It might clock in at less than an hour, but The Face of Darkness took me at least twice that long to finish watching because I had to take frequent breaks from the boredom. The film feels like the product of a pretentious film student: technically inept, turgid, pompous poppycock with atrocious acting.
Lennard Pearce (Grandad from Only Fool and Horses) plays a British politician who proposes a new draconian public order bill that would reintroduce capital punishment for crimes of terrorism. Realising that getting this bill through parliament might prove difficult, he puts into motion a somewhat unusual plan to drum up public support: he resurrects the body of a medieval man excommunicated by the church and gets him to carry out a terrorist attack, killing a schoolgirl by planting a bomb in a school playground.
While this unique plot sounds fairly intriguing, the reality is that The Face of Darkness is 58 minutes of complete and utter unmitigated toss that becomes more and more obtuse and mind-numbingly tedious as it progresses. It should come as no surprise to learn that this was the first and last film to be directed by Ian F. H. Lloyd, who presumably went on to explore pastures new, well away from the creative arts.
1/10. If you really want to watch Grandad Trotter snogging a centuries-old dead man or see what actress Gwyneth Powell did before playing Mrs McClusky in Grange Hill, then this is the film for you, but don't say I didn't warn you.
