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The Abominable Dr. Phibes juggles horror and humor, but under the picture's campy façade, there's genuine pathos brought poignantly to life through Price's performance.
All Critics (36) | Top Critics (4) | Fresh (31) | Rotten (5) | DVD (6)
A former art director, Fuest gives the film a preposterously lush, Ken Russell-ish look. Highly enjoyable. Oct 19, 2016 | Full Review…
A former art director, Fuest gives the film a preposterously lush, Ken Russell-ish look. Highly enjoyable.
Dave Kehr
High-camp horror with its tongue firmly in its gruesomely deformed cheek, this British oddity features Vincent Price in one of his most memorable roles. Nov 14, 2014 | Rating: 4/5
High-camp horror with its tongue firmly in its gruesomely deformed cheek, this British oddity features Vincent Price in one of his most memorable roles.
Wendy Ide
Anachronistic period horror musical camp fantasy is a fair description, loaded with comedic gore of the type that packs theatres and drives child psychologists up the walls. Mar 26, 2009 | Full Review…
Anachronistic period horror musical camp fantasy is a fair description, loaded with comedic gore of the type that packs theatres and drives child psychologists up the walls.
Variety Staff
Often amusing, occasionally sickening, always impressive for the imaginative Art Deco sets, it's pretty flatly directed. Jun 24, 2006 | Full Review…
Often amusing, occasionally sickening, always impressive for the imaginative Art Deco sets, it's pretty flatly directed.
Geoff Andrew
The humour is camp, the set decorations are art deco gothic and the editing is ropy, but Price's performance suggests that, underlying the madness, there is a real and damaged human being who deserves your support Oct 19, 2016 | Full Review…
The humour is camp, the set decorations are art deco gothic and the editing is ropy, but Price's performance suggests that, underlying the madness, there is a real and damaged human being who deserves your support
Film4 Staff
No film can be all bad which opens in a vast Art Deco chamber... with Vincent Price, masked, cloaked and hooded, rising out of the floor at the keyboard of a Wurlitzer organ playing Cole Porter melodies. Oct 19, 2016 | Full Review…
No film can be all bad which opens in a vast Art Deco chamber... with Vincent Price, masked, cloaked and hooded, rising out of the floor at the keyboard of a Wurlitzer organ playing Cole Porter melodies.
Christopher Hudson
A delightfully goofy horror film. Oct 19, 2016 | Rating: 3/5 | Full Review…
A delightfully goofy horror film.
A sardonic wink, back at The Phantom of the Opera and ahead toward Phantom of the Paradise, with The Avengers as structure and plenty of Franju in the mix. Oct 19, 2016 | Full Review…
A sardonic wink, back at The Phantom of the Opera and ahead toward Phantom of the Paradise, with The Avengers as structure and plenty of Franju in the mix.
Fernando F. Croce
There's camp to spare -- check out the doc's house band -- but there's also plenty of innovation on display, to say nothing of ample amounts of effective humor. Oct 31, 2013 | Rating: 3.5/4 | Full Review…
There's camp to spare -- check out the doc's house band -- but there's also plenty of innovation on display, to say nothing of ample amounts of effective humor.
Matt Brunson
Fuest plays up the 1930s-by-way-of-the-1970s set design, but any atmosphere gets lost in scene after scene that's lighted like a TV show. Oct 22, 2013 | Rating: 3/5 | Full Review…
Fuest plays up the 1930s-by-way-of-the-1970s set design, but any atmosphere gets lost in scene after scene that's lighted like a TV show.
Keith Phipps
Arguably the single greatest AIP release made without Roger Corman on hand as either producer or director... One of Price's signature roles. Apr 8, 2012 | Rating: 8/10 | Full Review…
Arguably the single greatest AIP release made without Roger Corman on hand as either producer or director... One of Price's signature roles.
Tim Brayton
"The perfect combination of horror and humor." Mar 9, 2009 | Full Review…
"The perfect combination of horror and humor."
Steve Biodrowski
A wind-up orchestra nicknamed the "Clockwork Wizards", reenactments of biblical curses and a phonograph in order to talk are only the faintly peculiar oddities in this olive-black, droll hybrid of operatic horror and Grand Guignol comedy. Since his face has been corroded away, Price conveys all of his vengeful emotions and homicidal frivolity with his disembodied, alto voice and his expressively mischievous eyes. Phibes' lair is a masterstroke of geisha design with a rich lavender-and-pink color palette. For a film with such an outrageously shlocky premise, the death scenes are underwhelming and tame with the particularly gruesome details held off-screen like the aftermath of a locust attack. An acid-rigged contraption by Phibes is obviously an influence for the elaborate traps for the 'Saw' franchise. The film achieves the requisite spookiness when Phibes is cavorting in his hideout with his mannequin band. To be fair though, the objective is a fiendishly funny and classy hurrah for Price and as a showcase for the erstwhile cult-classic maven, it more than delivers.
Super Reviewer
The is from the MGM Midnite Movies Double Feature Collection. These movies are always worth getting and make a fine collection. Sheer terror doesn't get much more frightening than this. Scare-master Vincent Price plays a doctor who loses his voice in a car accident, but can still speak by way of an electronic device. He vows revenge on the nine doctors that were responsible for an unsuccessful surgery attempt on his wife, Victoria. He, along with his fiendish but sexy assistant Vulnavia (Virginia North), murder them one by one in such grotesque ways as draining one guy of all his blood, attacking a nurse with a swarm of locusts, and giving an attendee of a costume party a frog mask that becomes so tight around his neck that it snaps his head off. The sheer audacity of these grisly murders, along with Price's meticulous and methodical planning, make for a one-of a-kind scary experience. 4 stars 6-08-13
The movie plays kind of like a campy version of Seven, except British. And John Doe is played by Vincent Price, whose playing the titular character somewhere between Dr. Evil and The Phantom of the Opera. Totally bonkers and totally worth a watch.
Wonderfully engaging pseudo-horror classic. I should note that I fell in love with this film at Adam Rifkin's insistence. A pre-cursor to the modern "torture porn", it plays more like an early EC comic than a horror film, which I love. It's also one of Vincent Price's finest performances and a very bizarre horror fantasy that will have you both disgusted and laughing at the same time.
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