A superbly macabre and strange horror film. It doesn't make a great deal of sense but then again doesn't really have to.
Eminent doctors are suffering mysterious deaths, including being killed by bats and even frozen to death. Trout of the Yard (Peter Jeffrey) discovers that there is a link. All of the doctors were present when the wife (Caroline Munro) of Dr Phibes (Vincent Price) was killed. However, he is supposed to have died too. With the help of the chief surgeon in the Phibes operation Dr Vesalius (Joseph Cotten), Trout discovers that Phibes is alive after all. Well in a way.
In reality Phibes is a bizarre half-dead creature who can only speak via gramophone and wears a full Vincent Price prosthetic face. He plays the organ in his wonderful Art Deco lair, accompanied by a clockwork orchestra, while planning and celebrating his hideous Biblical inspired killings.
A wonderfully campy and weird horror. Quite how a dead man was able to conduct such elaborate and audacious killings is never explained, but this isn't a film for worrying about such mere details! So over the top it does verge on self-parody but incredible stuff.
