SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Grimossfer Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

GL84 Following a strange rash of deaths, a police inspector realizes that the deaths were all of the men were in the employment of a doctor who let a distinguished professor's wife die in their care and sets out to stop him from continuing his plan of revenge against them.This here is a classic by any means of the word, and easily one of Price's best films. Among those reasons is the films' reason for being as perhaps one of Vincent Price's best-known roles, and for good reason. This is mainly due to the humanity Price brings to the role as he is a far more human killer and we feel for him more than we would some faceless killer in other films modeled after this one that it could've degenerated into. With Price known mostly for playing the maniacal villain with a sense of humor, this one takes the past films up a notch with it being over-the-top campy. This is mainly due to Price hamming it up in a more serious performance instead of his usual joke-cracking, but he even gets into it a little with some pretty funny sequences at times, from him directing the band of mechanical objects to him waxing lyrical to the audience of inanimate objects with hilarious lines of dialog. There are others, from a ballroom dancing sequence to the interplay with the police officers which steals the comedy from most of the film. Even without it being campy, there are some pretty genuinely creepy scenes due to the method of death in the film. It is quite original the way the killing is done in here, and basing them in the order of the plagues of Ancient Egypt is a brilliant stroke of originality. That allows for some ingenious and flexible deaths, as they aren't restrained to the usual axe and knife deaths with the rather creative setups throughout here that truly show his genius in full- force. The fact that this is also a very fast moving film is another great factor, as the film never really seems to be slow or dull, and something is always happening. We happen upon the first murder at the very opening of the film, and the film doesn't really slow down leading into the grand finale that attempts to recreate the exact setup that sent him on the rampage in the first place. There are only a few relatively unimportant things to bring up here. The first is also one of it's greatest strengths in the camp factor. Even though it makes the film more fun if it's camp, the seriousness of some of the events makes it seem a little out-of-place. The deaths are played seriously while the rest of the film is played for laughs, and the difference tone is quite apparent in some cases. The other factor is Phibes himself. One of Price's best instruments is his voice, and here he has it modified by a special instrument attached to his throat. Without the fluctuating tones he uses in his other roles, that great instrument isn't as effective here. Otherwise, there isn't much wrong here.Today's Rating/PG-13: Violence.

Basse Nasstrom Much like many evenings before, I felt the lacking of a great feature film to engage my prefrontal cortex. And since my go-to tends to be horror and horror only, I decided to change things up a little bit with a Horror/Comedy. Usually I try to stay away from this rather ambiguous mix of genres, but since I've got a weak spot for 70's horror, I gave it a shot. And boy, am I glad I did.From the very beginning there is something about the setting of the scene and the tension clouding up the room in its own silent way that reminded me of "The Holy Mountain", by the great Alejandro Jodorowsky. A somewhat strange comparison you might think, but it doesn't strike me as strange at all; maybe it was a favorable way for directors to approach the arts in the 70's. Whatever the common denominator might be, the opening scene presented, in my opinion, an undertone of similar vibes as that of "The Holy Mountain"; which is a good thing, of course. Overall, the film isn't all that scary, I must say. But that doesn't take away the fact that it is a great film. And also I wonder how scary a horror/comedy can get without it being a straight up horror film. Anyhow, even if it doesn't make my hair stand up on end it is still a great horror story. The film is an impeccable mix of the two genres; it's predominantly horror, with the occasional (and well placed) joke making an entrance when you least expect it.The comic elements sneak up from behind and grab you by surprise. At times, the jokes enter on such uninvited note that it really catches you off guard and make you burst into laughter. It is really my type of humor - black comedy. Compared to today's black comedy, it might appear somewhat modest, naturally; although how modest it might seem today, I'm sure that it was all but in the 70's. Overall, "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" is a film worth your while. If you enjoy a solid 1970's horror flick and at the same time don't mind the occasional laughter, you can't go wrong with this one. Even if you tend to avoid horror/comedy films, like me, I recommend that you give this one a go - it's timeless.

Hitchcoc I don't know how this stacks up in the annals of successful horror films. The plot is strained as a man seeks revenge on every participant in the operating room where his wife died. There are nine of them. Nobody does painful angst better than Vincent Price. He is Dr. Phibes and his performance is the be all and end all of this film. He is bitter and morose and cackles and fumes as he does in one after another. The ways that he murders these people are creative and almost masterful. He is an artist and a musician and he manages to strike a chord with all of us. If you love Vincent price, don't back away from this film.

mark.waltz If Dr. Philbes is a surgeon, I'm staying as far away from that hospital as I can get. But don't be fooled by the title: Philbes is a doctor of music, a doctor of theology, a doctor of culture. He's eccentric, passionate, humorous, dapper and sophisticated. He's also creative. When he gets a plan into his head, he takes it to the extreme, whether creating a band made out of plastic men, planning his wife's funeral, or killing the doctors he blames for her death and the accident that left him morbidly scarred. So between the birds and the bees, frog heads that crush skulls, a veggie head mold that makes a delicious lunch for locusts and all sorts of other inventive ways of torturous end of life methods, he gets an "A" in the school of evil creativity. It's so creative, in fact, that for actor Vincent Price, who plays this part, he not only got a sequel, but a sort of unofficial remake where the victims were changed from doctors to theater critics and his profession from well-rounded doctor of whatever to ham actor thriving on Shakespeare.Dr. Philbes doesn't thrive on Shakespeare here. He lives through the science of the ancient Egyptians and the tribulations brought to them when pharaoh didn't let Moses and his people go free. It's ironically another reference to "The Ten Commandments" for the over-the-top Price who played Baka, the chief master builder in that classic Cecil B. de Mille epic and later his appearance in "The Story of Mankind" where his satanistic attorney utilized references to the ancient Egyptians and Moses himself. Then, there's his campy performance in "Queen of the Nile" where he looked like a female impersonator playing Jeanne Crain's high priest father. "Dr. Philbes" is obviously meant to be camp, and I ain't referring to Camp Snoopy.British character players make cameo appearances as his victims, the most famous of which is gap toothed Terry-Thomas who was so memorable in this that he got to play another role in the sequel. Hugh Griffith, too, plays different characters in both films, a slightly larger one in the second, but here seen as a Rabbi who confirms the necklace Price puts around each of the necks of his victims as a Hebrew representation of the plagues of Moses which God put on the Egyptians for not obeying his word. Joseph Cotten co-stars here as the head surgeon during Price's wife's operation which presumably killed her, and Price's revenge against him is the most evil of all.The gory death scenes will certainly gross some people out. Fortunately, watching this right before bedtime, I didn't have nightmares, but I did have to turn my head away a bunch of times. Obviously meant to represent the art-deco style of the 1930's with its choices of designs and music, it is attractive to look at and definitely creative, but I hesitate in calling this a masterpiece because it seems to take great pleasure in its mean-spiritedness even if its tongue is firmly in its cheek. I also have to say that this film didn't warrant a sequel, and that comparisons to older horror movies is quite inevitable.