"Abominable" Director Robert Fuest Passes Away

News has broken that British filmmaker Robert Fuest has passed away at the age of 84. Fuest, best known as the director The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again, was active in the film and television industry until 1990.

After a stint in the Royal Air Force, Fuest would try his hand as an artist, teacher, and copywriter before becoming an art director on the 1961 spy series The Avengers. He would later parlay his position into feature filmmaking with Just Like A Woman in 1967. The opportunity to direct several episodes of the The Avengers followed in 1968.
Fuest would step into the horror genre by partnering with Avengers producers Brian Clemens and Albert Fennell to make the paranoid 1970 classic And Soon The Darkness. A cult item of its kind, the film is arguably the first in a subgenre of backwoods horror films that remained popular throughout the decade. The same year, Fuest would tackle an adaptation of Emily Bronte's gothic romance Wurthering Heights, an AIP production starring a very young Timothy Dalton. That production would be labeled a box office dud, but would go on to earn compose Michel Legrand a Golden Globe nomination for best score.

The director would return to genre in 1971 with The Abominable Dr. Phibes, a classic of surrealist horror. In it, the titular Dr. Anton Phibes (Vincent Price) would take revenge on a group of doctors he believes let his wife die following a devastating car accident. With murder plans inspired by the ten plagues of Egypt, Phibes bumps them off in elaborate, agonizing set-pieces. Phibes and it's sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again (1972) have been celebrated for their opulent art deco set designs, black sense of humor, and eye popping use of color. Of Fuest's brief filmography, these are his most celebrated films, influencing Price's own follow-up, Theatre of Blood, as well as the wildly popular Saw series (for more information, see the video review by James Rolfe, below).
Fuest would follow Dr. Phibes Rises Again with The Last Days of Man on Earth in 1973, a film which he also wrote and directed for a very low budget. Following its lackluster reception, he would tackle The Devil's Rain, a film noteworthy among movie fans for its eclectic cast (William Shatner, John Travolta, Ernest Borgnine), hammy dialogue, bizarre occult storyline, and wildly over the top, face melting, church exploding ending. While a disappointment, the film's trademark Fuest-ian sets and style combined with a wacked-out screenplay makes it among the most celebrated "so-bad-they're-good" films of all time.
Sadly, Fuest would cap his film career off with Aphrodite, a softcore porn film. The director would spend the remainder of the 1980s directing television, including the made-for-TV Return of the Stepford Wives. In a cyclical fashion, he would come back to the source material that gave him his start by directing The New Avengers before bowing out of the business in the 1990s.

Despite a relatively small filmography, Fuest's legacy has been secured among science fiction and horror lovers the world over. Our deepest condolences go out to his friends, family, and associates. May he rest in peace.



Extra Tidbit: Hammer horror starlet Caroline Munro (Captain Cronos: Vampire Hunter, below) makes an uncredited appearance as Phibes' wife in The Abominable Dr. Phibes.