Dr Phibes Rises Again (1972) – Review

There aren’t too many movie like Robert Fuest’s The Abominable Dr Phibes and anyone who has sampled its psychotropic delights will probably agree with me wholeheartedly. Essentially a fusion of revenge flick, slasher movie and an art deco explosion of unrestrained campness, the movie remains to this day as a true original that feels for all the world that Mario Bava dropped a shitload of acid an decided to make the worlds most flamboyant Saw movie and the finished product contains a near-endless stream of gaudy insanity that has to seen to be believed.
I mean, try taking this little sample on board: Vincent Price plays a mauled, disfigured organ player/theologian whose desire to get revenge on the surgeons who failed to save his wife leads him to kill them all in the manner of the ten plagues of egypt before embalming himself and laying himself to rest with the body of his wife once he feels his job was done. Macabre, bizarre and extraordinarily witty to boot, it would take a maniac to try snd equal such concentrated insanity, but only a year later Feust opted to deliver a sequel that saw the diabolical doctor return with even more screwball plans – but could such eccentric lightning possibly hope to strike twice?
The doctor is in… In fucking sane, that is.

Three years after Dr Anton Phibes vanished after murdering almost the entire surgeon team that fail to save his wife, Victoria, the deranged organ grinder rises once again from the death-like state he put himself in in order to carry out another stage in his whacked-out plan. With his thirst for revenge temporarily sated, he now hopes to transport Victoria’s lifeless body to the long thought mythical River of Life in Egypt in the hope that its magical properties will grant him and his wife enternal life. However, a fairly sizable speed bump slows his roll when he discovers that the ancient papyrus map that will lead him to his destiny has been nicked, he switches back over to full vengence mode to make those responsible pay in a myriad of needlessly complicated murders.
It seems that the culprit is the driven Darius Biederbeck who has been keeping himself alive for centiries, but needs that last, final top up that the River Of Life will grant him and so, armed with Phibes’ map, he leads an expedition to Egypt with his lover, Diana and his assistant in tow. However, Phibes isn’t one to let shit like this go, so after calling on his mute assistant to once again aid him in his unholy endeavors and shipping his lifeless wife, his organ and his clockwork band over to Egypt (only the essentials, eh Anton?), he launches another wave of murders as he picks of Biederbeck’s archaeological team one by one in ever more flamboyant ways. Can the returning Inspector Trout and his exasperated superior, Waverly, actually manage to catch Phibes this time, or will the doctor once again get everything he wants in the most extra way possible.

Visually speaking, Dr Phibes Rises Again certainly is a movie that lives up to its predecessor as it once again goes all out with some staggeringly kitsch set design, some vaudevillian humour and the sight of an extraordinarily pallid Vincent Price mugging magnificently despite the fact that his ghoulish character doesn’t technically have a voice. However, while the titular Phibes certainly has a knack for staving off death despite being embalmed the last go round, he’s not exactly proficient at holding back the law of diminishing returns as his second rise doesn’t prove to be a patch on the original. Returning director Robert Fuest manages to equal the retina searing look of the first film and even serves up a plot that’s arguably more batshit than before that chucks in guff about immortality giving pools of water and an Egyptian archaeological dig run by a man centuries old – however, even though the camp levels are off the scale and we get a triumphant return from Phibes unnerving mechanical band, the Clockwork Wizards, the madness simply just doesn’t stick as well as the first movie.
The main problem are the victims. The first film took the time to introduce Phibes’ targets individually, cast them with British character actors and gave them their own little absurd death vignettes which pushed the boundaries of “creative killing” decades before the likes of Saw or Final Destination. Be it watching Terry-Thomas getting bled dry while watching a stag film or Peter Gilmore get eaten alive by rats while flying a plane, virtually every thing that occured felt staggeringly original and ludicrously surreal. However, the sequel delivers its kills in more of a matter of fact pace, barely introducing anyone and delivering kills that feel less amusing and more laboured.

Sure, we get the sight of John Thaw getting clawed to death by an eagle, or another poor fucker getting crushed within a giant clamp while lying in his bed, but it all really seems to lack the eccentric character of the first film.
It isn’t all bad news, however. While the murders don’t have the same impact as before, they’re at least imaginative with a hulking manservant taken out by a prop phone that sticks a snake shaped spike into one ear and out the other and a man held in place by a golden scorpion statue while real ones scamper into his clothes to sting the living fuck out of him. Elsewhere, the return of Peter Jeffrey’s Inspector Trout and John Cater’s Superintendent Waverly means that that snappy, old school comedy is still present and correct with some killer one liners (Waverly – “I don’t think, I know.” Trout – “I don’t think you know either, sir.”) proving to be as dry as the Egyptian sands themselves and we also get a raft of cameos from the likes of Peter Cushing, Beryl Reid and even the aforementioned Terry-Thomas in a diffrent role to add to that delightful, odd British sense of humor.
Another plus point proves to be the addition of Robert Quarry as the ageless Biederbeck, because if you’re making an unfeasibly camp horror comedy, the only thing that can make it even camper is to hire the man who twice played Liberace-style vampire, Count Yorga to play a major role. It’s actually fascinating for the movie to introduce another, vaguely supernatural character to spa with the ethereal, scene chewing Phibes and while more could have been made from this connection, the movie gives us another belter of an ending that sees Phibes, singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow while punting off down the River Of Life on his wife’s coffin (which doubles as a gondola) while an abandoned Biederbeck experiences some advanced aging as his centuries of life finally catch up with him.

While Fuest failed to fully recapture the concentrated lunacy of the first Phibes, Vincent Price got to revisit a similar concept with far greater success a year later in Douglas Hickox’s Theatre Of Blood that kept the macabre spirit of Phibes alive while allowing the actor to actually speak his lines without the aid of an implant in his characters throat. Still, despite its flaws, Dr Phibes Rises Again rises again fairly adequately even if it has a less firm grasp on its own gaudy insanity.
🌟🌟🌟