Where the first Phibes misadventure was a decent horror movie spotlighting a quirky villain prone to playing the organ with his robot band and devising devious and convoluted methods of execution for folks he held responsible for his wife’s death, the next chapter weakly tries to rehash it, but ill-advisably transplants the bulk of the action to an ancient Egyptian tomb.
The only scenes in the movie that didn’t hang there limp and sallow like the skin on Vincent Price’s face were the ones with the two dudes from Scotland Yard. They provided moments of dry comedy and were a welcome respite from the overly self-conscious way the rest of the movie paraded around its baroque super-villain. (Does he have to decorate every secret hideout of his in art deco style – even the one in the ancient Egyptian tomb?)
The film begins with a couple minutes of clips from the prior film to set things up. It’s kind of one of those “previously on The Abominable Dr. Phibes” kind of things. The movie then begins wearing out its welcome as soon as the new material fires up.
Phibes is revived by moonlight hitting the top of his crypt. Once he gets out of his coffin he goes looking for his safe which contains a papyrus map to someplace in Egypt where he can hook up with the River of Life and revive Victoria.
He is dismayed to see that his house is now just a bunch of busted up chunks of concrete and he is even more dismayed when he sees that the papyrus map has been stolen. I wanted to tell Phibes that he was damn lucky to be awake at all and to quit whining about his little map. How in the world was moonlight supposed to hit the top of his stupid crypt when it was hidden in his basement buried beneath a ton of rubble? The glass is half full, jackass. Half full.
Phibes instantly realizes that it was stolen by Count Yorga himself, Robert Quarry. Quarry plays Biederbeck who is also after some of that old time Egyptian Gatorade that can halt the ravages of age.
Now, if there is a River of Life that has the ability to give people eternal life or revive dead people (I wasn’t quite sure if I was supposed to believe that it was going to do both, but even only one of those would be pretty impressive), wouldn’t it be a big enough river for two demented freaks to share? Sure, but then they wouldn’t be demented would they?
Phibes and Vulnavia make a beeline to Biederbeck’s house to get the map back and then book passage on the next ship to Egypt. I wasn’t sure how he knew it was Biederbeck that stole the map, but those kind of leaps in logic is what separates evil geniuses (and poor plotting) from us common folk.
Guess who else is on the ship? Biederbeck! Even though his map was ripped off, he’s running low on the elixir of life and heads off to the mountain where he thinks the River of Life is, figuring he’ll work out the details once he’s there.
The ship is where Phibes commits another murder, this time offing a buddy of Biederbeck who makes the mistake of messing around Phibes’ robot band! Okay, here’s the difference between these two movies: I can understand and appreciate a evil guy who hangs out at his house with his band of replicants or whatever. That’s a nice illustration of this guy’s complete rejection of reality and how he surrounds himself with his own tightly controlled version of life. But to have him box it all up and ship it off to Egypt where he’s going to be looking for the River of Life is just stupid. Why, the shipping charges alone would be ridiculous!
Well, the movie gets a hernia doing it, but finally all the players are in the same spot in Egypt so that they can start mixing it up a little a bit. Phibes hides Victoria’s body in a secret compartment of a sarcophagus of an Egyptian pharaoh he finds in the mountain tomb.
He also finds a key that opens a gate to the “other side” where his River of Life is located. As he says, he just has to find the lock that the key opens. He does find it, but dang it, wouldn’t’ you know it, but Biederbeck has gone and stolen the sarcophagus with Vicki in it! Phibes then begins whacking various members of Biederbeck’s outfit in a variety of interesting ways.
This movie tries to give you more of the same as the first one, but while it mimics it in outline form, it doesn’t have the imagination to measure up to it, particularly in the death scenes, which after all is the gimmick of these movies.
The first movie had him inspired by the plagues of the Old Testament and was a way to show that Phibes was literally coming down on those people like the wraith of God. In this movie, they give him some silly death machines that are dressed up in the trappings of ancient Egypt, but aren’t terribly clever or poetic.
Phibes himself is a bore this time around executing his shabby plan (couldn’t he have hidden the coffin in a better spot – like in his secret hideout in the mountain that no one ever found?) in between annoying trips to the organ and acting cultured (like complimenting Vulnavia on the fish dinner she prepared while eating it through his neck) though he wasn’t a complete sophisticate (like when he pulled a fish bone out of his neck during dinner).
In short, everything that worked in the first movie is hastily replayed in this one with diminishing returns. Even Vulnavia looks like she doesn’t know what she’s doing here this go round. This was about as worn out as Vincent Price looked when he woke up in the opening scene.
© 2010 MonsterHunter
