The Abominable Dr. Phibes (Robert Fuest, 1971)

 

Vincent Price was an undeniable king of horror films. His acting, his voice, his body posture, his facial characteristics, add to the making of one horror films' most iconic personas. The Abominable Dr. Phibes, one of his most famous films and a major cult classic is something to admire really. It's absolutely astonishing art deco set, it's darkness and morbidness and the acting of Vincent Price, make the movie one of the most distinguished horror movies of the early 70s. I still remember being taken completely by the tone and atmosphere of the film, where the set plays like another character of film, giving a highly eccentric flavor to the movie. The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a story of revenge, exactly as Vincent Price's later film Theatre Of Blood. A vengeance most fantasizing, most wicked and most demonic. But somewhere there, where you are feeling that Dr. Phibes is one of the ultimate villains that you have seen on the screen, you feel a strange and morbid sympathy for him. You feel that there is a certain allure from him towards you. You understand him. He might be a killer, but he has a... "secret" cause according to his agenda.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a movie that really takes you back to another, slightly forgotten era of cinema, where the special affects were simpler maybe, but they had an aroma of creativity. They had a flavor of utter sensibility. They weren't the harsh, horrific, nightmarish special effects that we are used in contemporary cinema, no, they had something delicate, something that comes from the heart, from the soul, something that can travel your mind in a way that we have forgotten today. The Abominable Dr. Phibes is artistic, creative, it doesn't follow the rule which says "let's make a movie, regardless with what". No, that movie has taste, has class, has charisma, has that characteristic that makes the film a joy for the soul and the brain. As a major fan of Vincent Price I can say that this is one of his best movies, a movie that captures the essence of the human troubled soul, a movie that works with every aspect of filmmaking in order to make the spectator get really attached to the movie, get really inside the movie. The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a British film, of a delicacy, that you can find in very few films. You have to watch it, you have to love it, you have to fucking own it.