It was like stepping into a time machine…only better.

The Film Forum on Houston Street in Manhattan was presenting a William Castle retrospective from August 27th through September 6th. All of the showman’s famous gimmick films were in the lineup, as well as some of his earlier, noirish work and 3D films.

I started off by catching two of his three “Whistler” films from the mid 40s. All three starred Richard Dix, however in different roles. The ‘Whistler’ of the title was not Dix, but a shadowy figure that set us up for the ill-fated stories to come, appearing again midway through the film to keep us on track. This unidentified phantom got his moniker by whistling some melody that was too abstract ever to have become popular with viewers.

Even with the Whistler’s dire warnings about the forlorn trajectories of the films’ protagonists, I wasn’t prepared for how downbeat MYSTERIOUS INTRUDER would end up. Pretty wild. To quote the Forum catalogue “Crooked private eye Richard Dix, hired to find the mysterious ‘Elora’ to receive a mysterious bequest, hires a fake one to grab it for himself and then the double crosses and murders start coming.” That barely hints at the darkly nuanced touches, but it was mostly the ‘B’s in those days that were allowed to get away with such unrepentantly villainous protagonists, as well as the sort of bleak finale the film delivers.

MACABRE was a motion picture I had missed in 1958. The first of Castle’s ‘gimmick’ films, patrons were refused entrée to the theater unless they filled out an insurance policy with Lloyds of London for ten grand in case they croaked of heart failure during the screening. Sure enough, the policy was still in force at the Forum, fifty-two years later, only the payoff had been updated to a million dollars for this playdate. The print was splicey, making the convoluted narrative even more difficult to follow, but it was a deliciously noir-ish little exercise nonetheless. Very satisfying for me, after all these years, to finally catch up with it.

13 GHOSTS (1960), in Illusion-O, beckoned you to put on the red-blue 3D glasses when a title appeared on the bottom of the screen, and if you weren’t up to witnessing the dreaded thirteen spectres, you could look through the left lens and see nothing but the set. However, using the right (red) eye filter, you were privy to a lion chewing on the neck of a tamer who’d lost his head in the cat’s jaws long ago, an ax-wielder striking anew, etc. The effect was cheesy in the extreme, but the Forum audience was primed for it. They laughed and had a great time. The lead actor, Donald Woods – a cross between Dana Andrews and Hugh Marlowe – was just the right milquetoast casting choice for the father who endures the manifestations in bewilderment. And it was wonderful to see Margaret Hamilton in the ‘in’ role of the witchy housekeeper who the hapless family inherits along with the haunted mansion. I particularly liked the Ouija Board sequence, when the clueless family members keep ratcheting the stakes higher with each absurd question (“Will one of us be killed?”). The print was excellent, and the glasses were dutifully passed out to each and every patron – unlike in the DVD collection release where, if you start having heart palpitations, you don’t have a choice concerning the ghosts.

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (1959) came with ‘Emergo’ – the living manifestation of a skeleton floating over the heads of the delighted audience. Vincent Price is the master of ceremonies in this Ten Little Indians tale, nicely shot, with a solid scare or two.

MR. SARDONICUS (1961), my favorite Castle film, found the ushers handing out ‘Punishment Poll’ cards, to be held up near the film’s conclusion, either with the imprinted thumb up, or down. Castle then appears on screen and counts the votes from his vantage point, and of course Sardonicus is to be punished for all the atrocities he’s committed. According to Castle, at the studio’s insistence, a happy ending was filmed, just in case, but never used. However, scavenger hunts in the Columbia vaults have produced no trace of the alternate ending.

Which brings us to THE TINGLER (1959). Back then, fourteen years old and very into horror films, only I – in the rural town of Harrison, NY – knew about the two rows of seats that had been wired to deliver electric shocks at the critical moment when the Tingler would escape from the screen into the audience. I had a crush on a local girl named Linda Elin, and I brought her to the theater, keeping her in the dark about what was to come. Nothing like a good electric shock, I figured, to have her jump into my lap.

An ancient ticket-taker was standing at the entrance to the lobby as we arrived, and I surreptitiously whispered to him, “Where are the ‘tingle’ seats?” He looked confused. “Where are the tingle seats” I repeated. Then he seemed to understand, and led us…to the bathrooms! How mortifying.

I never did get anywhere with Linda.

The Film Forum did not wire up the theater seats for the show I attended, yet they managed to out-do Castle nonetheless. When Vincent Price drops acid – a hilarious scene all on its own – suddenly a swirling, hallucinatory color mélange was superimposed on Price’s terrified face. When he stared in horror at the skeleton in his office, the HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL skeleton was yanked out over the audience for an unexpected encore. And when the Tingler escaped into the theater…suddenly a man stood up three rows in front of me, grasping a Tingler to his throat, choking and screaming, while ushers shined a flashlight on him and carried him up the aisle. During each of these delightful intrusions into our placid theater-going experience, the packed house roared with laughter and screamed their heads off. It was like ROCKY HORROR SHOW for adults. I’ve had my occasional problem with Film Forum audiences not being generous with older films, laughing too easily and breaking the spell. But we were all in synch that night. With me was Mark Talling, FIR reviewer, and he had a terrific time. A few days later, FIR’s webmaster Oren Shai caught the flick, and this time there were scattered electroshocks going off under select seats.

Credit for the series, and for the lengths to which the staff went to give us an ultimate viewing experience, goes to Film Forum Programmer Bruce Goldstein. I can’t say enough about how much fun, and what an event, the Castle retrospective was for everyone, and for me. My two favorite movie-going memories this year took place at the Film Forum. This was one, and the other was their screening of NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH, with Producer Richard Gordon and actor Richard Nielson in attendance.

DRAGONWYCK: THE GENESIS OF RODERICK USHER

Vincent Price is remembered as more of an icon of the Horror genre than ever in his lifetime. One of the reasons for this rests firmly with the seven films he created with director Roger Corman. When Tim Burton put together his very first film project it was of course called VINCENT, where he furthered the Price mythology by making Price and Edgar Allan Poe the same voice for a generation raised on these films.

All of this began long before Vincent Price ever met Roger Corman or Richard Matheson in 1960. It began while the actor was under contract to 20th Century Fox where he learned that Ernest Lubtisch was to direct a film from the novel DRAGONWYCK.

This film, and Price’s performance, would solidify the persona that Price would take to his grave. The following is an essay from the forthcoming book Prof Samuel Umland and I are working on for Tomahawk Press entitled BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE: The Poe films of Roger Corman.

In 1946 20th Century Fox would produce a film that would resonate well into the next two decades due entirely to the presence of an actor who had never held a film together before this one. The film in question is DRAGONWYCK, and the actor was Vincent Price. At the time I am quite sure that studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck assumed the film was a Gene Tierney vehicle since the actress was a top Fox star at the time, not to mention stunning to look at and compelling when given the right material. What Zanuck was oblivious to was the degree that Vincent Price would dominate the film and how much the character of Nicolas Van Ryn would ultimately affect all the genre roles that would follow, making Vincent Price the heir apparent to Boris Karloff by 1960.

DRAGONWYCK was supposed to be directed by the stylish Ernst Lubitsch, who had Gregory Peck in mind for the role of Nicolas Van Ryn. Ironically both Price and Peck had already worked together at Fox in THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM two years before, and were quite different in their approach to acting. Lubitsch fell ill during preproduction and the film was given to a producer and screenwriter who had yet to direct a film – Joseph L Mankiewicz.

Vincent Price and Gene Tierney had already made three films together when they were cast in DRAGONWCYK and adored each other as actors. Price recalled “Gene was so stunning to behold in the flesh, with those gorgeous blue eyes of hers, I used to kid her that if all the men in America could see her as I did they would fall hopelessly in love with her. While we were filming DRAGONWYCK her marriage to Oleg Cassini was beginning to come apart. We had a visitor onset who caught Gene’s eye almost at once, a handsome young politician named John F. Kennedy, and this chemistry soon made it apparent to me that a romance was about to begin, which it did.”

