- Director
- Robert Fuest
- Year
- 1971
- Runtime
- 94 min
Also released as
- Dr. Phibes
- The Curse of Dr. Phibes
- El abominable doctor Phibes
- Kaijin Dokutâ Faibusu
- Ужасный доктор Файбс
- Champagner für den Satan
- Das Schreckenscabinett des Dr. Phibes
- Ohavny Dr. Phibes
- Den blodtörstige hämnaren
- Das Schreckens-Cabinett des Dr. Phibes
- 恐怖博士费比斯
- 魔鬼怪医
- 歌剧院杀人王
- 恐怖博士菲布斯
- 血咒追魂
- 魔鬼怪婴
The Abominable Dr. Phibes
The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a 1971 British and Australian gothic horror film directed by Robert Fuest.
Vincent Price murders the surgeons who let his wife die, each death based on the plagues of Egypt. A gorgeous, deranged art deco comedy.
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Anton Phibes, a disfigured organist believed dead, is killing the medical team that failed to save his wife during surgery, using the ten biblical plagues: locusts, rats, boils, a brass unicorn head fired from a wall.
Robert Fuest, who came from The Avengers, shot it as pure art deco delirium: Phibes lives in a mansion with a clockwork jazz band and a mute, beautiful assistant, and the whole film is stylised to within an inch of its life.
Price does almost the entire performance without speaking, since Phibes can only talk by plugging a cable into his neck, and it is one of his best: theatrical, tragic and very funny.
It is a proto-slasher, an elaborate revenge-by-theme structure that Se7en and Theatre of Blood both descend from.
A sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, followed the next year and is nearly as good.
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Trailer
The sleeves
The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.
Where to watch
No legal stream, rental or disc found in the regions we check. For a lot of these that is the normal state of affairs.
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Adjacent
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Vincent Price as a hammy actor murdering the critics who denied him an award, each death staged from Shakespeare.
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The hinge between giallo and slasher. Friday the 13th Part 2 lifts two murders almost shot for shot.
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Elizabeth Báthory in an empty Ostend hotel out of season, and it is the most elegant vampire film ever made.
WATCHcanonFrankenstein
Karloff in Jack Pierce's makeup, and the flat head is a copyrighted design rather than anything from the novel.
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A machine for explaining why every other film on this site is shaped the way it is.
- Next in Gothic: Daughters of Darkness (1971) →
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