Dr. Phibes Rises Again - Unfilmed Screenplays and Proposed Sequels

Unfilmed Screenplays and Proposed Sequels

1971: The Bride of Dr. Phibes. Proposed to AIP by William Goldstein and James Whiton as a sequel to the first film. Set in the year 1934, it details a battle of wits between Phibes and a strange man named Emil Salveus, a member of a secret Satanic society called the Institute for Psychic Phenomena. We learn that Salveus is actually Lem Vesalius, the son of Joseph Cotten's The Abominable Dr. Phibes character, Henri Vesalius. Salveus steals Victoria's body, and Phibes kills the members of the IPP in a quest to recover her.

The group's leader, Colonel Trenchard, is encased in amber and shattered into a million pieces. This is carried out at the IPP offices, where Phibes gets the names and addresses of the other members. Charles Carruthers is sucked dry by leeches in his bathtub. Orchestra conductor Sir Mastin Mateland finds himself covered with melted butter and eaten by a lobster. Lady Peune has a helium balloon tied to her wheelchair and ascends to the heavens. Arch Vicar Wren has his organs sucked out by a vacuum device. Sir Judah Ido Adibo of the Abyssinian Embassy is left with a clutch of cobras in his bed. Salveus himself falls into an acid pit he'd previously prepared for Phibes.

Phibes recovers and revives Victoria in a scene recalling The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). As Scotland Yard invades Phibes' manor, the doctor and his bride enter a freezing chamber that will preserve them for a future date. A perplexed Inspector Trout remarks, "Commissioner, we could search hell and damnation, scour the very bowels of this earth....but he'll never be found. (pause) Perhaps he was never meant to exist".

Producer Louis Heyward rejected The Bride of Dr. Phibes, and tapped longtime friend Robert Blees to script something entirely different. Blees' first idea, which never progressed beyond one-page conjecture, was tentatively titled Phibes II and would have pit Phibes against Robert Quarry's Count Yorga. Blees ousted this in favor of the Egyptian scenario that would become Dr. Phibes Rises Again after Fuest's re-write. The idea of casting Quarry remained, but as Phibes' counterpart Darius Biederbeck rather than Yorga.

197?: Dr. Phibes in the Holy Land. Mentioned by Vincent Price in a number of interviews. Copies of the screenplay remain elusive.

197?: The Son of Dr. Phibes by Robert Fuest. Unknown how far along this got in scripting. Phibes and son (to have been played by a young Vincent Price look-alike) join to wage war on environmental polluters. The modus operandi would involve natural-geologic phenomenon such as tidal waves and earthquakes.

1977: Phibes Resurrectus. This is The Bride of Dr. Phibes with minor alterations. Goldstein and Whiton sold it to Roger Corman's New World Pictures. Corman planned to cast Forrest J Ackerman, the self-described "poor man's Vincent Price", as a mechanical Phibes doppelganger that fools Inspector Trout during a sequence set in a soccer stadium.

1981: Dr. Phibes. Exists in the form of a brief outline/sales pitch by Goldstein and Whiton, but it is unknown whether the idea progressed to scripting stages. Phibes is revived in 1981 and sets sail for New York aboard his 98-foot yacht. The city's diseased squalor is contrasted with Phibes' seafaring Art Deco idyll, replete with clockwork wizards, Vulnavia and the dearly departed Victoria.

Ensconced in a resplendent penthouse apartment, Phibes plans to resurrect his bride and build a new life in America. His activities rouse the interest of the Wormwood Institute, an elite "think tank of glorious eggheads" led by the 80-year-old Hector Seneca Cicero Wormwood. Each of the six Institute members, we learn, leads a "strange private life".

Astrophysicist Bulwark Stanton, the most devious of the group, is obsessed with little girls and keeps a mechanical effigy of one at home. Lester is threatening to disprove Einstein's theory of general relativity at the age of 12. He is chomping at the bit to match wits with Phibes. The Smith Brothers, experts in economics and nuclear weaponry, are identical twin transvestites. Wormwood himself wet nurses directly from the tap, laboring under the illusion that such is the key to eternal life.

When the old man smashes Victoria's glass coffin, she dries out and decomposes. Phibes is enraged and vows revenge. He kills each of the Institute members according to their greatest love; for instance, the chocolate-loving germ warfare expert Mr. Nim is transformed into a chocolate statue. Phibes concurrently conducts an urgent search for the essential salts to restore Victora's vitality.

1984: Phibes Resurrectus, prepared by Goldstein and Whiton for Richard P. Rubinstein's and George A. Romero's Laurel Entertainment banner. It is The Bride of Dr. Phibes with a re-written first act, in which he first appears flying over the white cliffs of Dover, in a hot air balloon that bears the motto "NON OMNIS MORIAR" ("I shall not wholly die", Horace, Carmina 3.30). This he lands in a cemetery, and proceeds into Victoria's tomb.

It includes a list of proposed stars:

PHIBES - David Carradine

EMIL - Paul Williams

STEUBEN - Orson Welles

WREN - Roddy McDowall

LADY PEUNE - Coral Browne

WOMBER - Donald Pleasence

PROBY - John Carradine

ADIBO - Sam Jaffe

198? The Seven Fates of Dr. Phibes. A treatment by Paul Clemens and Ron Magid. It was submitted to Vincent Price, who heartily approved and agreed to recreate his role one more time. It begins where Dr. Phibes Rises Again leaves off, with Phibes and a revived Victoria departing their Egyptian abode on a quest to recover seven ivory statues that depict figures out of Greek mythology. These statues will allow the pair to join with the gods in the heavens. Upon returning to London, Phibes discovers that his house has been demolished and the statues sold off to various individuals. Phibes murders each of them in a manner befitting the particular mythological character they possess.

Dekker has a statue of Cyclops; his eye is poked out. Thundershaft has a Cerberus; Phibes presents him with a large Cerberus figure, one head of which shoots string to tie him up, followed by the second head which spouts gasoline, and the third which issues fire. Azzared has an Arachne; her room is filled with spiders. Halifax has a Medusa; he is cased in cement, effectively turning him into stone. The murder spree continues, and Trout and Waverley of Scotland Yard again find themselves dogged at every turn by the deadly doctor.

The final statue, the Minotaur, is owned by Phibes' archenemy Prof. Norquist. He has found the River of Death, Styx, the waters from which have the capability to end Phibes' eternal life. Norquist is killed by Phibes and the statues are joined, opening the heavens to him.

Vulnavia's true identity is revealed to be the goddess Athena. She says, "Come children of Zeus", as Phibes and Victoria ascend to the heavens through an opening in the mountain top. Waverley, who with Trout has followed Phibes to his mountain hideaway in Crete, believes it all to be a trick and says, "Strike me dead if it's not a hoax"; he is promptly struck by a lightning bolt and turns into a puff of smoke. "Over the Rainbow" plays while the credits roll.

Louis Heyward also tried to interest NBC in a "Phibes" television series, with a Goldstein-written pilot, that would have recast the doctor as a benevolent crimefighter who uses his makeup and technological wizardry to ensnare criminals.