Nine Killed You, Nine Shall Die - The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971)

As a married man who has gone through his own medical dramas, there’s something about The Abominable Dr. Phibes that sets a particularly high standard for me. After watching this film, I now highly expect that, as and when something ever happens to me, my husband will take on the Vincent Price role and avenge my death.

Them’s the fucking rules, peeps.

Such is the somewhat beautiful premise of this film, a camp and silly story that is very indicative of its age. First released in 1971, the film plays with those elements of camp, keeping its tongue firmly in cheek throughout. Thankfully, it’s coming from a time where that camp wasn’t always screamed at and forced upon its audience, and works poignantly well within this narrative.

That’s right, I described a film featuring Vincent Price as camp and silly, but somewhat restrained?

In honesty, there is much to be said about The Abominable Dr. Phibes that may not have aged well; little of that is to do with the film, but rather the narrative itself, a somewhat messy affair that tries to include too much into ninety-minutes. Such is a time-frame that never really gives either its narrative or its characters a chance to grow or develop and with that in mind, some of The Abominable Dr. Phibes plays too much like a silly Carry On movie that wants its audience to react, laugh and move on to another episodic scene.

But this film also wants an air of heart and understanding, an air that wants its audience associating as much with its villains and its heroes.

This is a problem as the film isn’t entirely sure who is meant to be our hero, nor how it wants its audience to react. Are we meant to be rooting for our villain? Or are we embracing a world of torture porn in a fashion long before the phrase got used? (Don’t get me wrong, I know it still existed; maybe it just didn’t always have Vincent Price’s name associated with the word ‘porn.’ You’re welcome for that mental image)

Price plays the titular Dr Phibes, a doctor whose education is in theology and music rather than medicine; using this within the title of the film, this usage of the word and title as a ‘doctor’ is weird given that medical doctors (and other medical staff) are the victims in this narrative. With that in mind, one can’t help but feel that there may be some sort of powerful statement in terms of where this narrative goes.

Phibes is a somewhat unapproachable character, something that works both very well and terribly within this narrative in opposing breaths. Phibes begins the movie unseen, shown applying make-up and a wig, and has no traditional dialogue throughout (when Phibes speaks, he attaches a chord to his neck, his voice heard from a device and with no movement from his mouth.) Such is a somewhat inhuman design, a facade between Phibes and the audience that stops us from truly interacting; it’s a statement that works well within the narrative, allowing Phibes to emerge as the villain of the piece.

But in the same breath, he is too talented and enjoyable to watch to create any sense of fear or dread.

By surviving in this middle ground, Phibes’s status as the villain of our movie is problematic; our main police character, Inspector Trout (Peter Jeffrey) has no true sense of authority or power, (the film going out of its way to undermine what power he does have), while our medical Doctor Visalius (Joseph Cotton) is full of the ego of a businessman. Both characters and their portrayals add to the film’s sense of camp, challenging the audience to look at this story in its own right, rather than a story of heroes and villains.

Such is the heart of The Abominable Dr. Phibes, a film with such love at its heart that it becomes difficult to review or watch, not as a camp horror of its time, but rather a classical Greek tragedy that plays in romantic fashion. Our not-at-all-authoritative policemen find a series of elaborate murders, the only links being that the victims had worked on Phibes’ wife before her death. But of course, there’s no way that Phibes himself could be involved in these attacks, following his tragic death while returning to London to see her on her deathbed.

But we all know that’s not the case, don’t we?

Because such a narrative is told through authoritative figures, our police officers and our doctors are allowed to have voices, while our broken antihero is unable to speak. It stands on Price’s body language and the direction of Robert Fuest to establish Phibes as this romantic soul, one that the film’s narrative wants us to relate to; Phibes is charming, dashing and romantic, while what little we see of his victims as individuals contain an uncomfortable air that screams of class and privilege, with both Phibes and the film going out of their way to ensure that the audience do not relate.

Seeing this film as a Greek tragedy is all the more appropriate in the film’s closure, with Phibes becoming somewhat more powerful within the narrative; the final act gives him opportunity to move and “speak” with our police and doctors, justifying himself and his actions.

In blaming the doctors and nurses for his wife’s passing, Phibes, with his heartache and anger, becomes a fully realised and very approachable character, with an element that wants the film’s audience to embrace and adore that.

The film’s denouement, with Phibes threatening Veslius’s son (in a scene that feels like it deserves credit from the murder-porn Saw franchise), plays beautifully from this heartache. Similarly, such closure is romantically beautiful, as Phibes buries himself in a coffin next to his beloved wife. It’s a coffin that closes just as our powerlessly weak authoritative figures arrive, and not only does the scene play somewhat like the final moments of The Phantom Of The Opera (both the book, and the musical, that hasn’t been created yet) but Phibes’ actions provide something of a literal deus-ex-machina, locking himself and his wife in the same grave, one that carries a symbol of the sun in a fashion that feels wholly drawn from Medea’s physical departure with the sun-god after dealing with her own grief and anger.

Such is a powerful, and somewhat beautiful closure for the narrative. But it doesn’t wholly work; Price’s camp villainy is reminiscent of the 1960’s Batman TV-show and I can’t help but wonder if the film could have either embraced that camp further, allowing Price to become a true villain, or else gone with a smaller number of deaths in order to make this characters somewhat more forgivable.

I wasn’t aware when watching that The Abominable Dr Phibes had itself a sequel the year later, with attempts to build this into a full franchise. And some part of me wants to revisit this (by which, I mean do more than just watch the fucking sequel.) I like seeing grief and anger portrayed on the screen in this air of horror and revenge, and all the more when played out in such a lovably camp fashion.

Camp horror with a real sense of heart; what’s not to love about it?