The replacement of directors while filming was a situation particularly familiar to both of them. It had already happened while they were filming LAURA. In that film they had shot half of the picture with Rouben Mamoulian directing when Zanuck pulled the film away from Mamoulian for creating a gay subtext out of the relationship between Dana Andrews and Clifton Webb. Otto Preminger took over, reshooting some of the offending material, yet nothing Otto could do really hid the fact that Waldo Leydecker was a homosexual, infatuated with the glamour of LAURA rather than the romance between a man and a woman in the conventional sense.

Zanuck was a well known homophobe in Hollywood and made it known that he did not want homosexuals like Clifton Webb and Laird Cregar working on the Fox lot. He was, however, made to see the light: while he may not have liked it, these actors and quite a few more gay men in every dept at Fox made money for the studio and were far too talented to let sexual preference stand in the way. Nevertheless, Mamoulian was replaced by Preminger, who really understood the perversity of these self-serving characters and wound up making a classic in the process.

We will never know what kind of a film Lubitsch would have made out of DRAGONWYCK’s Gothic romance. What we now had with Mankiewicz in the director’s chair was a brilliant screenwriter who knew next to nothing about directing films but was blessed with a first rate cameraman in Arthur C. Miller. Price would work with Miller a total of four times in his career, the first time in SONG OF BERNADETTE, followed by KEYS TO THE KINGDOM produced by Mankiewicz, then A ROYAL SCANDAL starring Price’s friend Tallulah Bankhead with the original director of DRAGONWYCK, Ernst Lubitsch. This production would be taken over as well by Otto Preminger as Lubitsch’s health began to fail.

I asked Price about working with a first time director in an interview done in the actor’s home in 1985. “Joe was a superb writer as well as being a top producer in Hollywood. I remember how much I wanted to play this character Van Ryn and I must tell you I had my work cut out for me convincing Joe. He had me typed as the somewhat portly priest character I played in KEYS TO THE KINGDOM, so I went on a crash diet, slimming down considerably so that, by the time I auditioned for Joe, I was Nicolas Van Ryn at least in appearance. I knew I could play this part because it was very similar to the character Jack Manningham that I had played on Broadway in ANGEL STREET. That role was really the genesis of what I like to call my Aristotelian villains, and from that day forward I used it whenever I was called upon to play a villain like Nicolas Van Ryn, or Roderick Usher for that matter.”

Vincent could not have realized at the time of filming DRAGONWYCK how much of his later career would depend on the works of Poe, yet he understood the connection between Nicolas Van Ryn and Poe almost at once by reading the preface to Anya Seaton’s book which contained Poe’s poem ‘Alone’. This unlocked the secret to Van Ryn’s philosophy and especially his sense of “that demon in my view” that Poe refers to about his own inner turmoil as a writer. “When I began to create the character of Jack Manningham, who was a psychotic personality if ever there was one, I read Kraft Ebbing’s PSCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS, which was of great help for me as an actor in attempting to understand this kind of behavior. I read Seaton’s book cover to cover to try and discover what made Van Ryn such an egotist and found the basis for my characterization in Poe’s magnificent poem which I believe to be one of his best. In the book, Nicolas takes Miranda to New York where they actually meet Edgar Allan Poe. It is a shame that in adapting a novel like DRAGONWCYK to film, so much must be sacrificed. We also lost my real death scene as well. In the book I drown saving Miranda from doing the same during a boat race on the Hudson river, which redeems Nicolas as a man whose principals were always above the pack, yet the evil that resided in him was also measured in the good that was beneath the surface.”

It is interesting now to compare just how similar the great house in DRAGONWYCK is to the HOUSE OF USHER, both being haunted by ancestral misdeeds. One might even consider DRAGONWYCK to be the unofficial prequel to USHER. There is a moment in Corman’s film where Roderick Usher surveys the landscape around the house of Usher from his terrace, lamenting the decay and especially the family heritage which will die out with him. Seeing Price slimmed down once again to play Usher, he resembles what Nicolas Van Ryn might have become if he had remained locked in his tower chamber at Dragonwyck, watching the outside world drift away as the house around him decayed into the void.

