The Abominable Dr. Phibes - Will's Review

Given my penchant for classics, it's a marvel I haven't seen this until now, but I haven't, so I was really looking forward to it. 

In many ways, on paper, it should be exactly my thing; this is a Vincent Price movie with a capital VINCENT PRICE, the whole sequence where he comes up through the floor while playing a pipe organ could only work as a stylised 'oh my god that is so him!' moment with a known over the top personality (in the upcoming remake, this kind of thing will work simply because Burton is directing, replacing a personality lead with a personality director). 

The plot is solid but wacky too: Following the death of his wife on the operating table, Phibes has faked his own death (becoming horribly disfigured in the process) and is now attempting to kill the 9 people who assisted in her operation, in ways which recall the biblical plagues of Egypt. 

Sadly, the pacing is all off. Sadly, especially for a film where creative kills is the MO, the first half dozen or so deaths rattle by with no setup, and little in the way of payoff; one of them even happens before the movie starts and is simply briefly mentioned. We neither see enough, nor are given time to appreciate them. Even the movies last true victim, a Saw-like setup, in which a surgeon's son is chains to a bed bellow a slow-moving acid-dumping contraption, with the key to his chained embedded inside him,  is dealt with quickly and entirely off-screen. 

Phibes has a female assistant, who is literally never explained. She's central to the plot, many of the kills couldn't be executed without her, and she is the only lead the police have, but we never learn who she is, or why she is loyal to Phibes. 

Add to that the fact that Price really doesn't get all that much screen time, nor chance to flourish when he is on screen (his face is supposedly a mask, so be mostly has to hold it still) and the whole movie is just a catalogue of wasted opportunities. 

It's probably horror heresy to say this, but I'm tentatively of looking forward to Tim Burton's remake, a bit if modern pacing and appreciation for the inventive kills could sort this right out... Sadly I suspect it will be an all too-knowing, wacky,  Jonny Depp vehicle - no doubt with Burton's wife as Phibes' mystery assistant, and an intrusive Danny Elfman score.