Ultimate Decades Blogathon: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) by 18 Cinema Lane

Kicking off the second week of Ultimate Decades Blogathon is Sally Silverscreen of 18 Cinema Lane with her pick of 1971’s horror comedy The Abominable Dr. Phibes. 18 Cinema Lane is a fun movie blog where it offers a variety of movie reviews and movie news but also has a focus on Hallmark movies. Just like the pick for the blogathon is unique, there will always be something new to discover on 18 Cinema Lane as well. When you finish this review, remember to head over to her blog and check it out HERE.

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Take 3: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

The Abominable Dr. Phibes was recommended by one of my readers named Michael. When I found out the movie was considered a horror-comedy, I thought it’d be a perfect entry for MovieRob’s Genre Grandeur, as horror-comedies are the theme for February. Then I discovered the film was released in 1971. Because Kim and Drew, from Tranquil Dreams and Drew’s Movie Reviews, are hosting the 6^th Annual Ultimate Decades Blogathon, where the subject is movies premiering in years ending in 1, I decided to review The Abominable Dr. Phibes for both blogathons! As of early 2021, this is the fifth film of Vincent Price’s I’ve seen and written about. Most of these movies have either belonged in the horror genre or have been mysterious in nature. With The Abominable Dr. Phibes, this will be a little different, as part of the story is a comedy. Out of the movies of Vincent’s I have seen, none of them have featured a large amount of humor. So, by choosing this film for the aforementioned blogathons, I am given an opportunity to see Vincent work with slightly different material!

Things I liked about the film:

The mystery: In horror movies, there is usually a mysterious element that can come in a variety of forms. One of these forms is a mystery. Throughout The Abominable Dr. Phibes, the detectives at Scotland Yard are attempting to figure out why several doctors in their neighborhood are dying of mysterious causes. The way the mystery is presented allows the audience to solve it alongside the characters. This presents the idea of the audience sharing an experience with the detectives in the film. Even though we see what is making these doctors die, it doesn’t take away from the intrigue of the mystery. In fact, it keeps the audience invested in what is about to happen next. Seeing how all the pieces of the story connected was interesting to see. It definitely kept my attention as I watched the film!

The craftmanship: There were several items in this movie that caught my eye due to their quality and artistry. A frog mask is just one example. The head covering mask is covered in three different shades of green, allowing it to shine from many different angles. Gold piping can also be found on the mask, assisting in distinguishing its shape. Jewels add finishing touches as the mask features gold gems around the frog’s eyes and an emerald clasp in the back. Dr. Phibes’ mask also boasts incredible craftsmanship! The eye covering mask is shaped like a bird and is coated in shiny shades of green, bronze, and gold. Both masks were two of the beautiful I’ve ever seen!

The set design: The Abominable Dr. Phibes features several interesting set designs that are worth noting. Despite Dr. Phibe’s house only being shown at night and only part of its exterior could be seen, it was a magnificent structure! Its Victorian style brightened the night with its white frames and cherry wood doors. The house features a grand white marble staircase paired beautifully with chandeliers and crystal sconces. I wish more scenes had taken place by this staircase, as it is an impressive part of Dr. Phibes’ residence! Other locations in the story also displayed memorable set designs.  Dr. Vesalius’ apartment is a great example. Near the front door is a curved, frosted window. The door itself was covered in a light and dark wood that ending up complimenting the faded yellow walls. This location looked reflective of the late ‘60s to early ‘70s due to its color scheme and furniture selections.

What I didn’t like about the film:

The underutilization of Vincent Price: As I said in my introduction, this is the fifth film of Vincent Price’s I’ve seen. Therefore, I, as an audience member, know what he is capable of, talent wise. Despite being the top billed actor in The Abominable Dr. Phibes, Vincent wasn’t given much material to work with. He didn’t have any speaking lines in this movie. While there is an explanation given within the story, the only time we hear Vincent’s iconic voice is through recordings. It also doesn’t help that the different ways Dr. Phibes went after his victims overshadows Vincent’s performance. The more I think about it, the more I wonder if the creative team behind this film cast Vincent Price simply to get more people to see the movie?

