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koberulz.bsky.social · @koberulz.bsky.social@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Dr. Phibes Rises Again 2/10

It boggles the mind that you would cast Vincent Price as a character who is effectively mute. His voice is one of his most entertaining qualities, and watching him mime is nowhere near as much fun. There's no end to silly voicebox technologies allowing him to monologue, because the filmmakers are clearly aware that the stupid thing they're doing is stupid, but being aware you're doing a stupid thing makes it more stupid not less stupid. Equally stupid is writing definitive deaths for characters and then just deciding to bring them back anyway. There's enough pseudo-occult mumbo-jumbo to make the return of Dr. Phibes (Price, House of Usher) at least somewhat more palatable than that of an Emperor Palpatine or a Michael Scofield, and the movie itself is silly enough that none of it really matters, but it's still not the smoothest start. Even less excusable is the return of Phibes's assistant Vulnavia, who just shows back up with no explanation and is now played by Valli Kemp instead of Virginia North because North was unavailable. Having, in the first film, avenged the death of his wife Victoria (Caroline Munro, The Golden Voyage of Sindbad), Phibes now seeks to revive her with the help of a papyrus stolen from Biederbeck (Robert Quarry, A Kiss Before Dying) and then something about somewhere in Egypt that grants eternal youth or something. Most importantly, he needs to kill a lot of people in weird theatrical ways, and really everything else is just an excuse for that to happen. British cops Trout (Peter Jeffrey, Anne of the Thousand Days) and Waverley (John Cater, The Woman in Black) are, for some reason, on the case even though it travels to Egypt.

#movie

Published 2026-06-10 00:00 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere