Last night we found an awesome thriller called "The Medusa Touch"(1978). Richard Burton stars as "John Morlar", a man who believes he has the power to cause disaster with his mind. As the movie opens, we see him in his London apartment, watching a report on an American moon mission. An anchorman informs us that all contact has been lost with the space capsule. Then an intruder enters the flat and bashes Morlar's brains in with an iron statue. Morlar's neighbor is interviewed, but tells police he saw and heard nothing. He adds, however, that Morlar was not well liked: "He was a malcontent who was seeing a psychiatrist." The great Lino Ventura plays "Inspector Brunel" a French detective on loan to the Brits, who takes charge of the investigation. Shockingly, it's no longer a murder. Somehow, against all odds and with a shattered skull, Morlar began breathing again as the coroner took him away. He was rushed to the hospital and placed on life support, where he has a faint pulse but surprisingly strong brain-wave activity. The Inspector goes to see Morlar's shrink "Dr. Zonfeld" (Lee Remick), who comes off all cool and clinical, but because Brunel is persistent, she slowly opens up about what she perceives as his mental illness.
She reveals that Morlar thought he'd caused various people's deaths, dating to his childhood. "He said it started with his father, who was having an affair. Then there was a headmaster who tormented him in school." Their deaths are shown in flashback, as are all of Morlar's scenes. He's akin to Damian in "The Omen", who can will death upon you. Dr. Zonfeld tells Brunel, "He was delusional, of course." But Brunel thinks there may be more to it. He goes to see a metaphysicist at the local university, who shows him the filmed results of telekinetic experiments (which appear to be the real thing). Inspector Brunel believes Dr. Zonfeld isn't coming clean with him, so he puts the pressure on. "Listen, we are running out of suspects." "And you're insinuating I'm the only one left? Okay, well I'll tell you. He was so insistent that he had this power - to kill with his mind - that I decided to call his bluff. And when I went over to his apartment, where he said he'd prove it to me.....well, something happened that was so incredible that I still have trouble talking about it."
Folks, we are then shown a scene that will blow you out of the freaking water. Just watch the movie and see it for yourself (and no Googling). Lee Remick's mind is blown, and she's the "level headed" shrink who believes that everything has a "rational" explanation. I must cut in to say that science has only just begun to discover what is possible in physics, and the problem is always the scientists themselves, because of their rigid belief systems, and massive egos. But now, Dr. Zonfield believes, because she's seen Morlar's ability with her own eyes. He goes mad then, with his hatred of The Establishment, and sets out to destroy even more. But how can he do this when he's lying comatose in a hospital?
Wow! On the one hand, you have a classic 1970s disaster movie. In addition, you have a great police thriller, and on top of that, you have a mind-melding ESP plot. It's long at 109 minutes, but never drags thanks to the talent of the stars. Lee Remick was an underrated actress, tall, blonde and coolly intelligent. Man, they made great disaster movies in the 1970s. Bring back the studio system! Chuck CGI! Bring back real movies, with real actors. Okay, I'll shut up now. But this is how you do a thriller. Two Huge Thumbs Up! The picture is razor sharp. ////
Now then: I can't believe we've never seen "The Abominable Dr. Phibes"(1971). I mean, there's that title. It should've been enticement enough. In evaluating things that have scared you in your life, or affected you in any strong way emotionally, to properly analyse the effect it has had, you have to go back to when you first encountered the source, be it a picture, a word, a movie title, etc. For instance, I've mentioned how and why a poster for "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave" had such a lasting effect on me, from when first saw it as a seven year old in the window of the Reseda Theater. It was the image on the poster especially, of Christopher Lee with a stake through his heart, but there was also that title. The whole idea of Rising from the Grave was bad enough, and on top of all of this, the word "grave" is terrifying. So yes, one must identify what affects one, and in what way, or ways.
And so it is with Dr. Phibes. First, there's his name. I don't know if screenwriter William Goldstein considered the phonetics of fright when coming up with a name like Phibes (which no one's ever heard of because it doesn't exist), but it's a freakin' scary name: Phibes. He also used Ph instead of F, because Fibes wouldn't have been half as scary. Then, on top of that you had the word "Abominable." I don't know about you, but when I was five or thereabouts, the Abominable Snowman was one of the scariest things in the world, and it's because he was Abominable (c'mon - it wasn't because he was a snowman). So we see that certain words and the arrangement of their phonetic components have a tremendous power to scare. And a child feels this instinctively. A kid hears the word Abominable and he's scared, for the same reason that "Tarnation" is funny (and what the heck is Tarnation anyway?)
