A hooded figure emerges slowly from the floor of a cavernous art-deco space, dramatically playing an organ mounted on a hydraulic platform. Accompanied by a sinister clockwork jazz band, the figure sets the band in motion as a beautiful young woman appears. The pair dance before descending into a murder, as a cage full of ravenous bats is lowered through a skylight to devour a man alive. This is the opening of Robert Fuest’s 1971 horror film, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, a movie described as a surreal, kitsch, and intentionally funny murder-museum.
Vincent Price stars as Dr. Anton Phibes, a concert musician and theologian in 1920s London who seeks revenge on the medical team responsible for his beloved wife's death. Disfigured in an accident, Phibes wears a prosthetic mask and communicates through a gramophone contraption attached to his neck, his familiar voice emerging scratchy and distant. The film delves into his elaborate revenge schemes, which are often modeled after the biblical plagues of Egypt. He utilizes bizarre methods, such as boiling cabbages into a gloop to be consumed by locusts or impaling victims with a catapult-fired unicorn.
The film's narrative is relayed with visual panache and a surprisingly flat, deadpan tone. Director Robert Fuest presents Phibes' macabre murders, his bizarre rituals, and the bumbling attempts of Inspector Harry Trout (Peter Jeffrey) to catch him with equal detachment. While Joseph Cotten appears as one of the surgeons, Phibes remains the true protagonist, a character who is utterly bizarre, hilariously cruel, and desperately sad.
Unlike his contemporaries Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, Vincent Price did not appear in productions by the legendary British horror studio Hammer. His career followed a parallel American track in Roger Corman's Edgar Allen Poe adaptations. However, by the late 1960s, Price began appearing in British productions that pushed Hammer's horror style in new directions, such as the grim Witchfinder General. The Abominable Dr. Phibes, however, sits at the other end of the spectrum, functioning as a fantasia and black comedy.
The film answers none of Phibes' peculiar motivations, such as his clockwork jazz band, his relationship with the mysterious woman Vulnavia, or why he models his murders after the plagues of Egypt. This lack of explanation enhances the movie's dreamlike and deeply strange quality. By the end, when the contents of his basement organ elevator are revealed, the strange waxwork parade acquires a poignant pathos, a sad, trapped feeling that Price's eyes convey from the very beginning.