Weirdhouse Cinema: The Abominable Dr. Phibes

That's right, the Abominable Dr fives from one. Uh. This is a film that is frequently described as a dark comedy horror film, which is a It is kind of a way of saying this movie is weird, and we don't really know how to classify it, you know, because it certainly has Yeah, it has comedic flair in it, it has horror flare um, but it's it's ultimately its own unique weird vision. Uh. And it's it's really difficult

to compare it to just about anything else. I would almost say it's a musical, though the characters don't sing songs. There are a lot of musical numbers and dancing. Yes, yeah, it's very theatrical. Um Like, in trying to come up with an elevator pitch for it, I was thinking, it's it's kind of Phantom of the Opera meets Batman meets a wax museum horror movie and a swanky, unoccupied nightclub for stylish madmen. But but also you have to say the words Vincent Price, because I think that is a

key element of establishing the themes. Yeah, I think this is our first Vincent Price film, and um and Fibes has been on our our our list, It's been on our radar for a while, and I know we've heard from at least a couple of listeners suggesting it, and it came up again recently when I was looking at films that had very well regarded movie scores and so yeah, yeah, this is, uh, this is our first Vincent Price film.

That we did discuss The Tingler from N nine and an old episode of Stuff to Blow your Mind, but that was pretty weird house that was more of a like we used The Tingler as a bringboard to discuss some science or vice versa. You know. I would say The Tingler is somewhat different because The Tingler is a William Castle movie that has Vincent Price in it. But lots of Vincent Price movies, it almost feels as if it doesn't matter who the director is and it's just

it just becomes a Vincent Price movie. I would say this is one of those it is and then on the on the same level, one thing I kept thinking about is, Okay, Vincent Price plays a character in this film that that doesn't actually speak with his voice anymore. Uh. You hear Vincent Price's voice, but it's like a it's

it's like through a machine. And so it's it's unique to be watching this and you think, oh, well, you know, Vincent Prices is great, like as a visual performer, he has this amazing voice, uh, and yet we have a character who's uh, in many ways mute in this film, and it kind of it kind of applies to other characters in the film as well, like a lot of a lot of the people in this film are just part of the set piece. It's about about creating this

this theatrical vision somehow. Though, even though he doesn't speak with his mouth in the movie, the price ham juice gets on everything, like the Vincent Price campiness comes through in the energy exuded by every other actor in the film. And I was going to compare it to another great horror movie that I just watched within the last year, because they are so similar. This other movie is called Theater of Blood from nineteen seventy three. So it came out two years after Dr Fibes. But if you can

believe this, listen to all the parallels. Both movies star Vincent Price as a performing artist of some kind who is presumed dead but returns to enact an elaborate plan of revenge on a list of nine specific enemies, targeting each one in a succession of sort of themed murders. And in Dr Fibes the themed murders are based on the tin plagues of Egypt in the Book of Exodus, and in Theater of Blood they're based on deaths in the plays of Shakespeare. And in both movies, the Price

character has a cool, younger female sidekick. In Theater of Blood that is actually the It is Vincent Price's character's daughter, played by Diana Rigg, who always great. Dia rig one of my favorites, and in that one, uh, she's great. But also in that when Vincent Price plays a ham Shakespearean actor instead of an organist. All right, well, those

are certainly some five vibes. You're definitely vibing with fibies there. Um. You know one thing that I was thinking about, especially towards the end of this picture, and we'll discuss the plot here that uh was that this film The Abominable Doctor fives. It's kind of like the precursor to such dreary themed murder films as uh seven as I don't even thinking like Resurrection and of course the Saw movies.

Except this movie is like what if you had something like that and it was at least ten times is fun? You know? Um oh more than that? Yeah, this is the exact opposite. This is a weird, elaborate themed murders but just bouncing on rays of sunshine. Yes, So, I think Dr Fibes is one of my new show favorites. It's going on the list with uh, I think some of the best movies we've watched on here, like uh, I don't keep a running list of my favorites, but

they're somewhere in my head. It's gonna be like Mad Love, Robot Jock's Ship of Monsters and and oh and Inframan and this one's going up there too. Yeah. It's it's extremely watchable. I can easily recommend this one to to film fans of different genres because it does transcend genre. It's not just a horror film, uh, It's it's just so stylish so love lovingly stylish that I feel like it can suck in just about anybody, like you're just

just about any given scene. Even the scenes that don't play take place within dr Fibes, Subterranean, Um Organum fun House are still like lavishly decorated and and ingeniously shot. Totally agree? All right, well, let's go ahead and listen to the trailer. Here, h what lovely music for a murder? Or two or three or nine? Who's this? Ladies and gentlemen, I want you to meet a dear friend. Nine killed you, nine shall die your wife? No fibes but you I will kill but you go? Doctor I already dead? But

what's the guitar? The town cut is visited among the pharoahs before Exodus. Are you ready for Doctor five? All right, let's talk about some of the people involved in this motion picture. First of all, let's start at the top with the director, Robert Fust Fust Live through two thousand

and twelve, British director noted for his unique genre style. UM. It should come as no surprise to to some fans out there that he came up through the Avengers TV show before making such features as nineteen seventies and Soon in the Darkness, a thriller nineteen seventy adaptation of Worthering Heights with Timothy Dalton is Heathcliff, followed by the two

Doctor Five's films. Uh nineteen seventy three is the Final Program, which was based on a Michael moorecock novel starring John Finch, and seventy five satanic melt oh Mania movie The Devil's Ragin starring Ernest board Nine, The Shot, Tom Scarrett, John Travolta, and of course uh Anton LaVey. I was wondering if we should come back to The Devil's Reign on weird House. It is a notorious for being not very good but

also being sort of worth seeing. Yeah, yeah, it has greatness in it, and I think maybe we're in a better place, will be in a better place to understand it having experienced fibes. But uh yeah, and also it is possible that maybe the world just wasn't ready for the Devil's Rain um, especially when you look at his filmography, because it looks like, uh, he mostly did TV after

The Devil's Reign. All right. Um. The writers on this, they're two credited writers, James Whitten born two thousand and sixteen American writer who wrote the story for two Murder by Phone starring Richard Chamberlain. And then there's also William Goldstein, credited on both fives movies plus nineteen seventies six is The Amazing Doberman's, in which quote an ex con man and his five trained Doberman's helped the Treasury Department agent

stop a racketeer and his gang. It starred James Franciscus, Barbara Eden, Fred Astaire, and Billy Bardi. Um. It has an amazing poster. And my wife says that she remembered this movie. I think her her family they always had Doberman so I think they've watched any if there was a Doberman movie, Uh, they watched it. Imagine the pitch for that. What about Doberman's that solved mysteries? I think there was a They also tried to turn into a TV show. Wait, what kind of dog was Scooby Doo?

