FILM / The Abominable Dr. Phibes / Alfred Fournier
Image © Amicus Productions
When I was ten, I never missed the Saturday afternoon Creature Feature. The local station played a pair of horror movies back to back—Frankenstein, Dracula, Creature from the Black Lagoon. I’d sit for hours alone in the TV room, black-and-white light flickering across my face.
I loved anything with Vincent Price but became obsessed with the two Dr. Phibes movies. Disfigured in an accident and presumed dead, Phibes (pronounced “Fībes”) takes revenge on the surgical team he blames for his wife’s death, killing them one by one in gruesome and ingenious ways. A man mauled by bats in his bed, another chewed up by rats on an airplane. Dozens of scorpions crawl across another man’s torso, arms and face, slowly stinging him to death. One victim, tricked by robotic snakes, incurs the bite of deadly viper. As he frantically dials the phone for help, a metal rod shoots through his brain.
**
Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was seven. Soon after, she withdrew from family life. She was in and out of the hospital, and when she was home, Dad told us kids never to disturb her.
It wasn’t easy to make ends meet. Dad pulled extra shifts at the Chrysler plant to help with the medical costs. Some mornings I’d find him brooding at the kitchen table, bills spread out in front of him like Tarot cards.
One night after watching Dr. Phibes, I woke from a horrid nightmare, grisly death scenes flashing through my mind. Timidly—I knew I was too old for this—I knocked on my parent’s bedroom door and begged to sleep with them.
Dad brusquely refused—no doubt he needed his sleep for an early shift the next day. But Mom intervened, adamant. “Let him stay.” And that was that.
As I slipped beneath the covers, she casually placed an arm around me. I closed my eyes, feeling the warmth of her body for the first time in years, and quickly fell asleep.
**
I was the last person in the family to admit she was going to die. Mothers can’t die. I remember her aproned in the kitchen dancing to the radio, making spaghetti and garlic bread. She was slim and beautiful, the liveliest person in any room, envy of her sisters and cousins.
I was eleven when she came home from the hospital the last time. Dad converted the TV room into a space where she could rest and be near family those final weeks. He moved the television to the adjacent living room.
One night while we were watching Kojak, Dad emerged from checking on her, his face pale and stunned, eyes distant. “Her legs are blue,” was all he said. He almost stumbled, reaching out for the wall.
I don’t remember whether I kept away from her those final weeks because I’d been told to or because I was afraid. I know now there was a part of me that envied Dr. Phibes, the cunning fiend who found a way to channel the anger surrounding his loss. But for me, there was no revenge to exact. No filling that gap once she was gone. By then, my obsession with horror movies had passed.
Alfred Fournier is an entomologist, writer and community volunteer in Phoenix, Arizona. He is the author of A Summons on the Wind: Poems (2023, Kelsay Books). His flash and creative nonfiction have appeared in Drunk Monkeys, Quibble, Lunch Ticket, Delmarva Review, New Flash Fiction Review and elsewhere. Twitter (X): @AlfredFournier4, alfredfournier.com.