Watch The Abominable Dr. Phibes For Free

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

The acting in this movie is really good.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This is a stylish and clever movie. It's very colorful and the elaborate murder sequences are a lot of fun to watch. Dr. Phibes as a character is very cool. He could easily make for a Batman villain. The final reveal of his true appearance reiterates this point. Of course this character is brought to life by the legendary Vincent Price. This is also a period movie, set in England of the early 1900s. The set-pieces are colorful, and I always enjoy seeing the beautiful classic cars and planes. The greatest set-piece is Dr. Phibes lair, which again (and awesomely), makes him seem like something out of a comic book.

Vincent Price's Dr Phibes avenges the death of his wife by bumping off the culprits with each murder having a biblical connection. Very camp, very funny and very unsettling- this is one of Price's best just like Witchfinder General and the Poe films he also made with Roger Corman. Check out Phibes' clockwork band- one of the eeriest things committed to celluloid. Also check out the classic art deco decors and groovier surroundings that capture the early 70s so fantastically. Caroline Munro appears but only as photos of Phibes' tragic dead wife.

I wasn't expecting much from this movie and I was pleasantly surprised.This was the first horror movie I watched in awhile that actually made some sense and wasn't full of plot holes.While the cops in the movie did say and do some dumb stuff.Like saying to double check the bats for rabies after they killed a guy.Would they give rabies shots to a corpse?Besides little things like that it wasn't too bad.I'm not sure if I have ever seen any other Vincent Price movies but I was assuming everything he did was cheesy and this definitely wasn't.It was a good story and it wasn't boring.There was too much bad music but the story makes up for it. Six stars.

Even as a kid, I recognized the fruit bats that attack and "shred" the second of Phibes's victims as "flying foxes." Which led me to wonder, even as a kid, WHY fruit bats would attack and "shred" someone. Were they, perhaps, rabid...? Or (much more likely) did the filmmakers just get lazy and hope that nobody would realize that they were just fruit bats? (I STILL find it impossible to overlook this glaring gaff because the fruit bats are so damned CUTE...) I was tempted to say that this was the role that Vincent Price was BORN to play, but I realized that that wouldn't have been correct: he was too much of a ham to be destined to play a part which required him to keep his mouth shut. Still, the part affords him ample opportunity to strut his stuff and he seems to revel in it. There aren't a lot of actors I genuinely MISS seeing on the big screen, but Vincent Price is one of them.