meathookcinema Vincent Price's Dr Phibes avenges the death of his wife by bumping off the culprits with each murder having a biblical connection. Very camp, very funny and very unsettling- this is one of Price's best just like Witchfinder General and the Poe films he also made with Roger Corman. Check out Phibes' clockwork band- one of the eeriest things committed to celluloid. Also check out the classic art deco decors and groovier surroundings that capture the early 70s so fantastically. Caroline Munro appears but only as photos of Phibes' tragic dead wife.

classicsoncall Vincent Price has always been a personal favorite of mine and he gets to go full monty here on a host of victims in this stylized, colorful thriller. For those of you wondering how to pronounce the title, I would have been at a disadvantage myself if I hadn't seen a brief intro to the picture last night on Turner Classics. The host pronounced 'Phibes' like the word 'fives' but with a 'b'. So I thought that was pretty helpful or I'd still be wondering about it.The story line borrows an interesting concept from the Biblical 'Ten Curses of the Pharoahs', as the title character, portrayed by Price, begins to dispatch a team of doctors who failed to save the life of his wife during an operation some years earlier. The attack on the first victim brought to mind a 1959 Vincent Price programmer simply titled 'The Bat', in which a fiend unleashes a bat as his calling card when he commits his evil deeds. Phibes' other murders are fairly creative as well, the head shrinker who got his head shrunk was kind of unique (you'll have to see it for yourself). And here's something you don't think about - it's one thing to learn the body contains about eight pints of blood, but to see it lined up on a shelf in bottles is kind of eye opening. Poor Dr. Longstreet.Well I think Vincent Price fans ought to have a good amount of fun with this flick. The picture borrows concepts from a couple of Roger Corman's films - 1959's "A Bucket of Blood" and 1960's "The Little Shop of Horrors". Stylistically, I couldn't help thinking of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", more so for the weirdness of the set design and effusive use of color throughout. One thing you might have to get used to is watching Dr. Phibes express himself without using his mouth, the voice is clearly that of Vincent Price, but in keeping with his diabolical character, it sounds like it was run through a synthesizer.

SanteeFats Vincent Price plays the macabre Doctor Phibes. He is a living corpse who is out for revenge on those he holds responsible for his wife's death on the operating table. There are nine he holds to blame, eight doctors and a nurse. One by one they die by strange and varied ways. All are curses from the ten Biblical plagues of the Old Testament. Eight are killed by those various means. The last to be alive is Joseph Cotton playing the lead surgeon Dr. Vesalius. He is called to the house of Phibes to save his son by operating on him for a key that will unlock the son's collar and the gurney before acid will drop on Vesalius's son and kill him. Vesalius conducts the operation in time and moves his son from harm. As this happens Phibes, thinking he has succeeded in his final revenge, goes to the vault where he has his wife's body, inserts needles into his arms, lays down with the body, and is drained of blood while embalming fluid enters. As the police leave they wonder about the final curse, that of darkness. Well the lights go out before they exit the building but no one further is harmed. A fairly good movie all in all.

AaronCapenBanner Vincent Price is diabolically amusing as Dr. Anton Phibes, who is systematically murdering the nine doctors he blames for screwing up his wife's operation, resulting in her death. Phibes, a man of seemingly limitless resources, cunning, and patience, concocts a merciless scheme of using the ten biblical plagues to exact his vengeance, and though he is relentlessly pursued by the authorities, he always is one step ahead, leading to a self-created climax involving the playing of an organ and "Over The Rainbow"! Not to be taken seriously, film is a bit too grisly and violent to really work as a dark comedy, and too campy to work as straight horror, but nonetheless is a much remembered cult picture, and followed by a sequel.