ThedevilChoose
When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.
Anoushka Slater
While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
e_k_cinephile
I was amazed at the originality and intelligence of the story of this film. I am totally sure that this film inspired "Se7en", with the killer following a religious symbolism in his chain of murders and saving the last symbol for himself. It is also obvious that "the key hidden in the chest" scene inspired "Saw". The religious symbolism in the film leads to original murder styles that are visually interesting. And then there is the charisma of Vincent Price, perfect for his role. Seeing a never-speaking, female assistant was also original. Joseph Cotten provides a great counterpart to Price. The scenes with the police officers provide well-dosed humour to the film. A must-see cult film.
O2D
I wasn't expecting much from this movie and I was pleasantly surprised.This was the first horror movie I watched in awhile that actually made some sense and wasn't full of plot holes.While the cops in the movie did say and do some dumb stuff.Like saying to double check the bats for rabies after they killed a guy.Would they give rabies shots to a corpse?Besides little things like that it wasn't too bad.I'm not sure if I have ever seen any other Vincent Price movies but I was assuming everything he did was cheesy and this definitely wasn't.It was a good story and it wasn't boring.There was too much bad music but the story makes up for it. Six stars.
classicsoncall
Vincent Price has always been a personal favorite of mine and he gets to go full monty here on a host of victims in this stylized, colorful thriller. For those of you wondering how to pronounce the title, I would have been at a disadvantage myself if I hadn't seen a brief intro to the picture last night on Turner Classics. The host pronounced 'Phibes' like the word 'fives' but with a 'b'. So I thought that was pretty helpful or I'd still be wondering about it.The story line borrows an interesting concept from the Biblical 'Ten Curses of the Pharoahs', as the title character, portrayed by Price, begins to dispatch a team of doctors who failed to save the life of his wife during an operation some years earlier. The attack on the first victim brought to mind a 1959 Vincent Price programmer simply titled 'The Bat', in which a fiend unleashes a bat as his calling card when he commits his evil deeds. Phibes' other murders are fairly creative as well, the head shrinker who got his head shrunk was kind of unique (you'll have to see it for yourself). And here's something you don't think about - it's one thing to learn the body contains about eight pints of blood, but to see it lined up on a shelf in bottles is kind of eye opening. Poor Dr. Longstreet.Well I think Vincent Price fans ought to have a good amount of fun with this flick. The picture borrows concepts from a couple of Roger Corman's films - 1959's "A Bucket of Blood" and 1960's "The Little Shop of Horrors". Stylistically, I couldn't help thinking of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", more so for the weirdness of the set design and effusive use of color throughout. One thing you might have to get used to is watching Dr. Phibes express himself without using his mouth, the voice is clearly that of Vincent Price, but in keeping with his diabolical character, it sounds like it was run through a synthesizer.
SanteeFats
Vincent Price plays the macabre Doctor Phibes. He is a living corpse who is out for revenge on those he holds responsible for his wife's death on the operating table. There are nine he holds to blame, eight doctors and a nurse. One by one they die by strange and varied ways. All are curses from the ten Biblical plagues of the Old Testament. Eight are killed by those various means. The last to be alive is Joseph Cotton playing the lead surgeon Dr. Vesalius. He is called to the house of Phibes to save his son by operating on him for a key that will unlock the son's collar and the gurney before acid will drop on Vesalius's son and kill him. Vesalius conducts the operation in time and moves his son from harm. As this happens Phibes, thinking he has succeeded in his final revenge, goes to the vault where he has his wife's body, inserts needles into his arms, lays down with the body, and is drained of blood while embalming fluid enters. As the police leave they wonder about the final curse, that of darkness. Well the lights go out before they exit the building but no one further is harmed. A fairly good movie all in all.
