The Abominable Dr. Phibes

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.