I guess he was supposed to be like a great day In or something. Yeah, yeah, and not a The Doberman's have those like the pointy head, those really dirty pointed heads. Yeah, um derpy or terrifying depends on how you look at him, but they can they can look

quite dirty, all right. Uh. The star of this film playing Dr Anton Fives is Vincent Price, who lived nineteen eleven through nineteen The legend himself got all of him and an actor of great genuine talent who could have kept pressing just to focus on serious film roles, but but embraced camp. And that's something I really respect, Yes, and it was really really a master of it. Yeah. Price was active on screen from the late thirties to the early nineties. You know, great voice, great look, horror

icon um. You know, could could really play serious threat. But also it seemed to have a great sense of humor and was able to play that up. I was active in various genres, especially early on in his career, and you see him, you know, showing up in some some serious pictures during that time period for sure. Uh. And then he did all sorts of celebrity appearances and product endorsements later in life, and it seems seemed to very much you know, cash in on things to a

certain extent. And again, God bless him, he learned it by that point. But uh, time life enchanted world commercials. I think he did commercials for what are they called wine? Uh? What was that brand of wine coolers? Yes, where he's dressed like a polar bear. Um like, I I highly recommend anyone out there just do a like a YouTube search for Vincent Price commercials and you'll get numerous results and they're all great. Oh if you find the ones

where he's doing wine coolers. I don't remember the brand name, but that same brand of wine coolers also has commercials with Grace Jones that are amazing. Ultimately, I would say the Vincent Price pop culture footprint is almost just too huge for us to possibly do justice here in a single episode. So for my part, I'm just going to mention a few of my favorites, uh from from a

few different categories. So, first of all, in film, as much as I love this film, again, it is kind of weird to cast Vincent Price in a role where he doesn't actually speak. I think they're they're you know, they're much better examples of him acting both as a pure protagonist and also as an antagonist. Um. You know. Roger Corman's Mask of the Red Death is a great example of him in pure villain mode, while the in the Tingler. We get to see him as a as

kind of a tortured hero. Um, wait, is he a hero? No? Wait a minute, he's he's like trying to murder his wife and the Tingler. Oh, well, yes he was, but didn't he Well wait no, I think he's sort of he sort of is the hero, but he's a bad dude. Is there a film where he plays like a pure protagonist? Oh, I'm sure there's plenty of one. The Last Man on Earth, which is one of the many film adaptations of I Am Legend, is one of the earlier ones. He's in

that and he plays the main character. Um. How many film adaptations of I Am Legend are there? There's the there's the Omega Man. Yeah, there's the the one with Will Smith, There's the one with Vincent Price. There at least three, but there may be more. Yeah, and I think they're they're planning on making more now. Vincent Price also did a lot of television. Uh. One notable thing

is he appeared on Night Gallery. I think a couple of times, including the nineteen seventy two episode The Return of the Sorcerer, which is one of the few adaptations of a Clark Ashton Smith short story. When it comes to just pure selebbing, I'd say his nineteen seventy seven appearance on The Muppet Show is pretty stellar. That that's right in his element. I mean, oh yeah, Price can

act opposite a puppet. Yes, yes, very well. Though of those Muppet shows, some of them, if you try and watch them in their entirety, some of them can be a little painful at times. There, I mean there it was. It was a Hammy show. Uh, you know, not everything holds up all that well. But but Price was great on that. Now, when it comes to music and spoken word, that this is fact. I wasn't familiar with the pure scope of this. But uh, if you go to discogs

dot com, Vincent Price has sixty eight listings. To put that in perspective, Christopher Lee only had twenty six, which is nothing to sneeze at. Um, but sixty eight listings. Does that include Christopher Lee's metal albums? I think it didn't. Yeah, now I won't. I won't pretend to have heard even half of the uh the releases from Vincent Price. But but I've I've got to go with his excellent spoken word bit in the three track thriller Uh. That you know,

it's loads of fun, the funk of forty thousand years. Um. And then when it comes to product endorsements, Um again the timeline books, Um, Enchanted World's advertisement is great. But also he did one for Monster Vitamins. It's a lot of fun as animated monsters in it, and he's talking it's a children's vitamin commercial. But you've got Vincent Bryce there again. We we can't go through everything that Vincent Price was in, but just to mention a few of

the big ones. He was in the Ten Commandments, who was in House of Whack, the fly House, Unhaunted Hill. He popped up on the old sixties TV Batman series. Uh, he's a voice in The Great Mouse Detective. He plays the villainous rat and that, and then of course his final feature film appearance is in Edward scissor Hands Rest in Peace Man, So Vincent prices His character Dr Five's is listed in the end credits to this movie as

one of two protagonists. Um, which is so you know, humorous but also in keeping with the strange vibe of the film. Uh. The other protagonist is listed as Doctor of Salius, played by Joseph Cotton. Joseph Cotton is another legend star of film, stage, radio and television Live nineteen o five through probably best remembered for his roles and I think three different orson Wells movies Citizen Kane and forty one, The Magnificent Emberson's at forty two Journey into

Fear and forty three. Uh. He's also known for The Third Man from forty nine. I think that was the first first thing I really remember him from, so I guess I probably watched Citizen Kane around the same time. He was also in gas Light, which is where we get the term gas lighting from. And later on he appeared in such films as Soiling Green and seventy three, and such Italian films as Marcelo Alprandi's nine seventies six film They Whisper in the Dark and Sergio Martino's excellent

Island of the Fishmen a k A. Screamers excellent. So any anything he's in, it's a it's a solid screen presence. So in this he plays this character, Doctor Vassalius, who is the the last of the enemies targeted for revenge

by Dr Fibes. Yeah, because this film ultimately follows uh A pattern that you see in a number of different revenge films with kind of an anti hero revenge killer at the center is he'll have a number of targets and you'll start with the targets that are you either don't know much about out or or or or who are actively villainous in some way or another, and then you work your way towards a character who is more relatable and so you know, it forces you to sort

of enjoy the early kills but feel conflicted about the later kills that are planned. All right, some of the other people here, we have Peter Jeffrey in this um, probably probably not an actor that a lot of people are familiar with. He plays Inspector Harry Trout. He's the hard nosed British detective on the case. Ultimately has a

lot of screen time in this um. He lived and he had roles in such films as The Adventures of Baron Muchausen, Midnight Express, The Return of the Pink Panther, and he played the character Count Grendel on Doctor Who, among I think some other characters on Doctor Here. He did a lot of TV work. This is our main Scotland yard detective trying to solve the case of the doctors being murdered in bizarre ways. Inspector killed war Trout. Yeah, and it's it's pretty fun because at times he comes

up a little bit comedic. Other times he's just kind of just the hard nosed cop trope. Yeah, oh oh, but we've got to talk about so in this movie, Dr Fibes has a sidekick. He has an assistant named vol Navia, and she's great. Yes, it's played by Virginia North, who in my notes here I have six through two thousand nine ninety four, I suspect that I have a type of there. And she actually lived to two thousand four.

