YMMV / The Abominable Dr. Phibes

• Crosses the Line Twice: Even in a film as campy as this is, the sequence where Trout and Crow are unscrewing a corpse impaled to a wall by a brass unicorn's head by literally rotating the body around is a little over the top. Until you keep seeing the feet rotate by with the inspectors kvetching like they're merely trying to dislodge a particularly troublesome bolt. Then it's hilarious.
• Magnificent Bastard: Dr. Anton Phibes himself is a cultured, accomplished organist and theologian lashing out after the death of his beloved wife. Blaming the surgical team, Phibes spends years in hiding, letting them believe him dead, until he resurfaces and begins to murder them in a series of killings designed to emulate the Ten Plagues of Egypt. Phibes is repeatedly a step ahead of every attempt to stop or capture him and ends the film almost completely victorious. Resurfacing years later, Phibes once again destroys his rivals as he seeks to restore his Victoria to life, ending up completely untouchable by the end, with his calculating mind seeing him through every challenge.
• Moral Event Horizon: Although the Doctor has a very tragic and sympathetic reason for his atrocities it is this tragedy that blinds him to the fact that he is crossing the line by murdering several innocent characters throughout the film and even going so far as to threaten the life of the head doctor's young son just so he could teach him about loss.
• Narm:
  • The plague of rats. It's a pretty hard sell when the rats on screen look like they're just curiously crawling around instead of gnawing and scratching their victim. Likewise, the pilot himself just pushes them away or gropes clumsily for the one on his shoulder, never even trying to actually kill them: a task which really shouldn't be that hard for a man with leather gloves on.
  • Also the plague of bats. They're fruit bats, which while impressively large are probably not inclined to do much damage to a human. Plus they have cute widdle faces.◊
    From this review: "Basically, the man in the bed has little to fear unless he is dressed as a plum or a juicy papaya (not, as we shall see later, that dressing up his victim as a mango or Bartlett pear should be considered beyond our villain, no)."
  • The choice of color for the blood makes it look like Dr. Hargreaves is bleeding strawberry Kool-Aid from his injuries.
• Nightmare Fuel: The gallery of Cruel and Unusual Deaths aside, there's the moment when Phibes reveals his horribly disfigured face◊ to Vesalius
• Older Than They Think:
  • The last challenge, based on the Plague of the Death of the First-Born Son, requires the surgeon who failed to save Phibes' wife to cut out a key planted from behind his own son's heart that will allow him to unchain his son from a machine that will spray acid into his son's face if he takes too long getting the aforementioned key. This might as well be a prototype for the Saw films.
    • Not to mention the frog mask, which was exactly the kind of thing Jigsaw might have come up with for Mardi Gras.
  • Also, this is a film about a man with burned skin, supposedly dead, who takes revenge on those responsible, sometimes through their children. Hmmm.
  • And although the idea of the Poetic Serial Killer goes back way before this movie, it's fair to say that Se7en may have gotten some inspiration from Phibes' extreme creativity and use of religious motifs.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Ian Marter shows up in a bit part as a Bobbie. About three years later, he'd become well-known as Lt. Harry Sullivan on Doctor Who.
  • Dr. Kitaj is played by Peter Gilmore, who would later be best known for playing Captain James Onedin in The Onedin Line.
• Squick:
  • "And then he'll have a face... LIKE MINE!"
  • Phibes' toast with Vulnavia, pouring it into his neck. Just don't think about how he handles solid food.

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