Anya Seaton’s novel of DRAGONWYCK, like most of her work, is well researched and vivid in its depiction of the Dutch influence that dominated New York in the 1840’s, where a family like the Van Ryn’s could live like feudal lords of the 19th century, creating the role of “patroon” to allow men to farm land they could never own. In the film, Mankiewicz makes a point of depicting the ludicrous attempt by Van Ryn and his followers to recreate the culture of the European court life on the Hudson River, as if America was somewhere else out of reach.

The influences that hover over Seaton’s novel don’t end with Poe; the character of Nicolas Van Ryn owes something to the legend of Bluebeard, with its forbidden tower room and dead wives. Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca is almost a role model for Gene Tierney’s character of Miranda, although Max De Winter Van Ryn is decidedly not. I remarked to Price that this must have been the beginning of what I referred to as Vincent’s “late wife films.” This made him laugh. ” Absolutely, it was when I realize that my wife in the film is a bit too fond of food and drink as a result of my lack of interest in her altogether, I decide to help matters along by poisoning her with Oleander leaves ground into her desserts. After that, if my wife wasn’t dead by reel two, then she certainly was by the end of the film.”

DRAGONWYCK is by turns a bit of Poe and Tocqueville with a soupsan of Perrault’s COUTES added to the mix. The film as seen today is a tour de force for Vincent Price, which was not the intention of the studio or the director. I asked Price about this situation during one of our interviews in 1985. “Gene and I used to speculate what DRAGONWYCK might have been like if Otto had been the director when we worked on LAURA which, as you know, started out with Mamoulain, who did not really understand the kind of people these perverse New York socialites were or the world they lived in. I mean, there was not one redeemable character in LAURA, and when Otto came on the film he got it at once. He knew these people from his own experience. I believe Otto would have brought out more of the perversity of the faux nobility that Nicolas felt was his right as a patron. Also he would have paced the film with more clarity than Joe was capable of at the time. I think looking back that Joe did the best he could in trying to cope with a production like DRAGONWYCK. The set alone was intimidating; I mean you could actually live in it. Lyle Wheeler was a genius as he unitized an entire soundstage at Fox to create the great house of Dragonwyck. It is ironic to realize that even a major studio like Fox still tore down the whole thing in the same manner we did years later with the Poe films that I did with Roger {Corman}, THE RAVEN, which was a huge set, was taken down in three days, but not until Roger shot an entire other feature at the same time. As you pointed out, DRAGONWYCK may well have been my “first Poe film,” even though it would take my career another fourteen years to bring Edgar Allan Poe full circle with HOUSE OF USHER.”

In DRAGONWYCK, Vincent Price discovered his talent for the macabre, which began on the stage playing the murderer Jack Manningham in ANGEL STREET. From that moment until he was cast as Nicolas Van Ryn, the elements were already taking shape. Vincent clearly witnessed the same “demon in my view” that Poe had seen in his writing. Watching Price as he “hears” the ghostly music of the harpsichord played by a dead ancestor, or watching his descent down the stairs of the Tower room as he explains to his current wife that he is “what is vulgarly referred to as a drug addict, is to see the genesis of his future interpretations of Poe’s characters under the direction of Roger Corman.

VINCENT PRICE
FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM

David Del Valle with Director Jeff Burr

“It’s as though the very foundation of the place was human suffering” Vincent price as Julian White

Towards the end of the 1980’s Vincent Price was hosting the PBS series MYSTERY, touring the nation as Oscar Wilde, and occasionally acting in motion pictures. After the lack of distribution for THE MONSTER CLUB and MADHOUSE it seemed that his last real horror film would be HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS, however he would make at least one more before his official swan song in Tim Burton’s masterful EDWARD SCISSORHANDS.