Make that two thousand and four, not two thousand nine. Anyway, she was a fashion model who only appeared in a handful of titles, including this, which was her final final film, and she was She also pops up in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. She wasn't a bond girl, however, as the main love interest in that movie was played by Diana Rigg, the great Diana Rigg. But yeah, I really enjoy North as vol Navia in this movie. She this is also both of our sort of villain roles. The

killers in this movie do not speak directly. Vincent Price only speaks through like a tube in his neck plugged into a phonograph in some scenes, and Vilnavia doesn't speak at all, though she does play a mean violin as as like doctors are being drained of all their blood and she can she can wield a golden axe. That's right. So yeah, she's stylish and she's helpful. Now we're not going to list all of the various doctors who are murdered by Dr fives, but two of them are noteworthy. Uh,

there's a doctor Longstreet played by Terry Thomas. That of course, there's Terry hyphen Thomas, who lived nineteen eleven through n This is one of those guys who you just see his face and even if it's a still photograph, you can imagine the sounds he's making and there's something like yeah, yeah, yes, yeah.

He tremendous British comedian and character actor who really excelled at playing kind of like um, kind of like bumbling fops and upper crust weird and um yeah, there's a certain type of role that Terry Thomas just absolutely excelled at in this movie. He's a little bit Harvey Corman, but also a little you're gonna balk for a second, I think, but a little bit wings Houser. Well, he definitely choose the scenes with with a with a wings

Houser in Ian uh intensity Um. Terry Thomas was in loads of stuff, but I'd say probably the biggest film he was in, the most most well known is perhaps It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World from sixty three. He also pops up in Danger Diabolic from sixty eight, which is another highly stylish film, and that one was of course featured on Mystery Science Theater three thousand. He

was also a great voice actor. If if you've seen Walt Disney's Robin Hood, the animated Robin Hood with all the animal characters from Envy three, he is the voice of Sir Hiss the Snake. He's sort of the toady to the to the cowardly lion prince I believes out Yes, all right, another doctor we have doctor Um Hargreaves, played by Alex Scott. Alex Scott was in Next of Kin from two, which we just covered on a Weird House Cinema. So I won't go into detail about him, but you know,

if you want to hear more about Alex Scott. We discussed him in the cast section for our previous episode. He was the doctor in Next of Kin. Yes, he was the doctor, and he's a doctor in this one too. Yeah, in this one he's a he's a psychiatrist, right, he puts on the frog mask. Now another small but but fun role, we have Hugh Griffith popping up playing a rabbi who's called in or called upon by the inspectors to give some some expert advice on some of the

clues they've discovered. Griffith live nineteen twelve through nineteen eighty a Welsh actor who actually won the Best Supporting oscar Um Actor oscar in nineteen sixty for Ben her Now the next Oh, this, this is one where I think you. I don't think she was actually credited originally on this film, but you might say that this film also stars a

photograph of Caroline Monroe. That's right. Uh, when we actually see so she plays Dr fives deceased wife, and at some point later in the movie we actually see her

dead body. But I don't think that's Caroline Monroe. Yeah, I think it's just photographs oftware that are used which is which is interesting especially since uh, since she did go on to she wasn't a number of films she she was a pin up model, an actress who I think ultimately stolen seems to have stolen many like seventies film Nerds Heart because she she pops up in films like The Spy Loved Me from seventy seven, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad from seventy three, Captain Cronos Vampire Hunter

from seventy four, At the Earth's Core from seventy six, Star Crash from seventy eight, Star Crash, Yeah, Star Crash, Uh, Dracula A d nineventy two from nineteen seventy two. Um, and then she was in some stuff in the eighties

of note like a Maniac and Slaughter High. But yeah, this is it barely counts as an appearance, Like you could say that, uh Rita Hayworth is uh just as much an acting component in Schasna Shank Redemption as Caroline Monroe is actually a cast member of this film, though her photo does get a lot of screen time, as we have multiple scenes of Vincent Price just worshiping a headshot of Caroline Monroe. Yeah all, but but praying to her. You know. Another tie into a recent episode of the

show with with beast Master two. Apparently Caroline Monroe was at some point in the running to play the character Ursa in Superman, the Villain from the Planet Crypton, the part that eventually went to the actress Sarah Douglas, who played the sorceress in beast Master two and who I thought was by far the best part of that movie. But I think Monroe turned down on the role in Superman so she could be in in that Roger Moore movie. I don't have a real clear memory of that Bond movie. Ye,

that's the one. It's the first one with Jaws. It established, but it's in that regard it's just a necessary precursor to Moonraker. Uh yeah, that's true. Uh So that one was actually well regarded by critics when it came out. If you watch it now, it's, you know, like all those Roger Moore movies, is extremely cheesy. I recalled that one also being one of the ones with the most

just evil James Bond in it. Like I recall there's a scene where some assassins trying to shoot at him and he's like kissing a woman and then he literally just turns and uses her as a human shield to block the bullet from the assassin. I mean, I think it's implied that she's in on she's like setting a trap for him, but still like come on to that's pretty rough. Yeah, so that's a mean Roger Moore James Bond though is. Yeah, it has some good stuff about it.

Villain in it likes to feed people to sharks, because of course that's the guy. He's got like a gun under the long table. I think that's also the one where it's the first one with Jaws in it, and uh, Jaws gets thrown to some sharks, but he defeats the sharks by biting them. Yes, okay, see, I mean I mostly remember it for Jaws. Yeah, alright, let's talk about

the music on this one. Um. The music for this film, though a number of different songs are featured in it, the actual scores composed by uh Basil Kirchen, who through two thousand and five British composer and musician responsible for the scores of such films as sixty seven's The Shuttered Room. Starting Oliver read this movie, the four movie The Freakmaster,

which I've been tempted to watch for this show. It's kind of a seventies take on Todd Browning's Freaks and has Donald Pleasants, Tom Baker, and Brad Harris in it. Oh well, I like that cast list, but something about the idea of a vand's take on Freaks does not appeal to me. Yeah, I that's probably what's kind of helped me back. I know it has I think um Tom Baker plays like a giant, like a tall mutant character,

and there's like a plant man in it. So it's got some some attractive elements to it, plus Donald pleasants. But I haven't actually watched it yet. I've had it, like you know in the playlist ready to go Now. Kirchen did not return for fivees to UM, but he's

he's pretty interesting fellows looking into him a bit. Uh He came up in big band, but then he also got into electronic music and experimental music and tape manipulation and uh so you've had a number of individuals have pointed to him as an important influence, like Brian eno Um broadcast also Nurse with Wound, that's the project from Steven Stapleton. If you're not familiar with Nurse with Wound.