Weak on comedy: The Abominable Dr. Phibes is classified as a horror-comedy. When I made this discovery, I was expecting the movie to be more like Young Frankenstein. Even though there were a few times I found myself giggling, the film didn’t contain much humor. The Abominable Dr. Phibes relies more on the horror genre. It also contains a mystery within the overall plot, which would make it a horror-mystery. I felt misled after these reveals.

Depiction of demises partially used for shock value: Strictly from a story-telling perspective, it was interesting to see how Dr. Phibes carried out his plan. But when the plan is put into practice, the depiction of his victims’ demises comes across as more gross than scary. Within a segment of the story involving rats, there was a brief shot of a rat chewing on what looks like a bloody bone. I won’t spoil The Abominable Dr. Phibes, in case any of my readers haven’t seen it. But parts of the film like the one I described feels like the movie’s creative team just wanted to shock their audience.

My overall impression:

When I think of the term “horror-comedy”, Young Frankenstein immediately comes to mind. Even though I haven’t seen this film, I am aware of its premise. Because of my expectations, I was somewhat let down by The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Sure, its mystery was intriguing and kept me invested in the overall story. But as I look back on this movie, I find myself expecting more. Despite its classification as a horror-comedy, it ended up being a horror-mystery, with very little comedy to be found. I was also disappointed to see Vincent Price underutilized in The Abominable Dr. Phibes. While he was given different material to work with, he didn’t have any speaking lines. The way Dr. Phibes’ victims met their demise overshadowed Vincent’s performance. These factors make his portrayal of the titular character feel like a part of an ensemble instead of someone leading a film. This is an interesting movie, but I can think of stories of this nature that are stronger than this one. I still prefer a picture like The Crow over The Abominable Dr. Phibes.

Overall score: 7-7.1 out of 10

Have you seen a horror-comedy? Which film of Vincent Price’s would you recommend? Share your thoughts in the comment section!

Have fun at the movies!

Sally Silverscreen

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A huge thanks to Sally Silverscreen at 18 Cinema Lane for joining us with this great review! Be sure to it out. For a full list of entries of this blogathon, you can check it out HERE.

Clinger (2015)

I’ve been watching a lot of horror lately, it seems.  Well, this was a little bit of a backlog that I finally got around to sit down and review. Clinger is a horror comedy that I first heard over from Darren over at Movie Reviews 101 and he enjoyed it quite a bit.  It had me fully intrigued since I’m always down for a decent horror comedy since it usually promises a lot of fun.

Let’s check this out! 🙂

Clinger (2015)

Director: Michael Steves

Cast: Vincent Martella, Jennifer Laporte, Julia Aks, Shonna Major

When her possessive high school boyfriend dies in a gruesome accident, Fern Petersen’s life is thrown into turmoil. Things go from bad to worse when he returns as a love-sick ghost to kill her so they can be together for eternity. – Rotten Tomatoes

The only way I can think of describing Clinger is odd. However, it isn’t a bad way completely. There was a lot of awkwardly fun parts that I look back and realize that it was really funny. It did take a little while to warm up to at the beginning. Maybe its because it has a certain exaggerated reality of the high school puppy love from the overly exposed lovey dovey silliness. That in itself has a humorous  and entertaining take.  The main issue I had with this was the pacing and tone. One those two were established and the scenario was set up, Clinger was a fun and still awkward in a good way piece of horror comedy. The second half definitely held me a lot more than the first half. It has to do with having more action and just more going on. The first half did give the characters foundation of who they are and what their personalities are.

