Doctor Phibes Rises Again

Title - Doctor Phibes Rises Again
Language - English
Genre - Horror, Slasher

















This is the sequel to ‘The abominable doctor Phibes’ which I've reviewed here and this review may contain some spoilers.
The film starts with a with a flashback to the first film and a voice over tells us that Doctor Phibes had joined his wife but that he was only in a death like state, waiting until the right time to carry out the next part of his plan.  Three years after the end of the first film the sun hits Doctor Phibes’ coffin in the right place and the embalming fluid that Phibes had used is replaced with his blood.
Doctor Phibes awakens and summons his companion, Vulnavia and the couple use the organ lift to go back to his house to get a papyrus out of the vault only to find the house has been demolished and the vault is empty.  Doctor Phibes tracks down the papyrus  which is a map to a tomb in Egypt and he steals it back from Beiderbecke, an archeologist who is also trying to find the tomb.
The Egyptian tomb contains the entrance to the river of life which flows once every 2000 years.  Doctor Phibes plans to go there with Vulnavia and his dead wife to resurrect her and grant them all eternal life.  Beiderbecke has been sustaining his life via a mystical elixir and wants to use the river to grant himself eternal life and end his need for the elixir.
Both Phibes and Beiderbecke race against time and each other to unlock the secrets of the tomb and to be the one who gains use of the river.

I think i mentioned in the review for the first film that  Doctor Phibes is an early example of a modern slasher and the second film carries this on.  The sequel delves into the supernatural more than the first, in the abominable Doctor Phibes, Phibes is a living man who, like Michael Myers or Pamela Voohrees is killing a set of people for his own reasons without any supernatural aid  but when we come to the second film we have a more supernatural flavor leading to our slasher becoming unkillable, if he succeeds.  I also mentioned in the first review that some of Doctor Phibes’ traps and kills   could almost have been inspiration for movies such as the saw franchises the kill’s that springs to mind in this film are

1) the one involving the golden scorpion chair, where the victim is placed in a situation where he has to put himself in danger (or wait until someone finds him) to get out of the trap

2) the final trap where Beiderbecke has has to choose between his goal or his wife.

There are a couple of issues with the flow form the first film to the second.  The voice over at the beginning of the second film says that the police uncovered clues to where Doctor Phibes was hiding and that they caught him unprepared which is why he went into the tomb at the end, this is not true Phibes told them where he was so that the doctor could find his son and try to rescue him, the fact that Phibes went into the tomb with his wife was part of is plan all along making it the 10th death and the representation of the curse of darkness.  The second issue is that at the beginning of ‘Doctor Phibes rises again’ Phibes summons Vulnavia who appears, almost ghost like to aid him but at the end of the first film we see her hit and melted by the acid.  From what I have read  I believe that Vulnavia’s odd resurrection is due to the character originally being written as one of the clockwork toys that Phibes has created this was latter written out of the first film but, if it were still the case then this would explain why she appears in the second film un-injured, she is just a different model.  This is also the reason why the character doesn't speak, the clockwork version would not be able to.

Doctor Phibes Rises Again has a good British cast and has the same type of humor as it’s predecessor, the deaths are interesting and, although not as gruesome as you may expect in a modern movie they still make the film a good slasher. There seems to be more story to the second film as Phibes is not just killing for revenge but to get back what has been stolen from him and to keep his presence secret.

If you like imaginative deaths and a few giggles I recommend both of the Doctor Phibes films and think that is a pity that there were no more made.

The Abominable Doctor Phibes

Title - The Abominable Doctor Phibes
Language - English
Genre - Horror, comedy, slasher

The Abominable doctor Phibes is the first of two Doctor Phibes films starting Vincent Price as the titular doctor.  As we start the film we see figure in a cloak and a woman as they deliver a parcel through a skylight into the room of a sleeping man.  Neither of the speak to each other whilst this is going on and the cloaked man pulls the parcel back out of the room we see that it is a cage with the door open.  The sleeping man wakes up and sees something moving in his room and a number of bats fly at him ripping his face open.

When the police investigate the dead man we find out that he was a doctor and is the second to die an unusual death, the first was stung to death by bees, his face was covered in boils.

The cloaked man and his companion, Vulnvia are then at a masquerade ball where they hand a man (another doctor) an ornate frog mask which constricts, crushing the man’s head.

The man & Vulnvia are next seen at the house of a fourth doctor who they drain all of the blood from his body, whist he is there the man accidently drops an amulet which the police use to get a clue to what is going on.

The only link the police find between the dead doctors is that they all worked one case, the wife of doctor Phibes who died on the operating table.  The amulet that doctor Phibes dropped was one of a set of ten, each representing one of the 10 plagues of Egypt and there were 9 doctors who worked on the operation.  All clues point to the murderer being Doctor Phibes except he died in a car crash the same night as his wife.

The Abominable Doctor Phibes is an early example of a slasher movie with the killer targeting the surgeons who he blames for the death of his wife and his gimmick way using the 10 biblical Egyptian plagues to kill each of the doctors making each kill more inventive than the last.  I can’t help but wonder if the ‘cures of the first born’ influenced the ‘saw’ films in any way, it’s defiantly as twisted.

The film is very ‘British’ set in London in the 1920s it has a cast of well known British actors of the time and has a dark humour to it using similar gags as can be found in some of the carry on or St Trinnians movies such as calling Inspector Trout by different fish.

Part of the horror atmosphere is helped by neither of the leads saying much.  Vulnvia is a mute and one of the injuries Doctor Phibes suffered from during the car crash was damage to his throat meaning that he can only speak when attached a device similar to a gramophone speaker.

If you like inventive kills, a few giggles and over the top acting then give The abominable Doctor Phibes a watch.