The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)
Watching this movie about an organist who 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 complicated (read: ridiculous) schemes since the glory days of the Joker when he thought he could kill Batman and/or Robin with items such as a giant typewriter, I was reminded of something I was told when I was all ate up with my own schemes after the break up of my third common law marriage. Don't ever invest more in a relationship than you are willing to lose. I'm pretty sure they were quoting Dr. Phil when they dropped this pearl on me, so I immediately took it to be gospel. After all, Phil had gotten me through some of the toughest times of my life.
I mean, if it wasn't for him I wouldn't have even known that my actual self was being suffocated by the expectations of others. Unfortunately, by the time he and I found that out, my actual self had actually died, but I was still able to reap the benefits of other Phil-osophy such as "do you want to have a relationship or do you want to be right" and my favorite: "Look at all your failed relationships. What's the common denominator? You!"
Clearly this Phibes guy and his movie, while being enjoyable enough, isn't anything that I find terribly interesting to write about, so I went on over to Dr. Phil's website 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, like you need to make the decision to just go out and slap the yellow off of your boss' teeth.
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 whose movements are always the same - probably like an Arrowsmith concert or something. He's also created some sort of 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". I kept waiting for Lt. Geordi from Star Trek: The Next Generation to show up and declare that there had been some sort of holodeck malfunction and that the very fabric of space and time were at risk because his sex fantasies had come to life. 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, chiefly because Phil runs a lot verbiage about "payoffs" pertaining to this life law that I don't get. Something about how we do stuff because we get some kind of value out of doing it. Well, duh! (That's classic Phil, too!). Phibes has cooked up a revenge scheme where he kills some people and as a result they die and he keeps going until he gets everyone. Sounds like it's working out just fine for him.
Another life law that we'll be glossing over is the old "you cannot change what you don't acknowledge". Toward the end of the movie, Phibes acknowledges some stuff - like he's horribly disfigured and is a freak. Throughout the movie he's been wearing this really bad wig and this abominable Vincent Price mask to cover up for the lack of face he has after going over a cliff in Switzerland years ago. This is usually the part of the show where Phil breaks out the crowd-pleasing catch phrase all us Phillie Phanatics wait to hear: "You need to get real!" Whenever he says that, everyone always nods (including his victim) as if he had just flipped the switch in their messed up heads. Then Phil usually pauses and says, "No, I'm serious. You need to get REAL!" The victim, I mean patient, almost always gets teary-eyed at this point and promises Phil whatever he wants to hear. In any case, I thought it was pretty unhealthy that Phibes was hiding his true self behind that ugly Vincent Price disguise. So what if you had to drink through your neck? Stop looking to society's norms for validation!
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. Besides, Phil never has time to run down every single life law for each guest. It usually isn't too long before he wants to start selling his southern, down-home, folksy persona by saying stuff like "look at you, sittin' there, grinnin' like a possum". (How much more success would you have had with your own therapy if your therapist started comparing you to varmints and critters?)
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 (Did your dead wife that you're supposedly obsessed with approve that?) what did it get you? To me, your best revenge would have been to sue them and tie them up in court and with depositions for the next five years along with jacking up their malpractice insurance rates so that they'd be virtually bankrupt. The Ten Plagues of Egypt having nothing on discovery motions.
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.
Sadly, some of us are just destined for crazed ends. It's just the law of averages, man. It's like Terry (he's an angry, shrill voice in my head) always screams whenever I'm smiling vacantly at people that I hate: If you're going to ride the lightning, never ride alone!" 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.
I think that it would probably be most helpful for Phibes to start to move past this thing. Let these people know what your feelings are and how much it hurt you and that they aren't controlling your actions anymore. It's called life law number nine: "There is power in forgiveness". That's probably the healthiest thing for Phibes to do, but it also isn't very entertaining, thus the allure of the various plague-inspired killings (a gimmick that was kind of recycled in Seven). This movie turns out to be like most of the nut jobs you'll run into in life in that while you'll never really grasp the significance or reasons for their actions, you'll never be bored by them either. It's like MonsterHunter says in movie maxim number 6: "Distract me with a high body count and stylish death scenes and I'll never notice the shallow and underdeveloped story and/or characters".