Thankfully, She Is Not the FINAL Final Girl…

Final Girl (2015)
Dir: Tyler Shields
TC4P Rating: 4/9

I first heard that a film bearing the title "Final Girl" was in production a few years ago. The slightest research finds press releases from 2012 that hit the internet announcing such a project, and that jibes with my general memory. I thought at the time that if the film held tight to the implications of such a title -- that of a genre effort commenting on the post-ironic notion of a "final" surviving heroine amidst serial killer carnage -- that the film could prove most interesting, or at least fun. 

And then Final Girl, at least in my encounters online, laid low for a good while. As a result, it went off my radar to a degree, but every now and then I would get around to checking IMDb for a status update on the project. Each check-in would bring added confusion. Yes, Final Girl was still being made, but filming was just now getting underway. The movie was completed, but now there is another production called The Final Girls being planned. Final Girl was set to come out, but then no, it's not. The Final Girls is in production, but why hasn't Final Girl come out? Has it been shelved? How bad is it? Then, Final Girl was set to come later in 2015 on DVD and online. But, suddenly The Final Girls was coming out on both platforms as well? I gotta sit down...

Adding more confusion was the fact that one actor, Alexander Ludwig, stars as one of the male leads in both films. Different producers, directors and writers... same guy in both films with very similar titles (but not necessarily themes). Then came news of a television show in production for fall 2015 called Scream Queens, which also features Oscar-winning actress Abigail Breslin, who just so happens to be the star of Final Girl, the film starting all of this. What was going on? Had the universe imploded?

I will get to the other projects later this month. I won't see The Final Girls until later this week, and I am giving Scream Queens a couple more episodes to play out some storylines, before I tackle reviewing them. But I have now seen the first of the films, Final Girl, and you don't have to get too far into the film to see what the delay was. I can now readily admit that I should never have gotten excited for the project in the first place. I wouldn't go so far as to say the film should have been shelved permanently, for I feel any movie production should get a chance to either find its audience or repel it. I am a big one for film "closure," that satisfying sense one gets in accomplishing lists of films, or at least getting to say, "Seen it. Seen it. Seen it. Gotta see it. Seen it," as you run your eyes or index finger down a series of titles. Not getting to at least pay a single visit to Final Girl would be a curse upon my personal methods.

Final Girl employs the now popular term derived from horror films, but is itself not even close to belonging to that genre. It plays on elements from horror, but barely touches on them, and is far more content splitting itself between the action, revenge, and thriller genres at fairly equal levels. The chief problem is that it never really commits to any of them, and the film feels sloppier for it. A film done in such a way can have a ragged charm, especially if it sticks to maintaining a comic tone, but Final Girl has little in the way of any charm at all.

The plot concerns Veronica (Breslin), whose parents died when she was a young girl, and who is adopted by a man named William (Wes Bentley). Having seen his wife and child murdered years earlier, he raises Veronica to become his weapon of revenge upon those who would commit such crimes. After twelve years and a final test involving a drug combination that allows Veronica to confront her core fear (that of failing William so that he must kill her), William gives her a first mission. 

Women are disappearing in a small town, and there is a quartet of young men responsible: leader Jamison (played by Ludwig), Nelson, Shane, and Daniel, four fratboy types who dress perfectly in suits, pick up a blonde girl at a local diner, drive her out to the woods, and then make her run for her life while they hunt down and murder her. (They never stoop to raping their victims, because sexual assault makes it hard for the girls to run properly.) Of course, police investigation is non-existent (the number of victims is cited variously as eleven or 21, so you'd think that would get something started). After so many blonde women in the town have disappeared, I would hope that every remaining blonde would have gone back to their natural hair color or simply hidden under wigs. Veronica sets herself up as the next victim, and the remainder of the film is how she deals with the four murdering assholes.

I will go no further with plot details so as not to spoil anything for those who do wish to view the film as I did. But it will not ruin the rest of the movie to say that one of the chief failings of the film is in establishing that it takes place anywhere believable. I guess the film is supposed to be in the late 1950s owing to the cars, fashion, and music, but simply using an old diner as your one solid set design (apart from the campfire couches in the forest) really did not make me believe in the story any more. Having one of the frat jerks dancing and lip-syncing (badly) to rockabilly music while he combs his hair in celebratory foreplay over getting to kill another girl that evening only brought me sincere doubts that the actor had ever heard that type of music before.

