Sheer Bliss?

One of the pleasures of a weblog like this is the ongoing excuse to finally get around to watching films that you may have owned for years but never actually seen. Films like ‘Madhouse’, in fact.

Hammy veteran horror actor Vincent Price stars as hammy veteran horror actor Paul Tombs. Tombs may be a psychotic killer, but he can’t remember and the Police don’t have any proof – all they know is that his fiancé had her head cut off in mysterious circumstances and he had a complete nervous breakdown, so they have their suspicions. In jolly old Britain to stage a TV comeback, Tombs is dismayed to find that the people around him are being bumped off in unpleasant ways, and only his old friend Peter Cushing doesn’t think he’s the culprit. The truth, of course, is much, much weirder…  

A rather good, civillised slasher with lashings of Gothic and a large pinch of Giallo, ‘Madhouse’ is enlivened by numerous clips from Price’s horror resume, as well as wry, solid performances from the two leads. Sort of a conflation of ‘Theatre of Blood’ and ‘Dr Phibes’, ‘Madhouse’ isn’t hugely original, but it is good fun, and the denouement is gleefully ridiculous. Good stuff - I should have watched it ages ago.

Pete and Vince

From 'Madhouse', two horror legends enjoy a party. It could be worse, boys, at least Christopher Lee isn't in this one. 

Madhouse

Phibes Lives!

'Dr. Phibes Rises Again' isn't as coherent and fast moving as its predecessor, there aren't nearly enough killings, and it was apparently hell to make, but it's still a lot of fun.

Set three years after the first 'Phibes' film, it concerns the gruesome Doctor's attempts to track down a piece of missing papyrus which shows the location of 'The River Of Life', a mythological Egyptian stretch of water which could bring his dead wife back to him. The papyrus has been stolen by Darrus Beiderbecke (Robert Quarry), who hopes to use it to make him and his fiancee immortal (Beiderbecke is already several hundred years old but stays alive and young-ish thanks to a serum which he is rapidly running out of), so Phibes follows him across the world to kill him and the rest of his archaeological team (who, it must be said, are largely completely innocent of any crime whatsoever - they're just in Phibes way).

The dastardly Doctor has a hell of a time: training an eagle to rip John Thaw to bits - putting a scorpion down someones trousers - sealing poor old drunken chancer Hugh Griffith in a bottle - and, perhaps best of all, sandblasting Gerald Sim into a very clean heap of bones.

In the end, of course, Phibes triumphs, and the way is left open for any number of sequels which, sadly, never materialised.

The best line comes from the wonderful Terry-Thomas, playing a shipping executive furious to have been called into work at the weekend by Inspector Trout of Scotland Yard.

'We're looking for a mad man, Sir'.

'Well, you've bloody well found one! Do you realise this is Saturday afternoon?'

Hugh Goes There

Hugh Griffith as the shifty Harry Ambrose in 'Dr. Phibes Rises Again'.

Dr. Phibes Rises Again

Revenge Is The Best Medicine

‘The Abominable Dr Phibes’ is a huge amount of fun – cool, camp, funny, inventive, brilliantly realised, great cast, nice music (by Basil Kirchin), lots of death.

It's 1925, and the reliably magnificent Vincent Price is Anton Phibes: doctor, world class organist, inventor, aesthete and, since the terrible car accident that the rest of the world believes killed him, a hideously disfigured psychotic criminal mastermind.  Phibes accident was caused by his rushing to be at his seriously sick wife’s side – he never made it and, unfortunately, she died on the operating table. Crazed by grief, Phibes vows to take bloody revenge against the eight doctors and a nurse he holds responsible, even though there is no actual evidence that they were to blame.

Phibes is, of course, no common murderer, and he brings his peculiar genius to bear on the business of dispatching his enemies, getting Old Testament on their collective arses, re-interpreting the Ten Plagues of Egypt in a series of gruesome, clever killings that knock off the team one by one by one…

You’ll get a flavour from the screen shots below of the sort of ways Phibes gets even, with bees, bats, frogs and a unicorn making telling and deadly appearances.

‘The Abominable Dr Phibes’ was directed by Robert Fuest, an under-rated talent whose star burned brightly for a short time in the late sixties and early seventies. Fuest had honed his campy, poppy style on ‘The Avengers’ (he also directed ‘And Soon The Darkness’), and the two Phibes films (yes, there’s a sequel!), and his adaptation of Michael Moorcock’s first Jerry Cornelius book, ‘The Final Programme’, show his emerging genius for interesting, stylish and skewiff genre cinema.

Sadly, Fuest suffered a nervous breakdown during the tense production of ‘Dr Phibes Rises Again’ (the sequel! Coming soon!), and avoided major productions thereafter. It’s a real shame, as not only did his illness deprive us of a unique talent, but also several more planned Phibes sequels.

The Abominable Dr Phibes

They Can Only Shriek, Shriek

'Cry Of The Banshee' is effectively a cross between the better known 'Witchfinder General' and 'Blood On Satan's Claw' in theme and style but, sadly, doesn't come close to either film in terms of quality or interest.

The usually good value Vincent Price gives perhaps his most boring performance, seemingly rendered immobile by the dullness of the production, too stupefied to even arch an eyebrow. The story, which has nothing to do with Poe no matter what the posters say, is set in the sixteenth century and concerns an arrogant Lord (Price) and his boorish, spoilt brat children who piss off a local witch coven (by hacking most of them to death) and then feel their wrath, one by one, victims of a supernatural entity called Patrick Mower.

It pains me to say it, but this film is a waste of time. You don't even get to see the monster properly. A very poor show all round.   

A Thing That Never Learned To Die

More from 'Cry Of The Banshee'.

Cry of the Banshee

The rather Pythonesque titles (darting boggly eyes and all) are, perhaps not surprisingly, by the very Pythonesque Terry Gilliam.

Where Vile Things Crawl

'The Oblong Box' was originally to be directed by Michael Reeves, but he chucked a spanner in the works by dying of a drugs overdose in the pre-production stages. The film re-united (the Reeves directed) 'Witchfinder General' star Vincent Price with his co-stars Rupert Davies and Hilary Dwyer and, like that production (in the US at least), attempted to link the film to American International Picture's highly successful Edgar Allen Poe cycle. 'The Oblong Box' is the title of a Poe story, true, but this is not that story.

A sort of bizarre take on 'Jane Eyre', it concerns Julian Markham (Price), a rich man with a young fiancee and a dark secret gained in the Colonies: a crazed and disfigured older brother who he keeps chained up in an attic - but, as crazed and disfigured elder brothers chained up in attics are prone to do, keeps getting out and causing mayhem. The problem is exacerbated by catalepsy, body snatching and a Voodoo curse. Thinking about it, what problem wouldn't be?

Not entirely successful, but very entertaining, AIP liked the film enough to immediately fling Hessler, Price and most of the supporting cast into Elizabethan horror 'Cry Of The Banshee', which just so happens to be the featured film on this very weblog tomorrow. We don't always just throw this shit together, you know.  

The Oblong Box