Phailure Is Not An Option

There are few characters in film more driven than Dr. Anton Phibes. The famed concert organist (with a doctorate in Theology) lost his beloved wife Victoria during a failed surgery and, although he is believed to have perished in a fiery car wreck en route to the hospital, he survived to apply all his wealth and knowledge towards exacting his revenge on the operating staff he blames for his wife's death.

The ornate death traps (fashioned according to the Twelve Plagues of Egypt, as described in the Old Testament) and precision planning that are Phibes' telltale handiwork have been famously adopted by subsequent movie villains - like John Doe, from Se7en (1995), Jigsaw from the Saw series, and most recently, Clyde Shelton from Law Abiding Citizen (2009). In each of these films, these highly intelligent villains (anti-heroes, really) have a near-omniscient ability to plan ahead and to account for every probability. While it would be better for the world if these geniuses would use their gifts to advance the greater good, that isn't much fun. Deep down, we all feel we have a few scores to settle and to imagine having the skills and the means to do so is an irresistible dream - so to hell with the greater good.

That's a selfish notion to hold and it's probably no wonder that 1971's The Abominable Dr. Phibes (directed with great style by Robert Fuest) made such an impression on me as a child. Children - even good ones - have an innately selfish streak and Phibes, like all revenge seekers, is a selfish, self-absorbed character. Even though his wife's death was an accident, he feels justified in taking whatever lives he deems responsible for his loss ("Nine eternities in doom!" he repeats like mantra). Watching The Abominable Dr. Phibes again, I was struck by how blameless Phibes' victims are. Phibes really is completely unreasonable in his vengeance - what's arguably the most horrific death of all, death by locusts, is reserved for the mere nurse who assisted in the operation - and I doubt if this story would be told the same way today. A few innocent victims are caught in the crossfire in Law Abiding Citizen but in general, everyone that Clyde Shelton targets has some kind of crime to answer for - even if the crime is simply compromising one's values to play along with a flawed, often corrupt, legal system.

Were The Abominable Dr. Phibes made today, surely we'd learn that there was some catastrophic screw-up during the operation on Phibes' wife. A screw-up, and then a subsequent cover-up. There would be a real reason for Phibes to punish these people by any means necessary. Instead, these are earnest, well-meaning professionals who simply failed to save a life in their care. Victoria Phibes died because no physician, no matter how skilled, can save every life. Phibes is someone who doesn't handle disappointment well, however. In fact, it makes him go nuclear.

Phibes' victims in the original film were - to a one - just hapless scapegoats, wholly undeserving of their grisly fates. Rather than have the character return to the land of the living in 1972's Dr. Phibes Rises Again (in which his new victims were conveniently made to be morally suspect, even villainous), perhaps the sequel should have followed Phibes into the afterlife where he could've found someone to pay for making such an imperfect world in the first place. Now that's a truly biblical revenge I'd have liked to have seen.

Trick Or Trailers: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

When fans look back on the '70s, even for those who didn't live through that decade, to think of what legacy the '70s left the genre is to celebrate the gritty, grindhouse style classics like Last House on the Left (1972), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and The Hills Have Eyes (1977). But that wasn't the '70s that I knew. As a kid I had no awareness of that side of the horror genre. It wasn't just that I didn't see those movies, I didn't even know they existed. Later in the decade, I knew about the likes of Halloween and Dawn of the Dead (both 1978) but for most of the '70s, modern horror to me was about eco-horror films like Frogs (1972), the '50s-throwbacks from Bert I. Gordon like Foods of the Gods (1976) and Empire of the Ants (1977), and Godzilla movies. In other words, I hardly had my finger on the pulse of the decade.

Thanks to TV, however, I was well versed in classic horror and genre stalwarts like Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Peter Cushing were heroes to me as much as they had been to fans of previous generations. But among the classic horror stars, Vincent Price was always my favorite - maybe because he was still such an active presence on TV while I was growing up. I saw him everywhere - as Eggman on Batman reruns, as a guest host on The Muppet Show, on Hollywood Squares, and he even showed up in commercials for the game Hangman ("Wrong window!").

But the definitive Price movie for me was 1971's The Abominable Dr. Phibes. When I first saw it on Channel 30's The 4 o'Clock Movie, I was transfixed by its vivid colors, its art deco set design, its lurid violence (the death by locusts was the grisliest thing I had seen up to that point), and by Price himself in the role of vengeance-seeking organist, Anton Phibes. Thanks to the imagination of director Robert Fuest, there was a strange, ornate quality to the movie (with details like Phibes' clockwork band of mannequins) that I hadn't encountered before. I had never seen a movie as elaborately art-directed and stylized as Phibes.

The ghost of Phibes still haunts modern horror in the form of the elaborate murder schemes of Se7en (1995), the Saw films, and in the currently playing action/splatter hybrid Law Abiding Citizen. But there's nothing quite like the distinctive handiwork of the original mad planner. Even if it isn't "probably the most terrifying motion picture you'll ever see," as its trailer promised, The Abominable Dr. Phibes does curse most other films to be disappointments.