The mailbox baseball game the boys play with Veronica as they drive about only points out how ill-conceived the film is. After watching one of the boys use a baseball bat to demolish, in succession, a mailbox and a signpost on the side of the road, Veronica is given her turn. Her first attempt is meant to look weak (she is now a trained assassin... supposedly), but her second attempt totally smashes the sign to pieces and impresses the boys greatly. The problem is that Breslin seems to have Muppet arms in this film, and her second swing has no greater power to it than the first one -- in fact, neither appears to even be actual swings, but just mere placements of the bat out of the window. In real life, her attempts would either have her ending up with broken wrists, having the bat ripped out of her hands, or both. I know it is not really fair to compare movie actions to real life ones, or all films would die ignoble deaths, but in this case, it just emphasized how little the makers considered many of the details in their film.

I am fine with Breslin's acting in this film; it is in her physical performance where she seems just so wrong for the piece. There is just no force at all behind the blows she is pretending to give, and so her action scenes (and the second half of the film is filled with them; luckily, her stunt double is far more convincing) just all fall so flat. The back half is supposed to be especially darkly comic, with the boys engaging Veronica in a too drawn-out game of Truth or Dare, but it is merely dull and obvious. Final Girl also relies too heavily on the use of the hallucinations of the drug combo that William not only uses on Veronica, but with which he also supplies her as one of her weapons (but not a gun, no... runs out of bullets, so what good could it be?) The hallucinatory scenes could have proven interesting and fun, if it wasn't clear from the rest of the film that they would come off as forced as everything else.

I cannot say that I am disappointed in Final Girl. It is pretty much what I was expecting, so I guess it was more the concept I was initially excited about when I first heard the title. There was potential in this film, and early on, with the odd relationship between Veronica and William, I thought Final Girl might have gone further abroad in the sense of genuine grindhouse thrills, taking a simple revenge setup and getting crazy with it. That the film is more content with staying tame enough to play on the Family Channel shows you that the wrong people were at the controls.

Recently Rated Movies: Catching Up with Christopher Lee (the actor, not my brother…) Pt. 2

Of the Christopher Lee films I have seen to this point, the one area in which I hardly need delve are his most famous and popular roles. It has been decades since I first saw his Hammer Draculas and his turn as Frankenstein’s Monster, his villainous appearances in Bond and Three Musketeers films, and his Fu Manchu series countless times, and every role is etched in my memory. His later appearances in major modern epic series (LOTR, Star Wars) are also to be counted in this group, even if I hold little fondness for the last three Star Wars entries. I have also seen many of his supporting roles in films such as Serial (1980, of which I am still fond), a variety of turns alongside his old chum Peter Cushing in non-Hammer horror flicks, and his odd cameo in The Magic Christian (as a vampire waiter on an ocean liner). 

The point is that I am already well-versed in his major roles. In reviewing his oeuvre over the past couple of weeks and recalling his movies that I have actually seen to this point, there have been few thus far (except for some of the horror ones and The Magic Christian, which is certainly memorable but actually not very good) that I would describe as resting near even the lower rungs of the higher echelon of filmmaking.

But, as I make my way through his unseen flicks, I am discovering that there are plenty of near misses. As I recounted the other day, Hannie Caulder turned out to be a pretty good revenge western, if not great. Then I ran into three films which are ever so close to being good solid films, but just narrowly miss the mark for me. I am fairly certain that if I saw any of these three as a teenager or young adult, they would probably rank higher up in my memory, but I only just saw them in the past week. All three warrant follow-up viewings, and I will leave it to those moments to determine whether they move up or down in my rankings. So while I currently have assigned all three my middle of the road “5” rating, they were all worthy of my time and eventual, almost assured revisitation.

The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967) [aka The Snake Pit and the Pendulum; Torture Chamber; Castle of the Walking Dead; Blood of the Virgins; The Blood Demon; and many, many more…]

Dir: Harald Reinl

TC4P Rating: 5

One of the first hurdles for any horror film is evoking and maintaining a haunting atmosphere. This film has atmosphere in spades, as long as the soundtrack doesn’t emit a single musical note. The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism is set in the same type of fairytale, Germanic burg as many of the more famous Hammer selections like Frankenstein Created Woman, and like those films, the fairytale backdrop is betrayed by a lurid series of events that lead to even more chaos. 

