It's actually a bit ambiguous...I see the year 1921 in places but the interior design is very art decco. The cars are old, but there are a lot of acrylics and plastic tubes and whatnot. It's as if there is a bit of deception going on as to the actual time era the story was in.
So what year was it actually supposed to be?
I haven't seen the sequel, so excuse me if it's revealed in that film.
It's as if there is a bit of deception going on as to the actual time era the story was in.
It looks to be set in the 1920s, and that works for me.Not that I'm complaining about any specific anachronism(s), I was merely curious.
Note that I'm not fussing about the use of flying foxes or the like, I love this film and all the plagues are a hoot, especially when Phibes rejoices with a small clap or the like after a particularly successful endeavor.
I was intrigued by Vulnavia's violin playing. The actress obviously did not play the instrument, and it looked to me as if she wasn't attempting to mimic a violinist's technique in those scenes at all.
Yet another minor element that contributes to the overall surrealism of the film.
Although it's been disproved, in the thread "Who *was* Vulnavia?" there are a few who speculate the character is an automaton, and I'm thinking this was one reason why...her motions when playing the violin are kinda similar to the mechanical players in Dr. Phibes' Clockwork Magicians.
In the thread "Phibes Undead?", grotesk-1 states
The ambiguity is obviously intentional, and personally, while the unfocused and unfounded nonsense of other movies of the relative era and genre doesn't hold my interest, the way the Phibes movies deal with his existence is much preferred to more recent movies (and remakes) which seem to feel the need to over-explain everything to the audience.
So I've started the sequel, and I guess it makes it clear that she's an automaton. I mean, she met a gruesome end at the end of this movie, and when Phibes come back for the sequel he makes a new Vulnavia appear when he wants help.
Yup, the straight man's dream, a new girlfriend stashed in a closet or something, just waiting to be summoned to kill his enemies and sweep the floors!
I was wondering the same thing. At one point it showed the poster for a Dr. Phibes show and it said 1902 or 1905 but if it took place in 1971 as the movie did, there was no way he would put on a show when he's 1 so subtracting 20 years from 1905 would make him around 90. He did not look 90 in the film.
shareIt's meant to be the early to mid 1920s. Around 1925, probably. But it has a very 1960s/70s feel to it - the late 1960s/early 1970s style was very influenced by art nouveau and art deco and the era just before and after the Great War - think of Sgt Pepper, Lord Kitchener's Valet, Adam Adamant and all that. Although some of the interiors are very stylised, eg Joseph Cotton's house and the hospital, there's nothing in the film that looks totally anachronistic to me apart from some of the mens' hairstyles - men didn't 'have big sideburns and long hair in the 1920s, especially not police officers - but that's a common anachronism in 1970s films presumably because short hair was so totally 'uncool' that even actors refused to cut it for a part.
shareThe costumes are all over the map - men's suits suitable for the 1920s, Vulnavia's costumes with the fur hats and stretch boots that were fashionable in 1970. But this is one film where I don't mind, with the bizarre stylized sets and anachronistic technology, the film has a peculiar timelessness that belongs to no era at all.
The movie is free on youtube, if anyone wants a look.
One of Phibes tune 'All I Do Is Dream Of You' wasn't published until 1934. But the setting does look 1920s to me.
share1925 - Phibes' wife died in 1921 (as evidenced by her grave marker).
Later, Dr. Vesalius asks Nurse Allen if she remembers an operation from four years earlier, and tells her that her life was in danger because of it.