The Bad Movie Report

The Abominable Dr. Phibes

ADDENDA - THE PLAGUES

I'm lucky in a lot of respects; in this case, I have to say that most of the mail I get is very thoughtful, reasoned stuff. Sometimes I get letters that cause me to write more on subjects I would otherwise consider closed. Witness this note from good bad movie bud El Santo:

I just finished reading your review, and I have a question for you. When you watched it for review, did you happen to go and re-read Exodus? I ask because I did (in three different translations-- just to be sure), and I found the experience highly amusing. If you yourself trusted Fuest to do your remembering for you, go have a look and see if you notice the discrepancies I did. If you've already done the research, and noticed no discrepancies, I'd be really interested to know which version of the Bible you were using. I consulted the King James, the New English Bible, and the favorite of semi-literates everywhere, the Good News.

Have fun
,
- El Santo

Well, as far as discrepancies go, even a confirmed heathen like myself knows that the final curse laid on Pharoah by Moses was not Darkness, as Phibes would have us believe, but the Death of the First-Born. After all, I've seen not only The Ten Commandments but Prince of Egypt (and I recommend both). Going to my copy of The Oxford Companion to The Bible and The Jewish Publication Society's 1985 edition of The Tanakh (known as The Old Testament to the goyim), we find the following (Exodus 7:14-12:36, for all of you reading along at home):

  • The Nile water turns to Blood, a phenomenon that seems to happen every hundred years or so during the Nile's seasonal floods. Decaying algae turns the water red, foul and undrinkable.

  • The Nile subsides, leaving piles of dead Frogs everywhere. The stench must have been incredible.

  • Depending on the translation, there is either a plague of gnats, or lice, but everyone agrees on "vermin", doubtless generated by the piles of decaying frogs. By a stretch of the imagination, the writers of Phibes decide a rhyme is just as good, and gnats becomes Rats. Rats are vermin, after all.

  • So then there's "insects", or in some translations, "flies". Bats fly, right? Right?

  • Livestock are smitten by diseases - anthrax, hoof-and-mouth, whatever. For brevity's sake, it's the curse of Beasts.

  • Egyptians are plagued by boils, apparently caused by ashes from kilns which Moses and crew strew to the winds. Those who think the Tanakh/Bible is lacking in such things as dramatic irony should consider that these are the same kilns the Israelites use to bake the bricks with which they are being forced to build the pyramids. Zing!

  • Hail (just as rare as you would expect in Egypt) destroys an entire season's crops.

  • Locusts consume what's left, although no mention is made of the flesh-eating variety Phibes employs.

  • Darkness blots out the sun "for three days". Definitely not a mere eclipse; possibly a dust cloud, but the Hebrews enjoy normal sunlight.

  • Death of the First-Born.

So here's the score-card:

BIBLE

PHIBES

Blood
Frogs
Gnats
Flies
Beasts
Boils
Hail
Locusts
Darkness
Death of First-Born

Boils
Flies (bats)
Frogs
Blood
Hail
Gnats (rats)
Beasts
Locusts
Death of First-Born
Darkness

At least they got the placement of the locusts right.

Well, since when, one asks, has film ever really gotten history right? And theology is even more tricky, being open to a wider variety of interpretations. Some of the suggestions I've made about the Phibes team's choices in re-working the Plagues is, of course, mere supposition - but compared to the liberties they've taken with a text that resides in most households in America (and certainly every hotel room), my version could be... well, written in stone. Heh.

And then, of course, El Santo weighs in with:

In regard to your newly posted addendum to the review of The Abominable Dr. Phibes: Whatever the Jews were building with the bricks they baked in those kilns, it certainly wasn't the pyramids. Those were made out of limestone blocks-- not a single brick in them.

And while we're on the subject of pyramid-building, here's an interesting and little-known tidbit regarding the people who did the actual work. Contrary to popular belief, the pyramids were not built by slaves. Recent archaeological work in the ruins surrounding the pyramids has turned up payroll records listing everybody from engineers, artisans, and foremen down to the lowliest stone-sloggers. In fact, it turns out that pyramid-building was one of the better gigs available in Egypt, even for unskilled laborers, and that the engineers and master craftsmen doing the delicate work were making mad cash (at least by the standards of their day). I bring this up because of the Hebrews-slavery connection (I'll save my screed on the important but oft-overlooked distinction between slaves and subject peoples for another time...).

Well, I can only quote The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence: "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Besides, everyone knows flying saucers built the pyramids.

on to Dr. Phibes Rises Again

RATING:

- June 3, 2001