Review #747: 'The Abominable Dr. Phibes' (1971)

Dr. Phibes (Vincent Price) is quite the talented man. Not only is he a doctor, he is also a successful concert organist and, by the looks of things, some sort of mechanical engineer. He was also married to the beautiful Caroline Munro (who goes uncredited) until Phibes suffered serious facial injuries in a car crash on his way to see his seriously ill wife, who ended up dying on the operating table. Believed dead but instead in hiding and seriously pissed, Phibes begins to hunt down and imaginatively murder the nine doctors he holds responsible for failing to save his wife, building up to Dr. Versalius (Joseph Cotten), in the style of the Ten Plagues of Egypt from the Old Testament.

It would be easy and indeed lazy to label Dr. Phibes as camp. With it's wildly colourful sets and outlandish performances (Price is wonderfully over-the-top), this shares more with the kitschy futuristic feel of A Clockwork Orange, which came out the same year, than, say, the original Batman TV series. All realism is left firmly at the door, as we are introduced to Phibes, sat hunched and wildly bashing his organ (no euphemism intended), in the middle of what appears to be some kind of macabre ceremony. Left unable to speak following his accident, Phibes has also created a device which, when inserted into his neck, allows him to speak to his dead embalmed wife. It's deliciously free-spirited, never allowing something like logic to get in the way of fun, acid-trip horror.

It shares a lot in terms of narrative with the superior Theatre of Blood (1973) - which is often labelled Dr. Phibes 3 by it's fans - so the film is little more than murder after murder. But it's the inventiveness and the sheer audacity of the set-pieces that makes the movie so much fun. We have death by bats, a doctor who sits back and lets Phibes drain him entirely of his blood, skull-crushing-by-frog-mask, and a face eaten by locusts. There's something morbidly fascinating in watching the predictability of the events unfold, and the murder scenes provide buckets of black humour, in a tamer and more Carry On-style than Theatre. Price is unsurprisingly a joy to watch, while Cotten is surprisingly game. One of the wildest horror films ever made.


Directed by: Robert Fuest
Starring: Vincent Price, Joseph Cotten, Peter Jeffrey, Virginia North
Country: UK/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #43: 'Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte' (1964)

In 1962, when the careers of acting heavyweights such as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Olivia De Havilland were beginning to subside as the years took their toll, director Robert Aldrich directed Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, a story of sibling jealousy and sadism that saw Davis and Crawford go head to head. The film was notorious not only for it's brilliance, but for it's genuine rivalry between the film's two leads. The film was a success, and unwittingly gave birth to a new genre that has since become known as 'hagspolitation' or 'psycho-biddy thrillers', a splurge of films that usually portrayed a psychotic older woman played by a 1940-50's superstar. Davis and Crawford were the key players in the sub-genre, and they were both cast by Altman in his next film, Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, only for Crawford to drop out due to 'illness', when in reality it was because she just couldn't take Davis' bullying and general nasty behaviour. She was replaced by De Havilland, and although the film doesn't come near to capturing the greatness of Baby Jane, it is still a nice little shocker.

Beginning with a shocking murder that sees a married man who is having an affair with Charlotte (Davis) have his arm and head hacked off with a huge cleaver, the film jumps forward four decades, where the ageing Charlotte lives alone in her giant mansion that is being torn down by city developers. Haunted by the murder of her former lover (for which she may or may not have been the culprit), Charlotte is losing her mind when her cousin Miriam (De Havilland) comes to stay to try and convince her to leave before she is arrested by the developers for failing to leave her home. What follows is Charlotte's fast decent into insanity, but is she being played and manipulated by people after her vast fortune?

The film is a solid horror film with some genuine shocks and extreme gore for its day. Of course, the ever-reliable Bette Davis is superb as the squeaky-voice southern gal seemingly with the mind of an infant. Although the film works well as both a Southern gothic horror and as a thriller, the film doesn't have the intensity to last out the 2 hours and 15 minute running time and slightly outstays his welcome. But their is solid support from Joseph Cotten, an actor who has never been recognised enough for his excellent body of work, and Agnes Moorehead, another main player in the genre.


Directed by: Robert Aldrich
Starring: Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie