TheRetroCritic

Richard Pryor stars in Critical Condition , a comedy from 1987 in which he plays Eddie, a man arrested following a run-in with some dodgy characters who attempts to fake an insanity plea in order to stay out of prison. As a storm hits the hospital he'd been transferred to, the power goes out and he has to pretend to be a doctor in order to escape. Unfortunately, he soon finds he can't go anywhere while the storm is going on and is forced to really try being a doctor until it clears up, which obviously proves hit-and-miss, to say the least. Like with Brewster's Millions , Pryor is provided with a funny, simple concept and he makes the most of it. As both Eddie and his alter-ego Dr Kevin Slattery, Pryor does a great job in his usual off-beat way, throwing funny lines effortlessly and stumbling wide-eyed through difficult situations. The film is not a laugh riot throughout but the characters and scenarios are random and likable enough to keep you entertained. There'

It must be impossible to be a Vincent Price fan and not completely adore this nutty little movie about a mad mask-wearing doctor who plots an elaborate series of revenge murders against the group of doctors who failed to save his wife after a tragic accident. The Abominable Dr Phibes is super kitsch and pretty surreal making it feel more like some sort of macabre psychedelic painting than a straight-up horror film. There are a lot of ideas in there and really they shouldn't work together but somehow they do. On one side you've got Phibes, a completely gothic creation akin to the likes of The Phantom Of The Opera, on the other you've got English cops straight out of an Ealing comedy and in the middle a bunch of weird doctors, each of them looking like they belong to another type of film altogether. Like a Sherlock Holmes mystery or a Columbo episode. Hell, even Terry Thomas pops up out of the blue in an oddly seedy cameo! Terry Thomas lol Basically the joy of this m