The movie opens with a Phantom of the Opera like character wildly playing organ music then cranking up his life-sized mechanical band while he dances with a beautiful young woman. This is Doctor Anton Phibes (Vincent Price), not a medical doctor, but a PHD of music and theology. Four years previous his young wife, Victoria (Caroline Munro, in her first role), perished on the operating table--and he was in a horrendous car crash as he rushed to her. Everyone thought he died but he's been alive, recuperating from his terrible injuries. He wears prosthetic face and talks with a phonograph type device he devised. He wants revenge on the doctors who failed to save his wife's life, so enacts the biblical pharoah's curse on them. One guy is ripped to shreds by huge bats, another drained of blood and the nurse is devoured by locusts!
What I like about this is that the character is truly insane. It's really not the doctor's faults that his wife died, just his desire to wreak havoc and kill them. And although the movie takes place in the 1930's everyone looks and talks like it's the early 70's, which makes it even weirder. I love this movie!
The movie opens with a Phantom of the Opera like character wildly playing organ music then cranking up his life-sized mechanical band while he dances with a beautiful young woman. This is Doctor Anton Phibes (Vincent Price), not a medical doctor, but a PHD of music and theology. Four years previous his young wife, Victoria (Caroline Munro, in her first role), perished on the operating table--and he was in a horrendous car crash as he rushed to her. Everyone thought he died but he's been alive, recuperating from his terrible injuries. He wears prosthetic face and talks with a phonograph type device he devised. He wants revenge on the doctors who failed to save his wife's life, so enacts the biblical pharoah's curse on them. One guy is ripped to shreds by huge bats, another drained of blood and the nurse is devoured by locusts!