Christopher Lee plays Count Regula (which is what I would think Dracula would be if he devoured more fiber), and he is drawn and quartered in the beginning of the film for draining the blood from twelve virgins to give him immortality. (He fails because he had not gotten to the 13th victim.) He naturally swears vengeance before his body parts are ripped asunder, and sure enough, decades later, the script gives him the chance. Based partly on Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum (at least, the sections involving both a pit and a pendulum), Torture Chamber has a wonderfully creepy middle section where the protagonists (including post-Weissmuller Tarzan, Lex Barker) travel through a dark forest with bodies and limbs hanging from the trees all around them. All of the later scenes of Lee torturing his foes are also memorably committed to film, and I certainly enjoyed how much fun the film seemed to be having with its absolute depravity. 

In fact, my one and only real gripe with the film is the soundtrack, which for much of the running time seems too comic and buoyant for the storyline. However, it does have moments where it matches appropriately, so my initial statement regarding the emittance of a single note was merely to provoke. In fact, I quite enjoy the score all the way through, even the absurd parts. I just feel that at certain moments in the film, the score doesn't seem to belong. Overall, though, this is a fine, new addition to my regular Halloween viewing list, goofy and inconsistent music regardless. 

The Bloody Judge (1970) [aka Night of the Blood Monster; Trial of the Witches; and many more...]

Dir: Jesús Franco

TC4P Rating: 5

I not only think that the British tradition of having wigs lodged atop the heads of their judges and lawyers is quaint and rather silly in these modern times (I will put on the brakes before calling it stupid, but.. yeah...), the thought of them actually makes me a bit physically ill. Much in the way that I used to be so repelled by early ‘70s fashion in films (even though I grew up in that time) that I couldn’t watch certain films without a feeling of nauseousness, the courtroom attire of England does the same thing to me when I see it in a movie or on TV. I even want to wretch at the very thought of it, and I really don’t know why. Which is precisely the reason I have always put off viewing The Bloody Judge for eons. Almost always available for me to view, I have never been able to get past the image of Christopher Lee topped off with one of those ridiculous wigs on his noggin, no matter how enjoyably maniacal he was likely to behave in the film.

Well, consider me wrong. I should have watched The Bloody Judge a long time ago. Not that it is any great shakes as a “normal" film, but as a gonzo piece of shock horror, this is a pretty lowdown and dirty but gorgeously shot flick with some nasty torture scenes and bountiful nudity throughout. What you don’t get is the loopiness and lack of narrative drive inherent in many of director Jesús “Jess" Franco’s soft-core “masterpieces” (I am rather fond of some of those loopier films, especially Vampyros Lesbos). 

But what you do get from the other Franco films is the lovely Maria Rohm, who also co-starred with Christopher Lee in other Franco epics, including Count Dracula (1970) and The Blood of Fu Manchu (1968), as well as in several films directed by Jeremy Summers. It is no coincidence that the producer of all of these films, including The Bloody Judge, is her husband, the notorious Harry Alan Towers. Rohm certainly adds sensuality to a film that might otherwise just be unrelentingly grim. (This is my subtle way of saying she gets naked a lot and it distracts you happily from the torture bits.) Of course, I am joking… she doesn’t distract from the torture bits at all, since her biggest scene in the film is when she is locked in a cage and forced to lick the blood from a bound torture victim. I cringe in fear for any perv who actually gets his jollies from such a portrayal, but I will admit that the scene does add to the creeping effectiveness and overall griminess of the film.

Lee himself is solid as usual as the lead character, only loosely based on the real 17th century judge, George Jeffreys, who bullied his way through defendants, attorneys, and juries alike, and in this film’s version of the events surrounding the Bloody Assizes, dispatches accused witches to their doom without remorse. Of course, Jeffreys begins to grow worrisome over the chaos ensuing from his brutal courtroom tactics, and he begins to have nightmares of torture. That he will undoubtedly get his comeuppance is part of the fun of watching Lee in such a villainous role. 

It all depends on one's tolerance of tooth-yanking, hand-spiking, racking, digit-chopping, and beheadings, Don’t go looking for historical accuracy and try looking instead for pure psychotronic thrills, and you will definitely get something out of this.

Crypt of the Vampire (1964) [La cripta e l'incubo aka Terror in the Crypt; Crypt of Horror]

Dir: Camillo Mastrocinque

TC4P Rating: 5

If you have seen and loved Roger Vadim's Blood and Roses (1960) as I have and do, then this Spanish-Italian version of Sheridan Le Fanu's novella, Carmilla will likely pale in comparison to the more famous earlier film. But it is a worthwhile rendering of its own, even if most character names have been changed, some bad dubbing is to be endured, and the director more than once betrays his obvious influencing by Mario Bava (never a bad thing).

Christopher Lee gets a heroic role this time, albeit a tortured one, and as in villainous roles, he has enough talent and range to pull the part off just fine. As Count Karnstein, he has to do battle against the light lesbian leanings of a mysterious vampire who is leaving drained bodies in her wake. It could be his daughter, who may be the reincarnation of an ancestor rumored to have committed such crimes, or it could be her recent companion, who has instilled herself into the daily life of the castle. The black and white cinematography is routinely effective if not spectacular, the sets and darkness of the castle are nicely rendered, and the heavy breathing, haunted ladies look divine onscreen.

This is the one of the three of these films where I am closest to giving it a higher rating, if only because it is the least gratuitous of the trio. This is likely due to it coming from a less permissive time in cinema (and just a handful of years earlier), so it relies more on subtlety and suggestion. However, there is a grandly gruesome sequence involving a dog tugging on the foot of a hanged peddler with his hand severed. Yes, it is derivative of Bava, but when a witch is seen using that hand as a candelabra in the very next scene while she invokes a spell, then you will know the film is a keeper.

[Postscript: I have since watched both Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism and Crypt of the Vampire again, and while I am keeping Torture Chamber's rating at "5," I have shifted Crypt up to a "6," which is my general rating for "good."]

Recently Rated Movies: Catching Up with Christopher Lee (the actor, not my brother…) Pt. 1

In resurrecting many of the old regular columns on this blog, my favorite was often Recently Rated Movies, wherein I would shorthand my usual long-winded blathering and comment oh so very briefly on a series of films I had recently seen and rated on IMDb. To begin this column regularly again, I am tying it into a project in which I have been engaged for the past three weeks. I have been employing the Charts function on Flickchart to create lists that show me which films of one of my favorite actors I have yet to see. Because I have watched so many films overall (11,000+), for there to be films for someone like, say, Boris Karloff, they would either have to be films I have intentionally putting off for one reason or another, films that were harder to find in the past, or simply something I had little interest in viewing.

I began the project with Bela Lugosi, and quickly knocked out eleven of his films in short order (luckily most of them are barely over an hour long), including the infamously terrible (and justly so) Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla and Mother Riley Meets the Vampire. I then leaped over to the aforementioned Mr. Karloff (there was some slight crossover), and not only also took down eleven of his films, including three out of four of his late ‘60s Mexican flicks (where all of his scenes were directed at the same time by Jack Hill and then inserted into the films proper), but also four of his Mr. Wong films from the late ’30s and early ‘40s.

And now, I am on the chart for the recently departed Christopher Lee. He has 133 films listed on Flickchart (overall, he has 278 acting credits listed on IMDb), and of those 133 films, until the other day, I had seen ONLY 68 of them. That leaves a massive amount of his films left to see, and I doubt I have the time left or the energy to see them all. Lee himself had a quote he was fond of repeating where he is regularly told by fans, “I have seen all of your films!” His reply, “No, you haven’t.” Well, now I have ticked nine more films off that list over the last few days.

[Editor's note: All films are rated on a scale of 9.]

The Puzzle of the Red Orchid [German title: Edgar Wallace: Das Rätsel der roten Orchidee | Alt. English title: The Secret of the Red Orchid]

Dir: Helmut Ashley

TC4P Rating: 4

When is it called for to have the very British legend Christopher Lee, with his deep and memorable speaking voice, to have his dialogue dubbed into English? Specifically, an American accent? When he originally recorded his dialogue for this would-be thriller based on an Edgar Wallace story (as many European films were in the ‘60s), it was reportedly into what I have read in some places as some rather decent German. That aside, it is incongruous to say the least to watch Lee in numerous scenes while hearing a ridiculously square and far too rigidly pronounced American accent pour from his lips (and obviously not matching what he is really saying), especially given that there is no attempt at all to try and match the timbre of his famous voice. 

