Dr. Phibes Rises Again

Cult Films and Midnight Movies

"From High Art to Low Trash" Vol 1

By

Tom Baker

Dr. Phibes Rises Again stars Vincent Price in the Bob Feust-created surrealist horror comedy paen to Phantom of the Opera, James Bond, "Batman" (television series), and even Les Vampires (1915). Phibes is a comic book character straight out of pulp horror fiction, his face a prosthetic mask covering a hideous, acid-scoured visage that looks more decrepit corpse than human. His lips never move, and Price's priceless intonations are heard through a giant Victrola-like device with a huge, old-fashioned flower-shaped speaker.

Phibes lives, or lived beneath the city of London proper, in a subterranean lair of a secret supervillain, with his clockwork band, his gorgeous silent assistant Vulnavia (Valli Kemp), and his undead wife, Victoria, who sleeps in suspended animation or something in a glass coffin; recalling the old ghost story of Skiles Test, from Indianapolis, who kept HIS wife in a glass coffin, and tried to resurrect her via weird rituals involving ghostly blue light. Some fellows, it seems, just CANNOT let go.

I cannot remember the exact plot points of The Abominable Dr. Phibes currently, and I don't feel like looking them up. And it isn't necessary for the sake of this review. Phibes went into suspended animation or something with Victoria at the end of the first film, in a twin coffin made for two little (dead) love birds. He's back, with Vulnavia, to claim the papyrus that leads to a "River of Life" (a phrase pregnant with symbolic meaning) that offers eternal youth. Biederbeck (Robert Quarry), an eccentric and unlikable millionaire, currently owns it--he's been staving off his great age for centuries with a potion but is quite charged about this "eternal river" in Egypt deal that kept all the pharaohs young (although it didn't do much for Tutankhamen). His gal pal is Diana, played by the astonishingly beautiful Fiona Lewis.

Phibes goes around killing in strange, elaborate ways. He sends a golden snake through the ear of an actor ("Cheng," played by Milton Reid) that looks as if he was borrowed from a James Bond movie (after presenting us with a mechanical cobra and a real one, each crawling eerily across a billiards table), and kills another man using a seat with spiked armrests. (When the man tries to get the key to "unlock" these torturous restraints, he breaks open a vase--only to discover it's crawling with deadly scorpions.)

Another man is killed by a jet stream of blasted sand shot from the dashboard of his car. Yet another is placed in a giant bottle.

Phibes uses the most elaborate means, it seems, to accomplish the smallest tasks. According to Little Buddy AI, this is called a "perfectionist." But it doesn't seem to me to be exactly the same thing. Regardless, Phibes is quite the oversized torture and execution toy inventor. And he has a groovy mirrored hallway in his weird underground comic book lair, too.

Inspector Trout and Superintendent Waverley (Peter Jeffrey and John Cater, respectively) two bumbling Scotland Yarddies brought in for comic relief, follow Phibes to Egypt, where the entire merry crew experience more murders of the ancient Biederbeck's men. Trout and Waverley become lost in the desert. Meanwhile, Diana (Fiona is kidnapped by Phibes and we proceed to the final breathtaking climax.

It's all good horrible black humor and Batman-style supervillainous fun. I mean, what can one say about a maniac in a prosthetic mask that plays a mean organ, eats in the side of his neck, and yet is always in the company of two beautiful women (of course, one of them IS seemingly dead).

This movie is more fun than should be allowed in one sitting. It's a mad monster comic book dream of the sort of wild, surreal images and asurdist over-the-top murder methods that made the "Batman" and James Bond epics so entertaining. But, with the slow and considerate pacing of an eerily creeping, if humorous dream. So tongue-in-cheek you can taste the tartar through the side of your neck.

Finito! It is finished.

Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972)