And Now This: Dr. Phibe’s SAW-like trap and Stu stars on Law and Order

Welcome to the newest feature on Monster Land, "And Now This" will be a platform for plugging horror minutiae and anything else that can’t be explored in a longer article.

In The Abominable Dr. Phibes the title character, played by Vincent Price, is consumed by his quest for revenge on all the people involved in his wife’s death. Dr. Phibes visits the nine biblical plagues of Egypt on his victims, including death by hail (in January), locusts, rats and for one unlucky gent, draining his blood. Phibes saves the best for last and Dr. Vesalius, the chief surgeon on his wife’s case, is forced to operate on his teenage first-born son.

Phibes has lodged a key close to the boy’s heart that will open a brace holding the operating table underneath a cylinder filled with slowly descending acid. Vesalius has six minutes to extract the key and save his son from an acid facial. Phibe’s elaborate trap calls to mind several others in the SAW series, including Amanda’s trap in the first SAW and Detective Kerry’s brush with acid in SAW 3. I wonder if The Abominable Dr. Phibes was in Leigh Whannell’s Netflix qeue.









I also caught a glimpse of Matthew Lillard, otherwise known as Stu from the first Scream movie on a rerun of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. He plays Chet, a man caught in an incestuous relationship with his Aunt Birdie, who at her urging kills two of her three ex-husbands.

With slicked down hair and a Hitler-esque mustache Lillard delivers a powerhouse performance. His breakdown in the interrogation room brought back memories of the final scenes of Scream, when Sidney tells Stu she’s called the cops and he cries into the phone, “My mom and dad are going to be so mad at me...”

Comments

  1. Is that Carol Burnett wit Lillard?

    As for Dr. Phibes - WOW! the Saw connection, I never thought of that. My fave death is the frog mask that tightens while "Darktown Strutters Ball" plays.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes indeed, it is Pax.
    As for the SAW comparison, Stacie Ponder of Final Girl also made the connection on her movies to watch @ AMC

    ReplyDelete

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