I have always been a major fan of Vincent Price. His irony, his style and the larger-than-the-screen persona that he had blows my mind away. There are numerous films of his that distinguish from the bulk of B horror movies. And his movies, at least most of them, have him as the central, prominent figure. He stays always in his movies as the protagonist that gets all the attention. And in that way, according to this condition, The Abominable Dr. Phibes might be if not the most, then one of his most iconic movies. The character that he plays is the absolute figure of the movie. Every other character in the film comes definitely second. And if you add together the absolutely astonishing Art Deco style of the production design of the movie, then you have a combination that really makes the movie a flammable explosive.
The Abominable Dr. Phibes might be a B movie if you take a straight look at it, but it's a B movie that many A movies are envying. The dark and morbid humor, the persona of Vincent Price, the style and the flavor of the movie, the premise of the film, all of them work together as fingers in one hand to give to the audience a blast of enjoyment. There are moments in the movie that I was really wondering what fucking great job they had done with the visuals in this movie. The set of the film, a miraculous aesthetic achievement, plays like a real, flesh-and-bones character in the movie. You can't think of Dr. Phibes at his house without his toys and all this extraordinary universe of objects that the people who made the movie, had manufactured. Finally I can easily say that The Abominable Dr. Phibes is the example of a movie that was shot ahead of its time. Nobody at that time could have appreciated the aesthetical sensitivity of the movie and the darkly humorous tone of it. The movie stays this day much more proudly than it stood back in 1971.
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