Being an enthusiastic horror movie fan all my life, I have often heard the question of what the best female horror movie character is. Well, there are lots of votes for Luna (from Mark of the Vampire) and the Bride of Frankenstein, but I think my vote is for Vulnavia (from The Abominable Dr. Phibes). She's so elegant, mysterious, exotic, and as one character puts it: fashionable. She's such a delightful character, gliding through the movie like some sort of ethereal avenging angel, and I have no idea how she came to be, as there's nothing in the story to suggest where she came from or who she is; but she shows so powerfully how men's attraction to women's looks to the point of ignoring everything else can so easily be their downfall, and as such, I think she's a wonderful feminist screen icon, using her looks as a weapon against venal, lustful men in Western society. And to draw them in further in a way that many male comedians (and lots of men in general) mention would make "the perfect woman", she doesn't speak a word throughout the whole of the movie. And embodying this male fantasy character as she does, young, thin, exotically beautiful, silent, fashionable, exuding wealth and class, uninhibited, all the men she targets willfully drop all their defenses and fall victim to her (and her partner-in-crime, Vincent Price's Dr. Phibes).
But who and what is she, and how did she come to work for Dr. Phibes as his assistant avenging angel? Is she a black magickal homunculus, a robot, a replicant of some sort? Did she answer some personal ad in the newspaper that read: "seeking silent, beautiful, clothes-horse assistant for flamboyant revenge plot, no yammering, no fatties"? We never get to find out why she would even want to help Dr. Phibes in his revenge, and her emergence in the beginning of Dr. Phibes Rises Again makes it even more curious (although it makes her appear to be some evoked magical spirit, since she just appears out of nowhere at the mention of her name). But from the events of the first film, she could be Dr. Phibes's daughter from a previous marriage, or some adopted daughter, I suppose. She speaks not a world, but when splashed with the acid, she screams, so that seems less like a robot or magickal spirit. Oh well, if we knew where she came from or who and what she was, she would lose some of her mystique and allure; and at the moment, she's got that in spades!