Finally with Dr. Phibes, you had that iconic image where he pulls off his face mask, and he's a skull, and a burned one at that. I don't know if they revealed that in a trailer, a TV commercial, or what, but I remembered it even though I never saw the movie, and it once again stayed with me for life. At 11 years old when the movie came out, with the additional image of the "Skull" Phibes playing the organ, I was under the impression that it was a terrifying movie; as scary as horror got, something truly sick, almost forbidden except for adults. And as an adult, you'd intuit that it had an undertow of necrophilia.
So, to me, the whole idea of Dr. Phibes was unsafe. Even when I turned 14, and wanted to see Texas Chainsaw and Last House, I would've been put off by Phibes, and again - because of his name, his skull, and his lurid organ playing. It seemed scary bordering on obscene or blasphemous. All of this is to say that I had no idea it was played tongue-in-cheek. I thought it was a straight-up brutal horror fest.
Well, the Brits are very nimble at black humor. They have nuanced gradations of how farcial to play a given thing. You can do a black comedy full on, with exaggerated irony, or you can tone it down and do it Straight Faced, which is how it's played here. This is Horror Theater, played slightly Tongue In Cheek. The Brits can dial it in to any degree you wish, and in fact, contrary to how many of the fans reviewed it, I wouldn't call "Phibes" a comedy at all. Now, it's actually not scary, but more like macabre fantasy. The exception is Vincent Price's performance. It's scary because its genuine. He's silent for much of the film and speaks with a microphone up to his throat.
And since we often talk about what has frightened us in life, one of my all-timers was my barber when I was 8 years old. When we moved to Northridge, the barber by Alpha Beta was a nice enough man, but he'd had his larynx removed, and spoke with an electronic vibrator to his throat. Sitting in the barber's chair and being subjected to that (him holding the device to his throat) and the way it made his voice sound, scared me bad enough to ask my Dad to switch barbershops across the street to Vons. And Vincent Price speaks this way in the movie, with a suction mike on his throat. He lives in a giant old mansion in London, with a central music theater, complete with a mannequin orchestra that he himself has created. He wants revenge for the death of his wife at the hands of the surgeon Joseph Cotton. "Nine must die" he says, and that includes everyone on the operating staff. He kills them one by one, the good-old Agatha Christie formula. It's that kind of movie, with Dr. Phibes' theater as the spectacular central set piece. He has a silent female assistant named Vulnavia. We don't know if she's dead, a zombie, or what, but she's young and beautiful and does whatever Phibes says. The victims are killed in clever ways according to the Nine Egyptian Curses, and it becomes clear to the police that he's narrowing it down to Joseph Cotten.
The art direction is Oscar worthy and reminiscent of "Clockwork Orange"; that retro Pop Art look of the era. It's a definite must-see film for it's arty but gruesome take on the Phantom of the Opera story. Lurid and ghastly are the key words here. Phibes is tailed by the dedicated-but-stymied police. Two Big Thumbs Up for the fairly simple plot, but Two Huge for the concept. Vincent Price raises the level of the enterprise by playing it dead serious. The picture is DVD quality. ////
Well, folks, I must say that my life has changed so drastically, just since I wrote the last blog, that I am more than a little overwhelmed at the moment. I'm not gonna say anymore just now, except that it's both very good and very bad. The bad part is so godawful that it beggars belief. Anyhow, I am dealing with it and moving forward, and no, it's not a health issue, so no worries on that score. It has to do with a certain long running saga in my life. I will say that I'd rather be me than the bad guys, including ML (whom you would not want to be, trust me). As difficult as it's been for me, for them it's going to be horrendous. And to quote Jeremy Irons: "You have no idea."
So that's where we're at, at the moment. I thank The Lord and God the Father for every blessing, for without Them I would not have made it. My blogging music is Klaus Schulze "Cyborg", my late night is Wagner Tristan. I hope you had a nice Saturday. Go Rams vs. Green Bay. I send you Tons of Love, as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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