It's a UM kind of early industrial but also kind of noise is weird UM musical project that UH like. I have to say, I like Nurse with Wound, And then there's a lot of Nurse with Wound music that I cannot listen to, and and if you played it for me, I would say, I hate that, Please don't play it. But then there's other stuff that's really solid. So I don't know if you're if you're gonna check something out, I would say check out Thunder, Perfect Mind or UM rock and roll station. So I think the

five score kind of reflects some of these elements. There's certainly a lot of big band notes as well, of course, and then we have all this organ music and other tracks that are featured. It gets a little noisy and per percussive in places, especially when things are getting weird or or they want to amp up at tension, but it doesn't really get like Nurse with Wound levels of strange. But this score is often held up as an as an excellent genre score, though it's again it's kind of

a unique beast um. It's widely available in all formats though I think most of the vinyl out there is older. I haven't seen any evidence of any like super cool re releases from recent years. Though, I would emphasize that the music in this movie is a kind of hybrid product, because on one level you've got this weird score, but then you also have a lot of uh, directly diegetic music taking place on screen that's like uh jazzy big band numbers and an old sort of crooner standards. Yeah.

And finally, since this is such a visually luscious movie, we have to mention the set designer Brian eat Well, who lived ninety nine through two thousand and seven. Uh. Yeah, the sets in this movie are just to die for. So props to to eat Well and everyone else involved in creating these weird interiors. Um. He was a British production designer and art director. He designed the sets for

both Dr fives movies as well. Uh. He also served as production designer on such films as the nineteen seventy one Australian movie walk About uh Ye, Godspell, The Three Musketeers and the Four Musketeers from seventy three and seventy four. Uh. Nineteen seventies six is the Man who Fell to Earth start David Bowie, Uh, seventy eight, Sergeant Pepper, Lonely Hearts Club Band, Uh, The Onion Field and seventy nine and

the Killer Lion movie Savage Harvest see seventy three. Guys, I guess there's only one movie adaptation of God's Spell? Is that with Victor Garber? Yeah? I assume this is one. This is as far as far as I know, the

god Spell. This is the one, the one I've seen, and it does have I can see the connection here, Like there's a between this, this, this Broadway this, you know, this weird Broadway musical brought to life and the you know, the visual elements that are in play in God's Spell, like they compare reasonably well to some of the sensibilities we see in Dr fives, the Fibes never wears the Superman shirt. No, all right, you want to talk about the plot. Hello, let's talk about this plot? Okay. So

it starts very strong. You know, lights come up on rogue organ music and you see a player in a hood and cloak. So this black hood, it's kind of shiny. The cloak almost looks like it is wet or oily. Maybe that's just the material. But the the organ player is sitting at the instrument and then being like raised up on as if on an elevator. Yeah it is this, Yeah, this elevator powered um super moody organ of the supervillain organ um playing area. It's it's like, you know, it's

it's a familiar trope. It's very Phantom of the Opera, but then just played up tremendously. You know. The the visuals of this are just again just just so luscious. And then like the movie just starts at maximum WTF, like how to describe what comes next? And it's it's

a recurring theme. But so the organ player plays while the credits roll, and then he gets up and he descends a staircase, and the camera pulls back to reveal what appears to be a musical ensemble made of embodied humanoid automata like the rock a fire explosion like Chuck E Cheese or Showbiz Pizza, but instead of having banjo bears and cool rats, they are tuxedo dudes in Michael Myer's masks, and they're all playing tubas and drums and and stuff, and then he conducts them as if they

were an orchestra. Yeah, and the drum informs us what the name of this group is. It's Dr fivees Clockwork Wizards. So it's it's already off to a tremendous start, like this is a film that's so bold and it's stylish weirdness that we just kick things off with an extended horror pipe organ number in this underground nightclub. And then we're getting no dialogue. Uh no real you know, human

faces or human voices or anything, just like pure performative weirdness. Yes, and it commits so hard, like it goes on like you're saying, without dialogue for a while. So the organist in the in the cloak steps back, and then there's a whole dance number. Virginia North comes out in this amazing I don't know what to call the sugar plum fairy costume. Like she's wearing this this weird white dress with a strange golden vertical crown on her head, and

they dance together while the while the robots play. Yeah, and it's just it's tremendous, like it just it just sucks you absolutely and you're like, just it's and it works on so many levels. Um, like it sets the tone for a film where it's really hard to have expectations about what's going to happen because you're not entirely

sure what this film's values are. I kept thinking about that and ultimately made the the you know, the last twenty minutes of the film extra terrifying for me because it's like, I, I don't know what how a film like this ends. I don't know what it considers a proper ending because it feels like it's from another dimension. Can we stop them and describe the set in this room because they will return to it many times throughout

the throughout the movie. I was calling this the total party house because of course you have the ensemble there and and it's it's sort of always a party when when the when the automatry playing, But it's it's like a room with a giant I guess marble floor and then uh like balcony levels surrounding it all around. And what are some of the things in there? Like there's a table on one side of the room that has all of these busts or the upper parts of mannekins.

I think there are nine of them, each one with a ceiling lamp hanging over it that I think they're supposed to be made of wax or something like we see them melting later. And the organ is up on the stage at one end of the room. The room is decorated with all these satin curtains and these paintings on the columns leading up to the balcony with like these I don't know what you like, like pharaoh heads and uh, weird symbols. Yeah, it's a trip, Yeah it is.

