The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

An organist somehow manages to parlay his talent of playing funeral-type music into a scheme where he knocks off all the doctors involved in his wife’s failed surgery through some of the most ridiculous schemes since the glory days of the Joker when he thought he could kill Batman and Robin with items such as a giant typewriter.

Clearly this Phibes guy needs help, so I went over to Dr. Phil’s website like I usually do when I have a problem and noticed that he’s got his ten basic life laws that pretty much lay out everything you need to know to act like your life doesn’t suck.

In this movie, Phibes clearly demonstrates a lack of any kind of grasp on these life laws and this leads to his ultimate destruction, culminating in an unfortunate encounter with his Lil’ Psycho Home Embalming Kit. What follows then is my meagre attempt to help Phibes out with the aid of Phil’s life laws. (There is a sequel, after all.)

Phil’s first life law is “you either get it, or you don’t”. This is obviously a dumb and nonsensical one that is there simply so that he can have ten life laws instead of nine. We’ll just skip to number two because even though Phibes is having a communication breakdown with his authentic self (this could be explained by the fact that he has to talk by holding a tube up to his neck) I don’t see what that has to do with life law numero uno. Of course, I just might not be getting it.

In any event, number two is “you create your own experience”. Okay, that’s a little bit better – it sounds vaguely empowering. Phibes appears to have this one down pat. He lives in a big house and has all these robot-like figures playing old music in some kind of strange animatronic band. He’s also created a fake nightclub where this band plays and where he can play the organ. I always enjoy those nightclubs where some guy in a velvet cape is playing the organ.

I noticed that he also rides around in a car with his picture painted on the sides of the windows. I think that maybe Phibes veered over the line from “creating his own experience” into “creating his own reality.”

Phil emphasizes that everything about your experience is a result of a choice you make. Phibes has made choices such as what kind of house band he’s going to have and how to decorate his mansion and seems to be okay with all that. (Except maybe when he’s sniffing the glove of his dead wife in front of the shrine he has built for her in the house, but it’s not like the shrine is in the living room or anything.)

The third life law is “people do what works”. That’s so simple that it must be true! Is this guy a guru or what? If you haven’t guessed, we’ll be skipping over that one.

There’s a bunch more of these life laws, but to be honest, I’ve always found that if I have to remember any more than about two sentences of self-help mumbo jumbo, it starts to feel a little too close to work and I just fall back into my old self-destructive patterns, so I think we can hit the fast forward button on Phibes’ therapy and get on with helping this guy.

If Phibes was on Phil’s show, Phil would show clips from Phibes’ misadventures like when he used a catapult to impale a guy inside a gentlemen’s club with a brass unicorn and when he cranked up his homemade ice machine and froze a dude inside a car and ask Phibes “What do you think when you see yourself up there like that?”

Phibes would probably hang his head, put his tube to his neck and mumble, “I don’t like myself very much”. Okay, knowing Phibes, he would say something like “Nine killed her, nine shall die, nine eternities in doom!” but Phil has a way of breaking down barriers so you never know.

If I was Phil, I would have asked him what in the world these old testament plagues have to do with some botched operation. I’m sure that boiling those cabbages or whatever they were, collecting those grasshoppers, sneaking into the hospital, drilling a hole in the ceiling and funneling the green cabbage goo and grasshoppers onto the head of the sleeping nurse below was very fulfilling for the few moments when you were actually doing it, but when you got back home to your empty house with all the robots and the sexy female assistant you employed what did it get you?

So, is there anything that can be done to help Phibes? Uh, no, not really. See, it turns out that if your whole life was your wife (aside from your comely companion and cyborg musicians) and a bunch of quacks killed her because they were discussing golf courses and stock portfolios while they were supposed to be saving her life, then I think that your sick and twisted obsessive love demands that you immediately set about concocting the gaudiest revenge scheme you can wrap your warped mind around.

The only drawback in all of this is that since most of Phibes’ plan is style, there is a substantial lack of substance. Nothing of Phibes is really known other than that he was an organist who wanted revenge for the death of his wife. He never really let on as to why his thirst for payback took the form that it did or how a mere organist was able to devise all these elaborate death traps or what the deal with his bionic band was, but his taste in set design and musical accompaniment was impeccable.

© 2011 MonsterHunter