Monthly Archives: January 2017

It all must mean something! Maybe if I break this dog open!

Dr. Phibes Rises Again! (1972) is primarily about Dr. Phibes, antagonist of the previous The Abominable Dr. Phibes, inventing new ways to eliminate his foes as he searches for the fabled river of life in Egypt, dragging his dead wife and mysterious assistant Vulvania with him. Yet, for all the piled bodies, he continues to miss an important mark, his competitor in the search, Biederbeck, a man who’s already lived for centuries, but has run out the string and is in search of more … string.

As such, the rest of the movie receives a rather short shift. Editing is excessively choppy, the dialog is merely adequate, while Vincent himself looks quite ill and continues to resort to the tube in his neck for his monologues.

If murder in exotic form excites your interest, then by all means indulge in this odd little film, but there’s not a lot more to it than a mediocre Vincent and bodies strewn about the landscape in fairly inventive ploys. No one excites sympathy, so the passing of so many characters must be appreciated for its inventiveness, not for the sad tragedies.

mortsafe:

Mortsafes were contraptions designed to protect graves from disturbance. Resurrectionists had supplied the schools of anatomy in Scotland since the early 18th century. This was due to the necessity for medical students to learn anatomy by attending dissections of human subjects, which was frustrated by the very limited allowance of dead bodies – for example the corpses of executed criminals – granted by the government, which controlled the supply. …

The mortsafe was invented in about 1816. These were iron or iron-and-stone devices of great weight, in many different designs. Often they were complex heavy iron contraptions of rods and plates, padlocked together – examples have been found close to all Scottish medical schools. A plate was placed over the coffin and rods with heads were pushed through holes in it. These rods were kept in place by locking a second plate over the first to form extremely heavy protection. It would be removed by two people with keys. They were placed over the coffins for about six weeks, then removed for further use when the body inside was sufficiently decayed. [Wikipedia]

Heard on last night’s Bones episode.