It is a space that you know, it feels performed, but if it feels like a like a nightclub, but it also feels like a temple and it is kind of like his temple to holy revenge, a temple to uh it's to his love for his departed wife. Those those heads represent each of the victims that he is going to uh kill, the objects of his revenge. Um. So it's yeah, it's it's It has a real, you know,

strong ritualistic and performative vibe to it. Well, after the dance is over, the guy in the cloak he goes to operate a chain Pulley and I guess we can refer to these characters because we know who they're going

to be. This is dr Fibes in Volvania, and so he goes to operate a chain pulley in the middle of the room and it lowers something that looks like a shrouded bird cage into a sub floor basement, and and then Volvania goes down to the subfloor and tends to she kind of straps it onto I think a trailer on the back of a car. She straps it down with a leather belt, and then they get into the car and drive away, and we see them driving the car and it's the funniest shots of Wolvannia is

I don't think that's supposed to be her hair. Maybe it is. She's got her head is covered in this big ball of fur, and I guess it's supposed to be a fur cap, I think so. Yeah. Meanwhile, Fibes is sitting in the backseat being chauffeured with just like wearing the black hood and with the stocking over his face. So he's just you know, faceless terror. Yeah, it's it's worth noting that both of these characters have so many

different costume changes. Uh. That revenge, they say revenge is a dish Beth served cold, but that doesn't mean you can't style it up. That means doesn't mean you can't change your your your cloak frequently, that you can't engage in any number of rituals. Uh. Yeah, they're they're heavy and this vengeance game. And so they're headed out somewhere and we we cut to a bedroom we assume is

where they're headed. It's it's this guy in a in a lavish bed chamber with I don't know, fancy stuff all over the walls, like paintings of horses and markers to indicate this is a rich guy. But then in the ceiling above this guy's bed, a skylight in the ceiling opens up and we see fibes in Volvania lowering in that bird cage from earlier and uh, and then they retracted. They pull it back up with a trapdoor in the bottom of the cage hanging open. So it

seems they've released something into the room. And this is the first murder of the movie. That's right, it's gonna be death by free bat, just like in the Old Testament. Okay, we'll get into the biblical accuracy maybe a little bit, and I don't know about that. But so the guy in bed, he is attacked by bats. They're like bats crawling on him and he's like uh. And then we do the intro and reverse the cloaked figure and and Volvani.

They return home, they turn off the Michael Myers rock fire band and then he descends into the floor playing his organ. But the next morning, in the in the bedroom of the victim, we get to see some Butler action. Butler comes in with eggs on toast and like a bat lands on the eggs, and there are bats everywhere and the guy's face we see him laying in bed. It has been fully oatmeal ified. Yeah, death by free bat.

And then we see the first of a ritual that will repeat throughout the movie, which is that Dr fives back at his party house. He puts a dependant with a with a significant looking symbol on it on on one of the heads of the mannekins or the busts on the edge of the big concert hall room, and then he burns the face of the bust with a candle. But the next morning we get to see the police investigating, and and the police are they're played for comedy in

this movie. They're all bumbling. One of him says it's strange business. Tom a man literally shredded to death right in the heart of London. We find out that the victim was a medical doctor, and the police noticed something. They noticed that this vicious fruit bat shredding is similar to the recent death of another doctor in town who was killed by a swarm of bees in his library. And they say, almost turning to look at the camera, they say, his face looked as if it were covered

in boils, and that will be important shortly. So then we go back to the Total party house and we see Vincent Price, uh, putting on his face. We will We don't know what Dr Fib's real face looks like, but once he does a bunch of stuff to it, he looks like Vincent Price. And uh and I love this. I love everything about it. I love the weird sets. I love Vincent Price with shaggy ringo hair, and I love how they make Vincent Price's actual face look like

a sagging rubber mask on his head. They yeah, they give him this really waxy um color, and yeah, they had some other little elements to it. Uh. And he also know, of course it's been some Price, so he has a great mustache, but also really nice sideburns, yes, but also uh, dark rings under his eyes always yes, So he looks very very haunted, um like he even though he's not in pure monster mode right now, he still looks kind of monstrous and unnatural. But the movie

wastes no time. It is immediately onto the next Doctor Murder, so we we meet doctor Hargraves again. He's uh, he's at some swanky party where it's like fancy people are all wearing animal masks of some kind, and prices there in a mask. He gives a frog mask to doctor Hargraves. Dr Hargraves uh seems to just accept it. Uh, and and Vince Price helps him put it on, and he like does the catch on it, and and Hargraves introduces himself. He says, I'm a psychiatrist, you know, a head shrinker.

But oh, this rog mask it's a it's a track from Saw. It's like a head crushing action mask where it just keeps ratcheting itself tighter. And the doctor staggers around, trying to get help from a drunken lizard and some oaf in a pig mask, but there's no way of saving him. He just his head is crushed and he lays there with the frog mask and blood coming out of it while people in horsehead masks and and other weird costumes look on in amazement. So counting the the

off screen death, that's like the third death. So three down right, And we get a rundown of this by the police in the next scene, because there's a scene at Scotland Yard with cops are talking about how they don't want this story about animal themed doctor murders to get out to the press. There there's something that characters say multiple times in this movie. They're like medical men die all the time. I mean true is and because human beings die all the time? Um um that that

that under a suspicion of circumstances with animal themes. I don't know that that's like statistically a thing. Yeah, So Inspector trout Is he's tracking now, He's like, wait a minute, bats, bees and frogs, so what's going on here? But then it's immediately on to the next doctor murder. This is just they're coming thick and fast, and the next one is dr Longstreet. Is this Terry Thomas? This is Terry Thomas,

And it is such a Terry Thomas sat So. When we first meet him, he's immediately furtively ripping into a cylindrical parcel. I think he doesn't want his housekeeper to see what he's doing. And he's acting all sweaty and squirrely, and he appears to what's going on is that he seems to have received a canister of racy film reels from the East and he plans to watch them on his rattling projector while absolutely chugging red wine tonight, since

the housekeeper is going to be out for the evening. Yeah, and this is the part. So we're watching, you know, he puts on his film reel and he's watching. It's of like a late dancing with a snake, yes, and it's like a belly dancing snake dance kind of a film, you know, very but also a very old film. This is not something that um, well, you know. It brings me back to the question, I'm not sure exactly what when when this film is supposed to be taking place.

It's not supposed to take place in the seventies. No, I think it's supposed to take place in like the twenties. Bro Okay, so maybe it is a current film that he has acquired here. Okay, but yeah, Terry Thomas, he is a dirty chap and uh he looks a little bit. Wings Houser is here. He's watching inappropriate film reels, chugging red wine out of a sniff ter and like licking his lips so that he's just being gross. Yes, it's a great scene. But then oh here comes of course.

Dr Fibes and Volvania show up at his house. You know, they walk in and he's just kind of like, hum, what's going on? And while they sit him down in a chair, strap him in and then drain out all of his blood. Ye, put it in bottles up there on the about the they're about the fireplace. I believe it on a shelf. So that's four doctors down. But this one kind of breaks the animal theme. This one is is blood, huh, what's going on? But the police

put together a different pattern. They figure out that all four of these doctors worked for another doctor named Dr Vassalius, and this is Joseph Cotton, and so Inspector Trout goes to his house to meet him and see if he can make any sense of this. And I like how when he gets there Vassalius's teenage son Limb is very impressed by the presence of Scotland yard. Yes, and Vassalius's house looks like a hair salon. It's so stylish, so stylish.

