On top of this, he has some wicked necromantic moves which keep his decaying corpus intact while furthering his insidious schemes to avenge the death of his wife and return her to the land of the living.

I saw the second (and best) film first; the scene with the bodyguard getting stabbed through the head via a modified telephone receiver has stayed with me for years and I cheered when I found the DVD. The first film is bogged down with a bunch of modus operandi issues which hamper the villain’s raison d’etre but it’s cool nevertheless. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the first film isn’t as good but it’s the fertile ground upon which the legend is built.

Like most of these British horror films, we need to take into account that the studio was trying to rake in cash whilst appealing to the cinema public. Price has a ball with this role: his dialogue is all post-production so he goes to town with his vocal delivery. Phibes has no vocal chords so his speech requires an attachment to his keyboard organ, his gramophone, or his tuba (!) in order to be effective. Obviously, his spoken performance overlays his filmic neck-spasming, but that’s as it should be with this undead – sort of - entity.

“Somebody is using these ancient biblical curses to kill everyone associated with the Phibes' operation. But, I mean: the husband's dead, there's no children, it all happened ages ago - so who the hell are we looking for?”

Phibes has cheated death, in a less than ideal fashion; this we take onboard from the get-go and there are many darkly humorous shots of his rubber mask detaching, his wig slipping and of him eating fastidiously through the back of his neck. What propels the action of both films, is what he does with his post-necrotic condition. In the first film – “The Abominable Doctor Phibes!” – we see his fundamental motive: his wife has died from an inoperable condition which a team of doctors convinced him was curable. The ten specialists are killed by a series of devilish traps organised by Phibes and his clockwork assistant Vulnavia, each resembling one of the plagues that Moses delivered upon Egypt (and careful viewers will note that the links to the Biblical plagues become ever more tenuous as things roll on). There are some classic moments – killer rats in a biplane; a sculpted unicorn propelled horn-first through a human being (and a wall); the grasshopper demise of the attending nurse – but the bizarre deaths reach their apotheosis in the second film where there is no overriding rationale to try and contain them.

The second feature – “Dr. Phibes Rises Again!” - is where the series really gains traction and makes its mark. After avenging his wife’s death and embalming himself for a suitable interim in which to avoid the repercussions, he awakens to discover that, not only has his mansion been demolished on top of him, but his ancient Egyptian papyrus (the McGuffin of this episode) which shows the location of a hidden ‘River of Immortality’, has been stolen. With only one other person on the planet who knows of the papyrus and its secrets, Phibes is soon on the trail and ready to create mayhem in order to restore himself and his wife to (eternal) life.

On the way to Egypt and the mystic river, Phibes and Vulnavia unleash clockwork snakes and punch a spike through a henchman’s head; squeeze an antiquarian into an oversize bottle and dump him at sea; sandblast the flesh off a driver; compress an archaeologist into a small box; execute a randy digger using scorpions; and kill Inspector Morse (John Thaw) with a wind-up falcon. And they’re just getting started!

There are plenty of humorous bits as well, provided by the policemen - Waverley and Trout - who dog Phibes and attempt to bring him to Justice. Along the way they interview various character-actor staples of British cinema with amusing results and keep the plot rolling along for the audience. Between the two films, many actors are recycled – including Terry Thomas, who is bled dry in the first film but returns as an eye-witness in the second, and who was obviously too much fun (and in the public favour at the time) to leave cadaverous. Peter Cushing also puts in an appearance in a bit-part as a beleaguered ship’s captain – obviously, moments before he became the Grand Moff Tarkin.

The time period of both movies is the 1920s but, as they were filmed (in Spain) in the 1970s, they have set designs that smack of the sensibilities of an early Rod Stewart album cover. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if one is in the mood to go along with it: Art Deco was fashionable in the early ‘70s; ‘probably the reason they made these films in the first place.

I can’t recommend these two movies highly enough. There’s a gloriously giddy delight that resonates in every scene and you just don’t know what will happen next. That being said, nothing breaks the ‘fourth wall’ and intrudes as too outrageous – the sensibilities of all the characters are neatly kept in check. What bewilders me is the fact that the first film is generally available on DVD, but to see the (better) second film, you have to dig around, and even then you’ll probably have to buy it as a ‘second feature’ with the first flick. So take care with your impulse-buying!

So, if you like your villains to be effete, romantic masterminds, creators of devilish traps, remorselessly vengeful, capable of building homicidal clockwork girlfriends at a moment’s notice and who – above all – always succeed, this is the film series for you! Oh, and you’ll never be able to listen to “Somewhere, Over The Rainbow” without smirking ever again...

Four tentacled horrors.