I had been planning to write about my experiences on one of Vincent’s lesser-known films of this period and just never seemed to find the time. I wish to rectify that now with my recollections of being the casting director and unit publicist on FROM A WHISPER TO A SCREAM (1986), one of the last films he made before his health began to fail, resulting in his death a few years later from lung cancer.

Let’s begin by first explaining how Vincent Price came to be involved with this project, which was the brainchild of four young film buffs with no connections to speak of in Hollywood, and not a lot of development money either, yet they all shared a unique vision and a childhood passion for the Horror genre.

Dan Golden, script girl, David del Valle and Alan White

At just 24 years of age, Jeff Burr, a then-recent-graduate of USC Film School, directed all four segments, working in concert with his brother William and Darin Scott as writer/producers. Super-film-buff and screenwriter Courtney Joyner, also from USC, completed the ensemble, putting together the wraparound material which would feature Price as librarian Julian White.

These guys had been sharing a house in Tujunga, struggling as a team in breakout mode with the four episodes already in the can. Their primary goal for months – looking for more backing, sending out screeners to most of the usual film companies, but even with veteran actors like Cameron Mitchell and Clu Gulager in the cast they still could not find a distributor to release their anthology project.

David del Valle sitting in Vincent Price's chair on set.

Jeff had raised most of the money so far by returning to his hometown of Dalton, Georgia. Dalton, not too far from Atlanta, is known locally as the Carpet Capital of Georgia. Jeff had the movie bug bad enough to hit up the local residents for money to help finance the screenplay. This included asking girls he went to high school with, his dentist and his other friends. From all of this humble pie came the independent film company known as Conquest Entertainment.

I think it was my friend, film maker Dan Golden, who first put Jeff Burr in touch with me regarding getting Vincent to look at one of the segments and chat him up about appearing in the film as a kind of avenging host, lending his legendary reputation to, yet again, get another horror film off the ground which otherwise might wind up unseen and forgotten in some straight-to-video release.

At the time I had an impromptu house guest in the person of British director Michael Armstrong who, as fate would have it, actually wrote the screenplay for another one of Vincent’s 80’s Horror films, HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS. This is discussed in greater detail in one of the other essays in the Camp David collection. The reason Mike is of interest to this situation is that every time Jeff and Bill Burr would come over to discuss the project, Mike was there gloriously unemployed and preparing endless cocktails to fuel things up a bit. Needless to say, the end result was the two of us drunk out of our skulls, chatting the night away about Hollywood, and now and then touching on how to convince Price to do the film.

Execution Scene: Martine Beswicke strapped in chair. Lawrence Tierney as the warden in black suit. Right to left; Tony Clay in suit, Susan Tyrrell, David del Valle and Alan White

Now since these novice producers were dyed in the wool Horror fans, the notion of having the director of MARK OF THE DEVIL on tap for advice seemed like a no-brainer. However the advice of a boozy veteran whose own anemic career was in dire need of a transfusion was not always prudent, to say the least.

I mentioned Michael to Vincent at one point during all this and he recalled one incident in particular: “I remember waiting in London for the rewrites for LONG SHADOWS to turn up one afternoon. They arrived hand-delivered in the person of Mr. Armstrong. The script’s front cover and some of the pages were somewhat soaked in booze.” I had been wondering all along why Michael had never sought Vincent out while he was struggling in Hollywood. Vincent’s comments kind of explained why, and it made me sad because Michael Armstrong should have had more of a career than he did with all the talent he possessed (to learn more, read the installment “Marked by the Devil”).

“ONCE IT WAS HUMAN EVEN AS YOU AND I”

Among the handful of those unforgettable utterly surreal moments to be found in modern cinema, one particular sequence has been absorbed instantly into Pop Culture. This film was produced at the height of the science fiction craze of the 1950’s, and the sequence I am referring to occurs during those final screen moments in the life of scientist Andre Delambre, whose head and left arm are fantastically reduced and attached to a common house fly. The mutant insect is fatally caught in a spider’s web while elsewhere his human body is saddled with the head and arm of said house fly enlarged to human size, creating a tragic half-human creature trapped in the lab where this horror was accidentally created in Kurt Neumann’s production of the 1958 sci-fi horror thriller THE FLY. Now for this scenario to work one must simply suspend all logic as to why the heads of the fly and the scientist change size so drastically on each other’s torsos, not to mention why the scientist is still thinking with a human brain while the human head on the fly can still find the will to speak those terrifying last words “Help Me…!”