A minor plus is that this film moves pretty fast, though the characters are involved in a mystery I don’t really care about while Chicago gangsters are kidnapping people in London. There are some fairly stilted attempts at comic relief, but like everything else in this movie, the dubbing also kills the chance for any humor to translate properly for the viewer. It’s not as horrid as you think it will be going into it, but it’s still a bit of a chore to watch.

Hannie Caulder (1971)

Dir: Burt Kennedy

TC4P Rating: 6

Let’s not get carried away here. Sensei Tarantino loves this film and has pointed to it as an inspiration for Kill Bill. It is easy to see why he loves it, and it is also easy to see the inspiration it served. But this is not a great lost classic. It’s merely a fairly decent western with an excellent male lead in Robert Culp, and some good, disgusting supporting roles for Strother Martin, Ernest Borgnine, and especially Jack Elam. 

There is also a dandy small part for Christopher Lee as the expert gunsmith that Culp and female lead Raquel Welch call upon to customize pistols with which Welch’s title character can exact revenge on the raping and murdering trio played by Martin, Borgnine, and Elam. The movie has some wit to it, and is engaging from start to finish. Welch is hardly believable in her gunslinger role, especially in what she is allowed to wear during the era in which they purport to be, though I mark this up to the ‘70s and the need for the studio to sell her remarkable exterior (if only they knew how). 

I do have a complaint about the blood, which gushes forth from numerous bullet wounds throughout the movie, as being too obviously fake. It rather galls me about the third time it happens. Other than that, watch it for a prime example of just how assured and captivating Robert Culp can be in the right role.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)

Dir: Does it even matter?

TC4P Rating: 5

Let’s talk about product. Pure product. Yes, I am one of those original Star Wars kids from 1977. I read the paperback (with the purple cover and the pre-film character designs by McQuarrie) numerous times before the film was released that summer, and I bought the comics, toys, LPs, trading cards, posters, blueprints, t-shirts, puzzles, games, prints, and what have you without a second thought. Like any other religious convert, I gave up my allowance on a weekly basis to the Force reverently for a handful of years, and it never once struck me I was being manipulated at all as I followed the adventures of Luke, Han, Leia and their pals through the next couple of films. Nor would I have cared if I did realize the manipulation at hand. I was in my teens, I loved what I loved, and I didn’t want to hear otherwise.

Though George Lucas has crippled my opinion of his creation due to his obstinate mishandling of it in recent years, I still maintain a soft spot for the original films, enough so that I am like everyone else who can’t wait to see what J.J. Abrams will bring us come winter. Likewise, I am equally excited about Disney’s plans for a new Star Wars Land in the park. While that might further define me as a “sheeple” in regards to blindly going along with the rest of the flock, the quality of the product is likely to be so high that I couldn’t resist if I wanted, lest I be branded a curmudgeon, hipster, or troll or some unholy combination of the three.

But there is a difference between product of a remarkably high caliber and just mere product, rendered to the blandness of pabulum, still to be considered sustainable entertainment but absolutely lacking in real character or emotional depth. Even more interesting is when product of the second variety spews forth from the same factory creating the higher form. And thus, from that off-white void, crawls out Star Wars: The Clone Wars, animated to the far brink of what was accepted as popular animation in the year in which it was released (but no further), brightly colored, swift moving, and sporting the mind-numbing, political denseness that plagued the three most recent Lucas productions. However, it does have several presumably exciting battle sequences, mostly involving the younger Obi-Wan and Anakin, along with a young Padawan named Ahsoka (sadly, Lucas did not name an older brother for her as Supasoka, but I feel he would have), for those that have not already seen similar scenes in many, many other films. Therein lies the key to the film’s existence, both as product and as a part of Star Wars culture. It is also the same key that explains my reticence to embrace the later productions from my once beloved font of space opera entertainment.

I am no longer twelve years old. I might act like it at times. I may still adore most of the things I loved when I was that age. I may even still own most of the things I owned from that time (and I largely do). But I am no longer twelve. I am a 51-year-old man watching a film designed to attract actual twelve-year-olds to a possible entry point into the Star Wars universe, or to keep the kids already inclined to be inside that universe further entertained and to get them to buy the comics, toys, etc. that go along with it. Just like when I was that age.

