cult film freak: CLASSIC HORROR VIBES REVIVING 'THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES'

Virginia North in THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES Year: 1971 Rating: ****1/2

For American International Pictures, THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES was a hit, and for star Vincent Price, a comeback... despite the fact he never followed it up with anything quite as good and, for a comparably modern body count horror still holding onto the antique Victorian style within then present-day England, the titular Phibes gets severe revenge by killing off an assortment of who we later learn are fellow doctors that had...

Well that's something that shouldn't be spoiled despite every summary doing so, particularly since the movie deliberately plays out with that very twist concealed... while each and every Biblical Plague death carried-out, from a man in a suffocating frog mask to killer bats to bloodletting and being frozen alive in an automobile, is unique and spellbinding... and a lot of bloody fun with the kind of class that Price, only able to speak through a contraption that makes the audience basically adhere to an expository narration, pulls off with ease...

Vincent Price in THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES

There are three other important central characters in token investigator Peter Jeffrey, shown at Scotland Yard trying to figure out each murder right after each murder, making PHIBES both Gothic horror and police procedural... each sharing a fair amount of British dark humor, so even the extremely serious crimes don't feel extremely serious...

Then there's second-billed American-import Joseph Cotten, the "final girl" of sophisticated males... his only shortcoming being a cheesy effeminate son while Phibes, vainly dreaming of his own dead-preserved wife living once again, has a mute moll in the gorgeous Virginia North as Vulvania, ghostly present at every crime scene and the keeper of Phibes CLOCKWORK ORANGE-style interior manner with a mechanical band (not so ironically deemed CLOCKWORK WIZARDS), injecting science-fiction into the classy classic horror.