This now justly infamous “spider web” sequence where Andre’s head and arm rest on the body of a tiny house fly enduring the unbearable agony of entrapment, screaming for its life in a voice so small it almost cannot be heard by the human ear, all the while a very large spider advances closer to its prey. Anyone who has seen this film can never forget this moment and, regardless of how silly the premise, the sheer nightmare quality of this situation will haunt your dreams forever.

20th Century Fox has decided to release for Halloween this year a boxed set of the three films that make up the saga of the Delambre family and their obsessive quest for scientific knowledge in the “wild Country” of teleportation of matter. The first two films feature Vincent Price, while the third replaces him with Brian Donlevy. THE FLY, RETURN OF THE FLY and CURSE OF THE FLY are all in Cinemascope with only the first film being in color, with a decent budget and production values the others must do without. Having said that, all three films possess their own unique charms, and a large host of admirers in this ever unpredictable genre of cult cinema, so this forthcoming release should please those people out there in the dark who just cannot get those two words out of their minds.

My involvement with this project came about early last month when a gentleman named Roger De Siva asked for a copy of my DVD “VINCENT PRICE – THE SINISTER IMAGE” to screen over at Fox as a possible supplement for the boxed set. While this was going on, I was asked to participate in their documentary regarding the three films and, later, on a very different one regarding Vincent Price for another boxed set of just Price films from the MGM/UA library. After nearly a month of trading emails and phone calls, the powers that be in development informed me that Fox could not include my interview because Price and I discuss too many films that are not made by 20th Century Fox. Well all I can say is it that is their loss, as well as that of the fans who might have enjoyed hearing about the career and films of Vincent Price from the master himself.

The good news from all this is that while I was waiting to see what was going to be included in this project, I was invited to conduct the audio commentary with the “fly” himself, actor David Hedison, for the newly remastered DVD of THE FLY.

I had met him a few years before at an autograph show in Beverly Garland’s wonderful hideaway hotel in the valley. Mr. Hedison is still a distinguished looking man with a finely cropped beard. He appears tanned and silver haired, the very picture of health.

We recorded our conversation on a Friday afternoon at a lively audio house in Hollywood known as MARGARITA MIX, aptly named for they indeed do mix a fine libation after the fact, in an atmosphere of relaxation with great show-biz vibes in abundance. We even ran into David Duchovny in the next booth, obviously doing an audio commentary himself.

David Hedison was in fine form for the duration of the taping which took us nearly three hours. He had not seen the film for years so it was a fresh approach for him and he had fun with it. It was interesting to watch him look at himself as he appeared on film half a century ago.

Most of the cast and crew long gone, he still regretted the fact that the producers would not allow him to do a progressive make-up, gradually turning into a fly, which would have been even more horrific, not to mention a real acting challenge. To this day he still cannot forgive the producers for speeding up his voice on the soundtrack during the web sequence, making him sound more like a chipmunk than a man. He played his part in and out of make-up, even when his head was covered in a black cloth.

I especially loved the moment where David cried out “That is not my hand typing that letter; it is the director, Kurt Neumann” The commentary is never dull and we had a ball watching this underrated sci fi classic of the fifties unwind in front of us. All we needed to make it totally wild would have been those little robots from the Mystery Science 2000 series on hand to add their ad libs as well.