So, I am no longer the target audience for Star Wars: The Clone Wars. In fact, I am about thirty years past it. But it does not mean that I can’t watch the film, have an understanding of it, nor speak my piece on it. But I can't embrace it like I did those earlier films. It’s just really no longer mine. I knew this when it was released, and so I put off seeing it. And I only watched it last week because it was film highest up on the Flickchart list of Christopher Lee films I had yet to see, and if there was going to be a Chris Lee flick I hadn’t watched, it was not going to be a Star Wars one. And so watch it I did. Mr. Lee voices his Count Dooku character from the later films, and he does his usual excellent job. He is barely in the film, and the rest is taken up by the politics, battle scenes, and Jedi nonsense I mentioned earlier. What the ads should have read is "Come for the Dooku. Stay for the product."

Rixflix A to Z: The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

Dir.: Robert Fuest

American-International Pictures (AIP), 1:34, color

Cast Notables: Vincent Price, Joseph Cotten, Hugh Griffith, Terry-Thomas, David Hutcheson, Peter Jeffrey, Virginia North, Caroline Munro, Paul Frees (voice)

TC4P Rating: 7/9

"Nine killed you. Nine shall die. Nine times, nine! Nine killed you! Nine shall die! Nine eternities in DOOM!" - Dr. Anton Phibes (Vincent Price)

Poor Dr. Phibes... his wife dies tragically on the operating table after only six minutes in surgery. He gets in a tragic car accident, burnt and disfigured and thought to be dead. And the thought that the chief surgeon, the surgery nurse, and even the seven consulting doctors who presided over his wife's death are still alive fills him with the purest sense of revenge. (His wife's death would drive me mad as well, since Victoria Phibes is played by a young and uncredited Caroline Munro, one of the earliest "loves of my life".) To gain this revenge, he will reconstruct (with slight variations) the Biblical plagues of Egypt, doing in each of the guilty with a different plague (boils, blood, rats, etc.)

It seems simple enough, but this film takes a basic potboiler premise and takes it to an amazing level of sublime and artful horror. Phibes isn't just mad with lust for revenge; he is a genius of high order: a doctor, an inventor, a scientist, and a concert musician. Phibes manages to weave all of his various skills and interests into his revenge, and still takes time out of his murderous rampage for a waltz with his stylish assistant, Vulnavia. A ballroom in his art deco palatial estate is filled with clockwork musicians, and while no one is there to see any of this silliness, the pair seem to stage Broadway-style pageantry with Vulnavia in elaborate costuming, all of which Phibes accompanies on a grand organ, which rises out of the floor and also serves as an elevator to his hidden den. It also lends the film an appropriate nod to the Phantom of the Opera, if not also a reminder of Captain Nemo, himself a creature whose genius is likewise fortified through hatred and revenge against the human race.

And the murders are nothing simple, but sometimes quite involved set pieces of intellectual construct and scheming. Dr. Phibes is always there, lurking about the scene, but as no one believes he is even alive or even that he exists, the police are baffled constantly. It wouldn't do them any good; they wouldn't know him from Adam. Phibes, you see, has no face, and can only talk through a device that he has designed and implanted in the side of his neck. (He has another such device hidden unseen behind his head for drinking and eating, which is used to most humorous effect.) The Vincent Price face that we see throughout the film is merely a mask, and even when we know this for much of the running time, the reveal of his true self is still shocking, even when viewed numerous times.

This film is a delight, a most enjoyable time even for those most hardened against genre filmmaking, because The Abominable Dr. Phibes succeeds outside of this realm as pure, although out of left field, entertainment. It's not surprising that my three favorite films that came out of the same year, 1971, were Harold and Maude, A Clockwork Orange, and this film. While the intent and the subject matter of the three films could hardly be more different, from three wildly diverse filmmakers, there is still an overriding sensibility at play in all three that appeals to the same exact place in my movie-mind. Call it my need for artful subversiveness (even if Orange still comes on as fascistic). Even with the pretentious strains evident in all three (least of all in this one, though), I love them all equally.

RTJ

Sequel: Dr. Phibes Rises Again! (1972)

[This review was edited and updated with new photos on 11/14/2016.]