On the note of characters, there wasn’t a lot of them but the ones that showed up were done well. Some of them were really weird.  Our main characters, Fern and Robert are actually rather endearing to watch.  Both of their characters are quite fun to watch their relationship evolve and devolve into what it becomes. The third act is a little out of left field but it works to make this  more thrilling experience.  The most awkward of the characters has to go to the sister’s boyfriend which I wasn’t quite sure was just disturbing and not so my type of humor.

Clinger has a fresh angle to the ghost story.  Its fun and has some entertaining bits.  Its not too creepy and I’m not sure its really too funny either but it has heart and I can appreciate it for that.  The main characters are good and the ideas are pretty okay.  I think the main issue is that while I had a few laughs, I spent most of it feeling like this wasn’t my sort of movie. I feel like there are lots of people that would like it more than I would but something didn’t quite work for me.   You know that feeling where you know something doesn’t quite work but you can’t pinpoint what it is? That is what it felt like when I finished this and its why it took me a few weeks before sitting down and writing about it. In the end, its an indifference that I felt.  I was a little meh and then had a few chuckles and then enjoyed the finale quite a bit.  The story was okay and the acting was fun but then if you asked if I’d sit down to watch this again, I might not.

Clinger will succeed for those who enjoy this type of humor.  Except this just doesn’t quite hit it for the most part for me. I appreciated it for what it is and there are some good ideas here that could be a good watch for a rainy day.

Have you seen Clinger? What do you think about it?

Halloween Marathon: Tremors (1990)

If you recall, a few weeks ago, I posted up the podcast with my co-host David over at That Moment In where we have a random chat about Tremors.  If you missed it, you can find it HERE!

While I don’t watch a whole lot of Kevin Bacon movies, the few that I have seen has proved that he is a great actor with a widespan of skills for many different characters. Tremors was mentioned to me a few times before but the most impactful was during a Q&A session for Cop Car at the Fantasia Film Festival this year after the captivating thriller called Cop Car.  You can check out that review right HERE!

No more link-ups! Let’s head into the review! 🙂

Tremors (1990)

Director: Ron Underwood

Cast: Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross, Reba McEntire, Robert Jayne, Charlotte Stewart, Tony Genaro, Ariana Richards, Victor Wong

Natives of a small isolated town defend themselves against strange underground creatures which are killing them one by one.-IMDB

Tremors is definitely a treat in the creature feature genre.  In Netflix, its categorized with the cult classics.  Interesting because I guess I can see why it would be there. However, it is one of the more fun creature features despite its age and campiness.  The characters excel at balancing the humor and the fun aspect.  While it takes a little while to get the story going in the fun and adventure area, it does work well in building its story as we follow the main characters, Val (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Fred Ward) discover the threat that has been hitting obscure areas in town.  As the characters add more, we get some more sophisticated characters that add to the group and turn this into a fight against the creature for survival as they put their heads together and add a little boom here but discover that the creature is actually quite intelligent.

Is Tremors scary? No, that it isn’t.  But then, a lot of creature features aren’t exactly that scary.  They may have been when I was younger, like Deep Blue Sea but this one has some tense moments even though it never holds long enough to make it feel too endangering to the characters. Maybe that isn’t true because with the modern creature features, we always expect someone to die in whatever way and when we can’t determine when and how they will die and just how the creature is, there is a sort of underlying fear.  Definitely the beginning hit that horror territory more than the second half.  As we hit the second part, it really lands into the adventure part as they find creative ways of evading this creature lurking under the ground.  Its entertaining and its hard to not want to cheer the characters on at this point.  My favorite is definitely when they think up the whole pole vaulting escape plan. While it is fun, it is also rather fast paced as they try to outwit and outrun the creatures.

While Tremors is a lot of fun, there are some unnecessary and forced bits.  Its never enough to make me roll my eyes or get frustrated.  In the end, it still delivers a satisfying and enjoyable horror comedy creature feature enveloping all the subgenres I typically like.  Its fun and adventurous, and the characters and their cheesy outdated dialogue. Sometimes its that sort of dialogue that resounds and makes it even more entertaining. Its definitely one I wouldn’t mind rewatching especially if its watching Kevin Bacon’s funny reactions and dialogue and then the gun toting couple and the super campy creature effects.  Like it a whole lot!

