I had a number of films I planned to add here before Halloween, but didn't get around to it till now.
Here is The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971), starring Vincent Price, in a role that is both horrifying and at times humorous. A bizarre 1920's era inventor whose wife died, and he blames the doctors who treated her for his wife's death, and finds grandiose ways to brutally kill them off one by one, in ways patterned after biblical plagues unleashed on Egypt in the book of Exodus. Dr. Phibes at his pipe organ, Phibes in scenes resurrecting from death and then later embalming himself, his beautiful but creepy and deadly silent female assistant Vulnavia, his obsessive and bizarre death traps to kill off the doctors as he exacts his revenge, all done to the sound of his pipe organ as he plays, and to the elegant scores of his mechanical jazz band. Monstrous, twisted, ostentatious, and fun.
A few years ago, an aficionado of Vincent Price discussing Price's many decades of movies, on this particular movie on TCM described it saying: "Of all the Vincent Price movies, this one was the Vincent Priciest."
There was a sequel by the same director, Dr Phibes Rises Again (1972) that while not as good as the first and appeared to be produced on a visibly smaller budget, still is a nice continuation of the bizarre and darkly funny character, with some memorable visuals, such as rowing away at the movie's end in his dead wife's coffin in an underground stream.
