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The Abominable Dr. Phibes

The Abominable Dr. Phibes

Horror · Comedy · 1971

After a team of surgeons botches his beloved wife's operation, the distraught Dr. Phibes unleashes a score of Old-Testament atrocities on his enemies.

Movie details

The Abominable Dr. Phibes

“Love means never having to say you're ugly.”

1971 Horror · Comedy 1h 35m

Critical arithmetic

One number, for now.

TMDB

7.0 / 10

Community rating

After a team of surgeons botches his beloved wife's operation, the distraught Dr. Phibes unleashes a score of Old-Testament atrocities on his enemies.

CriticWise case file

What this film says about your taste.

Not a recommendation score. A measure of how closely the film’s taste signals resemble yours.

The archetype split

Who fights over The Abominable Dr. Phibes?

The split comes from the same five-axis model used by the test, not audience ratings or review sentiment.

Taste neighbourhood

Nearby on the taste map.

TMDB supplies the candidates. CriticWise reorders them by craft, strangeness, prestige, emotion, and pace.

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Circle

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Tales of Terror

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Three stories adapted from the work of Edgar Allen Poe: 1) A man and his daughter are reunited, but the blame for the death of his wife hangs over them, unresolved. 2) A derelict challenges the local wine-tasting champion to a competition, but finds the man's attention to his wife worthy of more dramatic action. 3) A man dying and in great pain agrees to be hypnotized at the moment of death, with unexpected consequences.

House on Haunted Hill

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Frederick Loren invites five strangers to the party of a lifetime and offers each of them $10,000 if they can stay the night in the reportedly haunted house. Armed with a gun for protection, each guest arrives in a hearse and will either leave in it much richer…Or dead.

The Curse of Bridge Hollow

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The Little Shop of Horrors

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Seymour works in a skid row florist shop and is in love with his beautiful co-worker, Audrey. He creates a new plant that not only talks but cannot survive without human flesh and blood.

Dr. Phibes Rises Again

Dr. Phibes Rises Again

Comedy · 1972

The eminent Dr. Phibes awakens from a decade of suspended animation and heads to Egypt with the corpse of his dead wife, which he intends to resurrect by murdering people in strange and heinous ways.

Signs

Signs

Thriller · 2002

A family living on a farm finds mysterious crop circles in their fields which suggests something more frightening to come.

The Dead Zone

The Dead Zone

Thriller · 1983

Johnny Smith is a schoolteacher with his whole life ahead of him but, after leaving his fiancee's home one night, is involved in a car crash which leaves him in a coma for 5 years. When he wakes, he discovers he has an ability to see into the past, present and future life of anyone with whom he comes into physical contact.

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Names above the title

The people responsible.

Directed by

Robert Fuest

Written by

William Goldstein · James Whiton

Vincent Price

Vincent Price

Dr. Anton Phibes

Joseph Cotten

Joseph Cotten

Dr. Vesalius

Hugh Griffith

Hugh Griffith

Rabbi

Terry-Thomas

Terry-Thomas

Dr. Longstreet

Virginia North

Virginia North

Vulnavia

Peter Jeffrey

Peter Jeffrey

Inspector Trout

Derek Godfrey

Derek Godfrey

Crow

Court is in session

Put The Abominable Dr. Phibes on trial.

Two incompatible taste archetypes. One film. Read the arguments, then issue a completely binding cultural ruling.

The defence The Arthouse Gremlin

“Its refusal to behave is the point.”

The strange choices create the kind of friction that follows you out of the theatre and into the argument.

The prosecution The Popcorn Loyalist

“Oddness is not depth.”

A film can break every rule and still leave nothing behind but the memory of how hard it tried to be singular.