A few days later a package arrived at my office with a signed photo of David in full make-up, which had an inscription that of course ended with the essential “help me” after the signature. So, in this writer’s humble opinion, whether David Hedison is at the bottom of the sea or trapped in a spiders web, this guy is ALWAYS tops in his field in my book.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (MGM) 1971
1 hour 35 minutes, Color, 1.85:1 aspect ratio, enhanced for 16:9 widescreen Tvs. Original.
PASSABLE

Dr. Phibes Rises Again! (MGM) 1972
1 hour 29 minutes, Color, 1.85:1 ratio, enhanced for 16:9 screens. Original Theatrical trailer.
RECOMMENDED

The “Phibes” films are Art Deco uniquities, and if you have room for some stylish black-comedy-horror in your collection, they belong. Witty, eccentric Brit director Robert Fuest had a mercilessly curtailed motion picture career, of which Phibes Part the 2nd was the height, even though it is a patchwork quilt and not terribly pretty as a result. On a professional high after the Phibes films, he came over here and did The Devil’s Rain, on which I hear the studio system drove him to despair. He hasn’t done a feature since, to my knowledge, though I’ve seen his name crop up occasionally on British tv.

The first Phibes is the more polished, and also the more staid. It set the darkly comedic tone that Fuest was to take to its limits in the second film, and there were others planned, and the gauntlet was even picked up by other genre directors like George Romero, but nothing more ever came of the series. In it, the titular character (Price at his most inimitably expressive, despite the fact that his character doesn’t speak through his mouth) is a former concert musician, now a cadaverous remnant of his former self out to avenge the death of his wife, and further to bring her back to life by occult means. His vengeance is exacted in biblical proportion – literally – as each of the guilty parties meets their demise in ways mandated by old testament prophecy. Locusts…rats… you name it, Phibes arranges it.

And in Rises Again!, he’s once more up to his old tricks, this time on a race to Egypt to find the underground river of eternal life, with the reliable Robert Quarry (Count Yorga) as his (not quite well-matched) adversary. This second installment leads to a eurphoric ending, wild and cathartic in the tradition of City Lights, Ride the High Country, The Informer, White Heat, 2001, all those daring films that send us back into our own worlds on a tremendous high. But disaster was to befall every incarnation of the second Phibes after its theatrical release, you see… wait a minute! I want to tell you, but I’m committing a cinematic sin. I’m verging on revealing a STORY SPOILER. Why I should be so worried about this, I don’t know. Half the coming attractions shown in theaters today ruin the film for everyone, so why shouldn’t I? But I won’t, at least not without warning you first. If you haven’t seen the film yet, you might read this part afterwards:

When Dr. Phibes Rises Again was originally released, the ending involved Quarry’s character being forced to make a fatal decision in order to save his wife, which caused him to age a hundred years in a matter of seconds. Clinging onto a barred gate submerged in four feet of water, his life ebbing away, he stares forlornly out at Phibes, who is blissfully paddling his ‘beloved’ into the darkness of eternal life while singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. It was, I can assure you, one of the inspired endings of film history. But alas, all the necessary music clearances hadn’t been obtained, so subsequent video releases, and laserdisc releases (US and Japan) were forced to replace the MGM musical crescendo with an ethereal choral piece which, admittedly, was effective, if completely lacking in irony. On the DVD box for the film, in a red rectangle marked “Fun Facts!”, someone has noted “Vincent Price recorded the song “Over the Rainbow” which was supposed to run under the credits, but was cut from the final version.” Grimly I ran the film, and to my overwhelming surprise, there was the original soundtrack back where it belonged. A mistake? A mistake that soon may be corrected? Buy your copy while you can! Remember what happened with The Little Shop of Horrors!

The double bill I recommend is the first Phibes followed by dessert, followed by Phibes # 2. Sip some colorful liquor during the screening. The good Doctor would have appreciated that touch.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (MGM) 1971
theatrical trailer.
Director Robert Fuest.
Written by James Whiton and William Goldstein.
O riginal Music by Basil Kirchin.
With Vincent Price, Joseph Cotten, Hugh Griffith, Terry-Thomas and Virginia North as Vulnavia.

Dr. Phibes Rises Again! (MGM) 1972
Directed by Robert Fuest.
Written by Fuest and Robert Blees.
Original Music by John Gale.
With Vincent Price, Robert Quarry, Peter Cushing, Beryl Reid, Terry-Thomas, and Valli Kemp as Vulnavia.