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.
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.