Have you seen Tremors? Do you like it? Are a fan of creature features?

Fantasia Fest 2015: Cooties (2014) & Point of View (Short 2015)

Its really early in the Fantasia Festival to be feeling a little overwhelmed but after the showing of Cooties on Friday, I needed one because the late showing turned my schedule around and then the weekend was slightly crazy. Weekly Adventures coming up to explain that bit in more detail.  After a weekend of crazy, other than this one, I have two more Fantasia reviews to go up this week.  Thank goodness, the second week of Fantasia is a lot less hectic so I can catch my breath and get these reviews up.

Before Cooties started, we had a short film called Point of View open.

Point of View (Short 2015)

Point of View

Its directed by Justin Harding who was present to introduce it a little. Running at 8 minutes long, its about “A tired coroner is stalked by the living dead — but only when she isn’t looking!” (Fantasia site).  Let me tell you: this short is awesome! The best way to start a movie like Cooties.  With an equally funny movie that had some little nerve-wrecking moments but all in 8 minutes that passed by faster than I ever imagined.

Cooties (2014)

Canadian Premiere

Director: Jonathan Milott, Cary Murnion

Cast: Elijah Wood, Alison Pill, Rainn Wilson, Jack McBrayer, Leigh Whannell, Nasim Pedrad, Ian Brennan, Jorge Garcia, Cooper Roth, Morgan Lily, Armani Jackson, Sunny May Allison

Clint (Elijah Wood) heads back home to Fort Chicken to hopefully work on his novel and gets employed as a substitute at the high school he used to go to when he was younger. There he meets a girl, Lucy (Alison Pill) that he used to go to high school with.  Lucy is dating the angry and awkward gym teacher, Wade (Rainn Wilson).  When contaminated chicken nuggets are sent to the school and a little girl called Shelly eats it, the virus spreads among the young kids and turns them into raging, flesh eating living dead.  As the school day progresses, the group of teachers and faculty that are struggling to survive try to find a way to escape the school.

You know how Shaun of the Dead was this really great horror comedy? Cooties is very much along the same lines except with a sillier sort of humor because its more Americanized? Its not meant to be offensive (in case you feel that way). Its just that British humor is in a league of its own. I always say this when I look at comedies: its totally subjective. While I’m not a huge fan of American stupid humor and there was a bit of it here, for the most part Cooties had a lot of effective laughs while being completely and equally effective at creating gory and tense situations. Even in horror comedies, kids being the ones infected or just in the scary side is incredibly creepy. There were really intense parts in Cooties, especially one of the kids who was just raging maniatic. The premise here and even the logic behind it is pretty great. Cooties essentially means that its a virus only in kids.  Plus, it even has some hidden messages about the education system…maybe I’m overthinking this but there’s one bit that made me feel like it was really poking fun at this new thing in school.  I don’t want to spoil it so I’m going to keep it vague. Point being, it works and does it in a really smart way.

The next aspect I would like to talk about is the characters. We have a mixed bag with the teachers.  Our main character is Clint who is really the not so confident and not really a leader who kind of gets forced into the situation.  Wade is the weirdo angry gym teacher who has all the dumb lines but who actually is hilarious especially when they start running the movie references and all that stuff.  Alison Pill is the preppy teacher who isn’t really all that positive so we get a first taste of her layered characters.  Actually, all these characters have that.  In the more secondary role (and my favorite character) was the science teacher, Doug played by Leigh Whannell (also co-writer of the movie) who pulls the best hilarious lines.  I think almost everyone laughed whenever he said any of his lines because they were absurd and just so inappropriate most of the time, especially since he played the socially awkward dude and Leigh Whannell does it so well! As the movie progresses, even the secondary characters all collectively add to the awesome fun comedy that adds in a good level of tension.