There's there's like, you know, African nasts on the wall, there's this like Satyr's statue with a light above it, shiny surfaces everywhere, potted plants, mirrors on the walls, and a lot of fancy chairs just lined up along the walls. Does his house have a waiting room? I don't know. But Dr Vassalius we see, is a model trained guy. Rails and train cars are scattered all over the floor. When Trout shows up and Trout fills him in, he's like, okay,

here's what's going on. And he's like, do you know why someone would want to kill all of your associates? And of course with saleus has no idea. He again, he says the same thing as the guy earlier. He's like, men in my profession die every day of the year. I don't know how often. Then like frog related deaths though, but yeah, But anyway, when the police find out about the Longstreet murder here, they get a clue, which is

the pendant left behind at the scene. Dr Fibes actually drops the pendant there by accident, and so they find it. They take it back to a goldsmith, the person who made it, and uh. The goldsmith tells him, Yep, this is an ambulance. I made ten of them. It was a lady who ordered them. Uh. And Trout is like, was she smart? And then he says fashionable. Yeah. It's a fun scene because there's a lot of a lot

of goofy back and forth between these two characters. But the jeweler informs Trout that the sign on the ambulance is something requested by the person who bought them, and it's a symbol in Hebrew. So the inspector then has a new clue and takes it to a rabbi to get the run down, and here we get a major exposition scene. So the rabbi tells him that the symbol is Hebrew for blood, and okay, this makes sense because

Longstreet was drained of all blood. But it's also notable for being one of the ten plagues of Egypt, of course, turning the Nile into blood. And so here we get a speech about the ten plagues of Egypt. So this is from the story of the Exodus in in the Torah, and the context is that the Jews are in bondage in Egypt and God keeps sending plagues against Egypt to force the Pharaoh to release them. Here we get a

list of the plagues which are in order. And I'm not saying these are necessarily the correct plagues, but this is what the movies as says. They are boils, bats, frogs, blood, rats, hail, beasts, locusts, death of the firstborn, and darkness. Alright, we've had the first four, so we're almost halfway through. I feel like I must flag as kind of a Bible nerdy like compare that to the actual list in a in a

good translation of Exodus. I don't think that really matches, but anyway, So we get more scenes with Dr Fibes back at the party house and he uh, this is this is where we first see him speaking to a shrine of the image of a woman. We find out his wife. This is the one played by the photo of Caroline Monroe against Stella star Uh, and he's like worshiping this this headshot of her. He's got a whole

table I think of her her belongings laid out. And we mentioned earlier that Vincent Price never actually speaks out of his mouth in this movie, so the only times he talks are by plugging a phone of graph into a jack in the back of his neck. And this connects to another weird scene later where he looks it looks like he's drinking a beverage by pouring it into

the back of his neck. Yes, at one point he tastes something he's mixed up on his finger by like sticking his finger back there to where they're when we never see it, but presumably there's some sort of a mouth hole back there that has been I don't know if it's surgical or technological, but uh, not knowing for sure makes it all the more impressive. When he's tasting something, is that the Brussels sprout. Google, Yes, the Brussels sprout.

We'll get to that. But this also provides some exposition because talking through the phonograph, he gives this whole uh fiery speech and he says nine killed you, nine shall die nine It turn it he's in doom. But we also get some exposition on the other side, for with

dr Vesalius and the police. So he and Trout do some research and they figure out that there was actually only one case where Visalius worked with all of the doctors who are now dead, and that was on one patient named Victoria Regina Fibes, and we get the whole backstory. So she she had some medical emergency. They were operating

on her. Her husband was someone named Dr Anton Fibes, and as Anton Fibes was racing to the hospital where his wife was in surgery, his car went off a cliff and exploded and he was incinerated or was he? And the reason from this, Okay, so the rest of the surgical team that worked on this case of Victoria Fibes, they all need to be put under police protection, but the police don't really get there fast enough for most of them because the next scene is where Vincent Price

uses an air conditioner in a car to kill a guy. Yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, like this in the carriage there, they just kind of like pulled him over, take incapacitate the driver, and then just hook him up to the a C freeze him solid and there's like snow blowing in his face from this machine. Yeah, it's pretty good and this one was the scene too that's very feels very Avengers uh and uh in its weirdness, you know, because we got like a little bit of super science that in

in weirdness. And we're also getting into that territory here too with our villain. Where our villain is um. He's not incapable of air. We saw him drop the amulet earlier, but he's really thought out everything and is a man of multiple talents, a real villainous poly math. Yes. In fact, the very next scene we start to learn about all

of his different expertise. So first of all, we get a clue from for Scotland Yard, which comes from Dr Vesalius's son Lim, who says he was in the music shop I think, talking to the owner there about the great organists, and he just happens to name some of the great organists offhand, Bridges, Drew and Fibes. And so they're like, oh, oh, I see Dr Anton Fibes. He was a aid organist and he's apparently been paying the local organ shop guy recently, even though he's supposed to

be dead. So they take a trip out to the crypt where Mr and Mrs Fibes were supposedly laid to rest, and we get more discussion about his background. They say, okay, he's not only a concert organist, he's also a PhD in theology. And I thought this was hilarious. Inspector Trout is like that would explain his knowledge of the ten plagues of Egypt. It seems like rather basic knowledge. I

don't know, it's not really a deep cut. But another really weird thing here is that wait a minute, Okay, so Fibes is a concert organist and a PhD in theology. I started to wonder, that is a really weird coincidence if this is not supposed to be a play on Albert Schweitzer. But I don't know why else that would be. So do you know anything about Schweitzer. I didn't know a lot about him until you you mentioned the possible connection, and I read like just a basic bio on him. Yeah. Yeah.

He's an interesting figure who was a medical doctor, a concert organist, and one of the most important scholars ever of the New Testament. He's largely responsible in historical Jesus scholarship for putting forward probably the reigning historical understanding of of Jesus today, which is that he was an apocalyptic Jewish prophet, somebody who was predicting the imminent end of the world. But but I was just thinking, like, it doesn't make a lot of sense otherwise, But it would

be that is such a weirdly specific thing. An organist and a PhD in theology. I don't know. So yeah, I mean it makes sense. It's one way to flesh out your villain. Pick a pick an historical figure and say what if we made them into a super villain, If they were a super villain, what would it be like? Yeah, So I don't know, strange choice, but interesting anyway. At the crip we've got, you know, so they're like, well, let's just pop open these coffins and have us look. Yeah,

there's no no official process here. They just just rip them open, just pop them open. Yeah. So they pop open the Doctor fibes to him. It has only ashes in it, but whose ashes we don't know. They pop open the Mrs fibes to him, nothing, completely empty. One of the next scenes I recall is Inspector Trout back at the office receiving just a whacking chew out from his superiors. So they, you know, he's what what is do you remember this boss's name, the guy who's yelling

at him for like a minute straight. I believe this is James Grout just playing sergeant. I could be wrong on that, but but it's a it's it's a real fun role because he's, yeah, he's a real he's a real hard ass. Yeah he's he's demanding that they solve the case immediately. You know, we we can't have these weird doctor murders just hanging out there because there was public outcry and that's falling on me. And the big boss also yells at Trout for not wearing his suit

jacket inside. It is a real stickler. Uh. And then we get another doctor murder scene. This one I thought was kind of strange, but it was the rat attack in the planes. One of the doctors is an amateur pilot. He takes his plane up and then while in there, I guess they guess Dr FIBs and Volvania have put rats in the plane. The rats attack him and then he crashes the plane. Um. I guess part of it's the sequential nature of this and also the britishness of it.

