DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN
...to the occasion

  I don't know if the first Dr. Phibes film was so big and unexpected a success that a sequel was guaranteed within a year or if it was just planned that way, but sure enough, thus came the sequel.  Luckily for us all, Dr. Phibes Rises Again is just as much fun as its predecessor.

Vincent Price reprises his role; we'd last seen Dr. Phibes embalm himself for a slumber of unspecified length next to the corpse of his beloved Victoria.  In true clockwork fashion, he comes to when the moon is in the cusp of the fifth house of...or somesuch.  At any rate, by design it's just in time for him to jaunt on over to Egypt with the body (and of course his lovely assistant Vulnavia, played sexily yet silently by Valli Kemp this time...I THOUGHT she looked way hotter than in the first film) so that they can unlock the secrets of this underground river of eternal life.  There, they run afoul of an archaeological dig.

Even though it predates Raiders Of The Lost Ark by ten or eleven years, there's a definite Indiana Jones vibe going on here, and that's pretty neat.  Instead of Indy, however, the leader of the dig is more an effete blusterer, played by Robert Quarry.  This movie knows better than to try giving us a hero other than Phibes himself.

The first Dr. Phibes movie felt a little lackluster to me but certainly grew on me as it trode on.  The sequel tries hard NOT to be lackluster (Phibes' organ playing in the first scene - well, the first scene that isn't a flashback - is so disco-tinged I expected him to start playing "A Fifth Of Beethoven"), and while lacking the freshness of the original, it's still a lot of fun.  Increasingly inventive, unlikely, and macabre murders again take center stage; it's hard to pick a favorite.

Watch for Peter Cushing in an all-too-brief role as the captain of the cruise ship that takes Phibes and Vulnavia to Egypt.  I haven't got much else to say about this one, except that it's good.  It's late, I'm tired, and dammit, I bought groceries today and I don't know where half of them are.

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