It helps to have rather a loose grasp of sanity when it comes to crafting a horror oddity, but when it comes to the kind of absinthe fueled, art deco blowout of Robert Fuest’s gaudily decorated The Abominable Dr. Phibes, you’ll be hard pressed to find a revenge flick more off its trolley than this.
Anyone on the lookout for straight scares or crafted tension may be incredibly bamboozled by a viewing of what could possibly be one of the most eccentric horror movies ever made, but you have to understand that’s not what Dr. Phibes is really all about. While it certainly takes on the creative killing mantle that eventually got picked up so eagerly by the Saw franchise, it’s mood, evocative set design and a frenzied sense of the absurd that keeps the not-so-good doctor ticking and the result is a multicoloured, mardi gras of the macabre that truly has to be seen to believed. So strike up the mechanical band, allow the titular doctor to prepare his organ (steady now) and prepare to take a plunge into a serving of 70s horror that isn’t afraid to go totally nuts.
After a number of prominent members of the medical profession turn up dead thanks to some bizarrely complicated acts of premeditated murder, Inspector Trout of Scotlamd Yard has the rather unenviable task of trying to work out what the hell is going on. With one victim killed by a swarm of fatal bee stings, another drained dry in his bedroom by an attack of vampire bats and yet another crushed to death in an elaborate frog mask at a fancy dress party, cracking the case certainly isn’t going to be easy – but Trout couldn’t possibly hope to dream about how weird things can still possibly get.
After the next victim is found drained of all his blood, a clue is discovered which eventually unlocks the whole sordid enterprise and it seems that the perpetrator is none other than famous concert organist Dr. Albert Phibes who was presumed dead in a car crash the Swizz Alps as he raced to be at the side of his dying wife Victoria. However, after she died in surgery, the mutilated Phibes – who has doctorates in both music and theology – has vowed vengence upon the nine doctors he holds responsible for his wife’s passing and with the aid of his silent assistant, Vulnavia, he kills each victim using the Ten Plagues of Egypt as his terrible inspiration.
As the elegant maniac works his way through his flamboyant shit list, Inspector Trout manages to figure out enough to realise that Phibes’ final target will be the original head of his wife’s surgical team, Dr. Vesalius and working backwards from there manages to place the surviving targets under some form of protection. But Phibes is to canny, to intelligent and just too batshit to be stopped now and as his acts of vengence get evermore complex, it seems that he’s destined to accomplish his terrible goal.
When stripped down to its basic principles, The Abominable Dr Phibes shares an impressive amount of DNA with any other film that sees a talented yet bitter madman enforcing his twisted ideals on morality on those he considers corrupt and while I’ve already mentioned Saw earlier on, the comparison holds up pretty well – if Jigsaw was less twisted champion of life and more Liberace. But the camp levels get pushed so hard and the lighting, tone and humor are dragged so far into the realms of the vaudevillian, that it often feels more like Brian De Palma’s gonzo horror musical, Phantom Of Paradise, than anything more brutal.
You see, to get the best results from Phibes, you really have to embrace the chaos and just accept the wackiness – and that way you’ll find yourself entranced at the strangely magnificent details the film wields. For example, the there’s Vincent Price’s Phibes himself; a flashy, cape wearing, skull-faced Phantom type, who wears a prosthetic face, speaks through a plug in device in his neck that allows him to project his ruined vocal chords through nearby gamophones and endlessly vents his frustrations via his organ playing while accompanied by a wind-up, robotic band called the Dr. Phibes Clockwork Wizards. Why does he have all this stuff? Who exactly is Vulnavia? Why is is methods of murder so damn poetic? The questions don’t matter, the point is you just go with its go for baroque style and prog rock visuals much in the same way you’d treat it if Dario Argento made a Carry On film.
Also needlessly and hilariously extra is the manner that Phibes executes his victims that are about as easy to swallow as an American football, but devilishly fun all the same. Some are cheesy and tongue in cheek (those are clearly fruit bats in that opening scene), some are trippy (the frog mask one is particularly avant-garde) and some are slightly chilling (the removing of Terry Thomas’ blood is a genuinely unnerving concept), but all of them push the bizarre envelope as hard as they can. I mean, can you name another film where a pilot is eaten alive by rats mid-flight, a man is frozen solid in his own car or a nurse has he sleeping face covered with liquefied sprout juice in order to entice a bunch of locusts to eat her head? Didn’t think so.
Of course, if you hadn’t figured out by now, Robert Fuest’s Abominable Dr Phibes is a comedy, but rather that trying to score big laughs with prat falls and slapstick, it instead uses its morbid delights to amuse by confusion, not unlike a more essorteric Monty Python sketch, a more experimental Spike Milligan gag or even the type of mundanely surrealistic chuckles you’d get from The League Of Gentlemen or Inside No. 9. Yes, we get more broad strokes from the likes of Peter Jeffrey’s long suffering Trout while superiors fail to remember his name, or Terry Thomas oggling at a stag film before his imminent demise, but the bulk of Phibes’ funnies come from just how fucked up and trippy the filmmakers can stretch the weirdness. Take the finale for example; apparently satisfied with the carnage he’s wrought, Phibes decides to call it all a day and finally go to join his wife in the great beyond. However, as the Dr. is nothing short of being the consummate drama queen, he elects to do it by taking his place beside his wife’s preserved body and then proceeds to calmly have himself embalmed while “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” plays over the end credits leaving the survivors none the wiser about anything they’ve just experienced.
It’s the perfect visual for a movie that proves to be fiercely unlike anything you’d get today, and even though Price himself not only popped back up for the similarly barmy, Dr. Phibes Rises Again and the spiritual follow up (and even camper) Theatre Of Blood, the original, Abominable Dr. Phibes still stands as one of the most distinctive, trippy, freakouts of the 70s – and that’s bloody saying something.
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