But I was reminded of psychomania A lot in this because it's the whole section in Psychomania where there's you have every all the bikers trying to kill themselves in unique ways. They can come back as undead bikers, and there's kind of like each one is more ridiculous than

the last. That is a great sequence, oh Psychomania. Oh, that's also one of the best, I think, speaking of the best, oh, the next murder it maybe it's one of the cheapest where you're kind of like, I don't know, Five's you're kind of really stretching the theme here, but on the other level, like absolut lutely top marks for creativity and style. So the so the police have not been able to protect any of the doctors yet. So they finally get to the next one before five Scan.

They're at his Gentleman's club in London, I guess, and they're like, okay, we're gonna take you into protective custody, will make sure nothing happens to you. So they're walking out of the club and as they opened the door, you just hear like an arrow hitting the target sound effect, and he has been pierced through with the horn of a brass unicorn. Yes, as oh, when they say it was fired from a catapult. Yeah, And this is one of those moments in The Villagers reminds you like, don't

try and think too forensically about this motion picture. If you're like, well, how did they get a cataby lay a catapult trap there, and and how did they work out the aerodynamics of launching like this brass unicorn at this guy. We'll just don't worry about that. Just trust us that happened. The unicorn horn has a spiral pattern on it, and they have to unscrew the guy from the wall. They show like his feet going around. Yes, it's such it's such great gallows humor. I love it.

But then so you've got this extremely silly scene and then right after there's kind of a serious scene where Fibes is he's again worshiping the headshot of Caroline Monroe, but in this one he recites part of a wonderful love poem by John Dunn, The Goodmorrow. Do you know this one? Rob, I wasn't familiar with this one. You might remember lines from it, you know, people might have read it at school, and sometimes it has the lines if ever, any beauty I did see which I desired

and got twas but a dream of the well. He doesn't say those lines in the movie. He instead he quotes some lines from the last stands of the poem. He quotes them out of order. So the last stanza is my face in thine I thine in mine appears and true plane hearts do in the faces rest? Where can we find two better hemispheres without sharp north, without declining west? Whatever dies was not equally if our two loves be one or thou and I love so alike

that none do slacken, none can die. It's a great poem. But he so he reads the first four lines of that stanza, but he reads lines three and four and then one and two, so the ones about the hemispheres and then the in the faces rest. Well, Yeah, he's put a lot of work into this whole revenged cycle and ritual h So you know, he's he's figured out how to mix it up a little bit. He's got to get it just right. There's been many takes. But then it goes straight from that into probably I would say,

the weirdest murder in the entire movie. Would you agree, Yeah, yeah, it's and it's also and this is nice that the murders all feel a little bit different, and they're presented in different ways. Like we get no clue at all about the set up for the brass unicorn catapult murder, but the making the unicorn or everything, no extended scenes of that, But this one is all about the prep work. In fact, you just set you just sat there watching

this weirdness take place, and you're like, what are they doing? What? What? What? What of the tin plagues of Egypt involved Brussels sprouts. Let's talk about Brussels sprouts. What is happening. Volvania is walking around dressed like Queen Elizabeth and holding trays of Brussels sprouts, and Vincent Price is standing over a giant pot of boiling Brussels sprouts, and he's like picking Brussels sprouts from her hands and throwing some of them into

the pot and throwing other ones away. He's inspecting them to see if they're just right. I don't know why, I don't know how this works, but he's like making he's turning the Brussels sprouts into some kind of essence of Brussels sprout. Yeah, and I wasn't sure what was going on. I was like, well, we know that, um, you know, obviously he was. He was heavily disfigured, and we I think by this point we already knew know that he drinks through his neck. So I was thinking, well,

maybe this is just what Dr Fibes consumes. Maybe he's on a liqu a diet and he likes Brussels sprouts, and brussels prouts are good for you, and brussel trouts are great. So I mean, maybe not in this form, but no, this is this is the world. I mean, I love brussel sprouts like good, like roasted. The idea of boiling brussels sprouts down to a paste is one of the most disgusting things I can imagine Brussel sprouts

and wet heat. No, no, no, yeah, but yeah. Watching this, I was like, I have no idea where this is going. But I'm I'm all in, let's see, well where is it going. We've got one last person on the list. It's a nurse who worked on the you know, the Victoria Fives case, and so the police are trying to protect her. They send her into a room in some building where every surface is green. Very nice and fits

with the theme of of green good. So they're like, okay, go in this room and sleep, and she's like okay. They tell her to take a sleeping pill, and uh, I guess that would explain why she is slow to wake. Later, Dr five sneaks into the floor above her, drills a hole in the floor, hooks up a machine to pump green goog. I guess this is what he made out of the Brussels sprouts into the room. It dribbles all over some globe lamp and then dribbles all over her face.

And then he releases locusts into the room via a tube and they marched single file and then they go down and I guess they start eating the green goo off of her because they like plants and I don't know. And then they just strip her flesh down to the bones. Yeah, it just completely de flesh her skeleton. Yeah, pironify her. Is that weird enough for you? It's such a weird scene, and of course you know it's completely unrealistic, but but

but kudos he was able to work. It was like, once I saw the bugs, I was like, ah, you're doing the locusts. Okay, now it all makes sense. He made Brussels sprout goo. Then he used, okay, well you know he's been working up again. A lot of work went into this. He probably tried different you know, liquefied vegetables and liquefied plants to see what would get the locust excited enough to completely consume the human human bodies flesh. And this is what worked. And she never woke up

the whole time. Well, she she'd taken a sleeping tale, so she was she was out. But then finally we get down to the climax, which is when Visalius realizes that, oh, the biblical play falling to him is the death of the firstborn, his organist son, his son Limb has been kidnapped by Dr Fibes, and uh here here we come to our James Bond trap ending. So Vassalius finds out

