Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
The Abominable Doctor Phibes - 1970". britishhorrorfilms.co.uk. Archived from the original on 6 November 2014 . Retrieved 3 April 2015. Most of the humor in the film come from inspector trout of Scotland Yard. Most of the other characters are basically fodder for Prices revenge, revenge for his late wife's operation that left her dead and Price disfigured. Klemensen, Richard; publisher. "The Definitive Dr. Phibes". Little Shoppe of Horrors. Des Moines, Iowa, October 2012: Number 29.
Aided in his quest for vengeance by his beautiful and silent 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. Trout discovers one of Phibes' amulets (torn off during a struggle) at the murder scene of the fourth doctor, which takes place while he is interviewing Vesalius. He first takes it to the jeweller who made it, then to a rabbi to learn its meaning. Now believing Phibes may still be alive, Trout and Vesalius go to the Phibes mausoleum at Highgate Cemetery. Inside they find a box of ashes in Phibes' coffin, but Trout deduces they are probably the remains of Phibes' chauffeur. Victoria's coffin is empty. Elegant Classical Musician: Vulnavia does this twice, playing a violin as Phibes engineers the deaths of his victims. And Vulnavia is a hottie... Another physician is introduced, and this bizarre plot begins to flesh itself out a bit more. Inspector Trout visits the home of Doctor Vesalius. There is one thing that links all of the deceased together. All of the physicians, including Vesalius, operated on a woman named Victoria Phibes who had been dying from an undisclosed illness. While the team had been operating, Victoria's husband, Anton Phibes, had been returning from a concert in Switzerland. On his way to the hospital, his car flipped over and exploded. Phibes was burned to "death" and there was nothing left but ashes (or so the story goes). Trout suspects that Phibes may have faked his death and has vowed to kill all of the doctors who failed to save his wife.
Contains examples of:
Directed by former art director/production designer Robert Fuest, who got the gig after helming a Wuthering Heights adaptation starring Timothy Dalton that was described as having “the unfortunate physical appearance of a vampire tale,” The Abominable Dr. Phibes leans into that heightened melodramatic aesthetic. Emily Brontë, meet Vincent Price. The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a deliberately campy 1971 British horror film directed by Robert Fuest, starring Vincent Price as the eponymous doctor and Joseph Cotten as his nemesis.
Lampley, Jonathan Malcolm (2010). Women in the Horror Films of Vincent Price. McFarland & Company. p.155. ISBN 9780786457496. Lampley quotes Vincent Price Unmasked (1974) by James Robert Parish and Steven Whitney for this figure.
You might also like
Dr. Vesalius: (to Trout) Human error won't stop him. He's had years to hide, to plot this damnable thing.
Donahue, Suzanne Mary (1987). American film distribution: the changing marketplace. UMI Research Press. p.301. Please note figures are for rentals in US and Canada At the mansion, the dark figure hangs a pendant over one of the wax busts (matching the man just killed) and burns its face with fire.
What Happened to the Mouse?: No one wonders where Phibes' chauffeur went when Phibes' car crashed. There's only enough ash to make up one body. Everyone except Trout assumes that the one body is Phibes', but if he's known to have a chauffeur, they would wonder where his ashes went. And if he died... someone would notice he was gone. Vincent Price has always been a personal favorite of mine and he gets to go full monty here on a host of victims in this stylized, colorful thriller. For those of you wondering how to pronounce the title, I would have been at a disadvantage myself if I hadn't seen a brief intro to the picture last night on Turner Classics. The host pronounced 'Phibes' like the word 'fives' but with a 'b'. So I thought that was pretty helpful or I'd still be wondering about it.
Murderous Mask: Dr. Hargreaves is done in by a mechanically constricting frog mask that crushes his skull. Phibes’ plan isn’t limited to “wanna play a game”-like constructions. In fact, it’s far more ambitious and fitting with the designs of his own lair: Over-the-top, lavish and utterly surreal. The killer looks to inflict Exodus’ ten plagues upon the medical professionals that failed to save his wife during surgery. That means everything from hail (flash-freezing a man with some kind of Batman villain cold machine) to frogs (crushing a man’s skull with an amphibious mask at a masquerade)—all done with the subtlety of a Lady Gaga performance. To our delight and, occasionally, that of the unapologetically bumbling cops (Peter Jeffrey and Norman Jones are both hilarious) on Phibes’ trail, these murders escalate not only in their display of divine power but in pure hedonism. “Beasts” is kind of a vague plague. What do Phibes and Fuest do? Catapult a brass unicorn head through a victim, who must then be unscrewed from the wall.Dr Anton Phibes, long thought to have died in a car accident, embarks upon a murder spree against the doctors who failed to save the life of his beloved wife. Never Hurt an Innocent: Phibes spares a chauffeur when he could easily kill him. He seems intent on killing only the nine who he considers responsible for Victoria's death. Or Vesalius' son, since Sins of the Father and the Curse of the Firstborn. The Bad Guy Wins: Phibes commits almost all of his murders and then commits suicide in the first film to escape justice and be with his wife in death. Visalius being able to save his son is the only thing that prevents a clean sweep for Phibes. Inspector Trout takes multiple turns at holding the ball, most notably failing to connect the "plague of darkness" with the large, stylized depiction of a SOLAR ECLIPSE on the coffin-for-two Phibes rigged for himself and Victoria.
Great Deal 
New Comment