Overall, Cooties is a downright awesome horror comedy with just the right amount of comedy to satisfy your taste and very well balanced in the tense horror zombie movie its supposed to be.  With a fantastic cast that has script which gives us a variety of different characters that help create a balance that works effectively, it keeps the movie constantly entertaining. The premise of using kids (and having cooties) to be an actual virus that turns them into zombies is absolutely great.  The whole idea of it was simple but well illustrated during the movie as we learned more about this virus and just how it had spread.  Cooties ends with a bang and leaves it wide open for a sequel and you know what, if the same crew sat down to write the sequel, count me excited! You can bet that this one is going right into my movie collection when it comes out 🙂 Its really good and I totally think you should give it a shot!

Seeing as this is a Canadian premiere, I’m thinking its opened elsewhere.  Have you seen Cooties? What do you think of it? Are you a fan of horror comedies?

Marathon Intermission: Zombieland (2009)

Everyone needs a little break and just so no one starts getting fed up with my movie marathon for the non-Valentine’s Day avid bloggers.  I took a little breather and watched Zombieland with my boyfriend.  Although, is it really taking a break? Tons of horror movies and slasher flicks get released during Valentine’s time, no? Anyways, its also the newest addition to my movie collection, along with Pirates Band of Misfits.  Movie buying has to be stopped now until my atrociously huge stack of unwatched movies are seen. What do you think? Okay, maybe one more…seeing as Peter Pan just got released from the Disney vault.

Sidetracking again, so back to our main feature…ZOMBIELAND!

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, Abigail Breslin

America has turned into Zombieland.  The nerdy Columbus has survived based on his firm belief in following his set of over 30 rules (as far the movie showed us).  He is on his way to head back to Columbus to see if his parents are still alive.  On the way, he meets Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) who is his exact opposite.  Tallahassee is a fearless man who is on the constant search for a Twinkie and sees the need to go full out destruction mode on zombies and the already destroyed land.  As they both head off together, they meet up two sisters, Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) who have learned to survive in the chaos with extreme measures, while going on their way to Pacific Playground in search for a land with no zombies.

The only reason I bought this movie was because of Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin.  I’m putting straight out right now.  Also, because I enjoy zombie movies.  It never really scares me too much and this one is a horror comedy.   I went into this one pretty much blind and I had no idea what I was getting into.  You know what? I LOVED IT! It was funny, entertaining and the zombies were convincing.  I had one moment that startled me but its just because I’m easily startled.

I loved all the cast.  I don’t think I’ve ever hated any movie with Emma Stone.  Okay, I did dislike one of the movies but I loved her role in that one.  I’m referring to Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, if you were wondering.  Emma Stone is a fabulous actress.  She act the hell out of anything you give her.  So this one is the same director as Gangster Squad which also has Emma Stone and one I haven’t seen yet.  I’m sure that you get my Emma Stone love.  Next up, Abigail Breslin is just a pretty awesome young actress.  I’d like to think she wasn’t part of New Year’s Eve garbage. Back to some good thoughts, she was wonderful here.  Seriously, I can see good things happening to her if she gets some decent roles. As for Jesse Eisenberg, I didn’t see Social Network so this is the first time I saw this guy on screen (I think) and I actually have this thing of watching nerds on screen because they are crazy awkward hilarious, just as much as Woody Harrelson’s Tallahassee grew on me.  Tallahassee was a fun character! Plus, there was even a special appearance of Bill Murray.

The action, the shooting, the humour and the story  matched with witty and fun characters just made this movie super awesome to watch.  I can truly say that I haven’t had this much entertainment watching a movie in a long time.  I’m starting to really enjoy this  horror comedy subgenre (is that what its considered?)

Zombieland? What do you think? What’s your favorite zombie movie? Any Emma Stone and/or Abigail Breslin fans?