that Fibes has his kid. He knocks out Inspector Trout, who tries to stop him, and then he heads over to the party house where all kinds of things are happening. U vol Navia is wearing this amazing like red cloak with a with a golden son with all these like insect legs on it, and this, uh, this hat with

peacock things shooting off of it. I don't know. She's the high priestess of the Revenge, I think at this point, yes, beauty full and this, uh, the the Automata playing their their big band music, and Doctor Vissalius arrives and and

oh god, they explained this whole thing to him. His They're like, Okay, you've got six minutes to operate on your son, to get a key out of his body that I've placed in his body that you will have to use to unlock the table, which so you can move the table that he's on so that this timer

doesn't release a bunch of acid onto him. Right, It's it's it's like, this is very much This is where I was definitely thinking about, like the Saw movies and and all, but like, really Jigsaw just a rank amateur with no style at all compared to Dr Five's because as grotesque is this sounds, and it does come off as like legitimately kind of at this point, it's still beautifully rendered. You know, this white background. It's it's very

stylish and and it also works really well. I feel like the tension really builds in this part of the movie because, like I I referenced earlier, we're at the part where we're past the victims, where we can be like, Okay, that guy seems sleazy. I guess it's okay of our unrealistic movie villain kills them. But now, like we're dealing with with the doctor alone, we haven't really seen anything to any reason to hate him and his son even more so, like he is an innocent when it comes

to the death of fibes wife. You know, no, no matter how you you know, tease apart the details of her demise, right, so Visalius is he's he's setting to it. He's trying to get the task done. Meanwhile, of all, Navia goes to grab a solid old axe and just starts hacking up the whole place. I guess, you know, Fibes is like, we're done destroy everything, so she's at it. We get a Fibes face reveal, Yes, where what is his real face? It's I don't know how to describe it.

It's a skull face. Yeah, it's a like very very Phantom of the Opera skeleton face. Uh. You know on the posters you see some like mechanical elements um that are part of it, like you know, he's you know, touching on the fact that he's also kind of made up have some clockwork elements to himself, because he has this big showdown right where he's talking about, uh, you know,

how the doctors can't be trusted. The doctor said he wouldn't survive, but he used his own ingenuity, to his knowledge of music and acoustics to allow himself to speak again. And and he also has that great line there where he's says, I've killed nine times in my life. How many motors may be attributed to you? Speaking to the doctor. Yeah, So he comes down there, he takes the mask off, because this whole thing is like soon your son will

be disfigured by acid. It will look just like me. Um. And then of course the doctor continues to try and frantically work the surgery, and meanwhile he just kind of like backs up and scapes into the elevator, uh, and leaves them to try and pull it off. Now we Visalia succeeds. The sun is not harmed, but Fibes does get away and the police arrive. Oh and there when the police arrived, Volnavia is standing there, I guess, ready

to attack with the golden, the solid gold axe. But then she stands under the acid machine and she gets she gets acided. Yeah, she gets acids lined. We don't actually see her melt or anything, but um, it's it's it's you know, it's an implied melting. And I guess you know she's not a good character. She's not. She's been doing a lot of murder, a lot of murders, so it feels fair. Oh but then Dr Fibes he basically gets away with it because what does he do.

He goes down and we find out, oh, there's there's Mrs Fibes in a sort of crypt with a robotic lifting or mechanically lifting lid. He gets into the crypt next to her, I guess, planning to be interred alongside her body, and then hooks up a machine to replace his blood with embalming fluid, and we see it like coming out of these yellow, very clearly labeled beakers that say embalming fluid. And so he's going down there, I guess,

getting embalmed in real time. When the when the police inspectors show up, the we're like, wait a minute, what was the last plague big Stinger? Of course, plague of darkness and the lights go out. Yeah, and we get the credits roll. And this is in the credits where we see both doctor both doctors are listed as the protagonists, which I like. And then when oh, and then what song is playing over the end credits just to add to the utter weirdness of this movie. Somewhere over the rainbow. Oh,

it's so good. And then at the very end you get a little stinger, you get an evil doctor fives Vincent price laugh. Oh god, I love it. There's just in the last twenty minutes there's so many weird touches, like I love how the when he self embalms himself alive. The embalming fluid is this bright yellow opposite the bright red of the blood. Um. It made me think. I

think phantasm too has bright yellow embalming fluid. I have no idea what color embalming fluid actually is, but I hope it's bright mustard yellow like in these motion pictures. There's the lid to the casket. Oh what about that? Oh, it has like this elaborate sun, moon and earth, this astrological thing going on. Amazing great set design. Uh, this one's a real winner. Dr Fibes is the best. Absolutely, yeah, this one. This one was a lot of fun. Highly

recommend it. Just just a weird fun picture. Uh yeah, probably not for the week, kids or anything, but unless we say otherwise, that applies to any movie we talk about here, right right, But I've got a lot of fun for just about everybody else. Uh. This one is currently hard to stream anywhere as of this recording, at least in the United States. Uh. There's an old DVD available in the United States and and that is what

I rented from Video Drome to watch it. There's a nice arrow video Blu Ray for regions be Slash two out there. But luckily the folks at Video Drume informed me that a new Blu Ray edition is about to come out from Keno Lorber. It's gonna come out next month and it's a two pack with both Fibes movies in part one and the sequel. Uh. So if you're excited to check out this film, well, hey, it's about here.

And who knows a lot of times when these films come out like this, um it opens up streaming options as well, at least in subsequent months. So I feel like Fibes is returning. Uh. In grandiose fashion, which of course, uh fits him perfectly. I can't wait. I will probably be trying to grab one of those. Yeah, Kino Lorber.

They tend to do a really good job. Alright, anything else you want to say about Dr FIBs, I mean, there's so many This is one of those movies are just so rich with weirdness that we we didn't even have time to touch on everything. There's so many great shots, um, you know, so many nice little details that are either added to a performance or certainly to the background. For instance, I feel like we could have just described his organ that he plays, glowing red organ. Oh yeah, it's just

so beautiful, gothically super villain stylish. Oh, it's just it has to be seen. Don't watch this movie if you're making Brussels sprouts for dinner. All right, We're gonna go ahead and close out this episode. But as always so we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Any five stands have any tidbits they want to share with us, right in? Let us know, uh weird, how cinema comes out every Friday, and the stuff to blow your mind

podcast feed. We are primarily a podcast about science and you know, sometimes mythology and culture and history and so forth, but on on Friday's we set most of that aside and we just focus in on a weird film like this one. Uh Core. Episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind come out on Tuesdays and Thursdays Artifact or Monster Effact on Wednesday, and on Monday's we do listener mail huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth

Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.