THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES
I'm all out of witless review titles!

  Somewhere between House Of Wax and Theater Of Blood lies The Abominable Dr. Phibes, which strikes me (despite the acclaim its received) as a rather lackluster Vincent Price effort, but still, hey, it's Price, and how lackluster can that be?  Even middling Price is gold to me, guys.

Price stars as the doctor of the title, a genius of clockwork assembly and acoustic invention.  He keeps his own life-sized fully-clockworked band at home to entertain him.  And he's killing other doctors, using increasingly elaborate methods of execution (he even sets up a hailstorm for one guy - localized entirely inside his car!).  As Scotland Yard (very slowly) closes in, his method and his motive start to become clear.

Price, unfortunately, doesn't actually get anything to say until 35 minutes into the film, and even then, he does it with his mouth closed and a microphone of sorts held up to his neck, like some twisted version of an emphysemiac.  His methods reach rather ludicrous heights of elaboration, but that's part of the film's charm, though I'm at a loss to explain one scene where Phibes incapacitates a chauffeur with a Vulcan nerve pinch (which my brother and father and I always referred to as the "Spockbite").

The tone of the film is grisly but mostly comic, as I said, somewhere between House Of Wax and Theater Of Blood.  There are moments where whether the intent is horror or humor is not clear (such as one scene involving a big brass unicorn), but the ambiguity seems to work in their favor; my favorite laughs are the ones where I've just been successfully shocked with something anyway.

Though the cinematography makes everything look like it's been colorized from black-and-white, the costuming and set design in Phibes' abode make for some weird and wonderful sights.  So, even though Price's dialogue is mostly restricted to crackly soliloquies muttered through an electronic gizmo, at least the scenes there are fun to look at too.

Directed by Robert Fuest (who would go on to helm the sequel a year later), The Abominable Dr. Phibes unfortunately gives away a major, climactic plot development right there on the cover.  Regrettable, but not something that couldn't be seen some ways away.  Perhaps not gushingly so like I usually would a Price film, I'd recommend this nonetheless.  Also known as Dr. Phibes and The Curse Of Dr. Phibes.

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