The Abominable Dr. Phibes

The Abominable Dr. Phibes is as close to a perfect film as I think cinema in 1971 could possibly aspire to. It features Vincent Price as the Phantom of the Opera-inspired mad comic book supervillain Phibes, who, down below the Earth, holed up in his comic book super villain secret HQ with his clockwork band, his Wurlitzer organ, and the ever-fashionable silent sex kitten Vulnavia (Virginia North), worships at the altar of his long-dead Victoria (Caroline Munro), and plots elaborate deaths for his enemies. And all of his enemies? These were the surgeons who couldn't save Victoria's life.

Phibes is not a conventionally handsome bloke--that is, without his latex "Make Me Look Like Vincent Price in a blonde Beatles wig" face mask, he's a rather hideous old gent, giving Skeletor a run for his money, perhaps. (Yeah, I know he always wore the visor, but you have to figure old Skelly was pretty raw to look at without the Cobra helmet. Oh, wait! I'm confusing "G.I. Joe" and "He-Man." Damn my damn fool foolishness!)

Getting back to it, Phibes is pretty much eternally miffed at the cadre of surgeons (and one nurse) that he sees as stealing the dying Victoria from him. Hence, to that end, he and assistant Vulnavia enact the "Curses of Egypt" straight out of the Bible, dispatching their various victims by vampire bats (don't recall that in the Bible), boils, hail stones, locusts, naturally. Whether this is all Biblical or not is debatable, but it IS entertaining as hell, and in true comic book supervillain fashion, Phibes goes to the most extraordinary and surrealistic lengths to murder each of these twitching honkies, some in their vehicles, some in their beds; one by locking a giant poisoned frog head to him while he's at a party. (Having just watched the movie Forbidden Zone (1978), which features a similar frog head mask, I'm struck by the synchronicity that underpins human affairs. I believe Jung first commented on this, but I've never read very much of him and find such books boring so while I digress, I also decline. Or some such.)

While all of this is going on, the Defective Detective, Mr. Trout (Peter Jeffrey), stumbles around with his underlings and lessers (or bettors?) trying to piece together the revenge modus operandi of the fiendish, silent, Phibes, who talks using a Victrola, his voice coming out of one of those huge, old-fashioned horn speakers they had on those things, that look like blooming wooden flowers. Or some such. (He also drinks through a tube out of the side of his neck. One can readily see why Vulnavia, who has the looks of a fashion model but who always wears a fur babushka cap, suggesting she's his Russian sweetheart, so adores him.)

The film has high camp written into every gorgeous frame--surreal and comic, grotesque and horrific at turns, it features a lot of creepy organ music, old Tin Pan Alley tunes, and Vulnavia doing interpretive dance in dream-like interludes where she wears the hottest 1971 fashions straight from the Paris runways.

And, in between, we have the mad Doctor and Doctor Vesalius (Joseph Cotton) his intended target. At the end, we have an acid bath. And what's a horror film without an acid bath finale?

Created and directed by Bob Feust, and written by Jams Whiton and William Goldstein, this cinematic graphic novel has elements that would later appeal to Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and other folks who helped reshape comic books from being banal cultural ephemera to whatever the hell form of high art they are now considered to be.

There's enough good and dirty fun here for the peanut gallery. What can I say? When Lex Luthor, Count von Cosel, and Erik the Phantom get together to party (on the set of Les Vampires), such genius seems to be the result.

Now I have to go pump embalming fluid into myself, in preparation for my eernal repose. But not, sadly, with Victoria, Vulnavia, or even Vinnie P.

Wonk, wonk.

The Abominable Dr Phibes 1971

***

Cult Films and Midnight Movies

"From High Art to Low Trash" Volume 1 (Paperback Edition)

By

Tom Baker

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