Faceless

Prolific director Jess Franco made a lot of crap during his career, but in his filmography there are several hidden gems - and Faceless is definitely one of them! True to Franco's style, the film is trashy and sleazy throughout, but it's the eighties atmosphere that sets this film apart from the majority of Franco's opus, as Faceless takes in trashy eighties pop and themes of vanity, which ensure that the film is always obviously a product of the eighties. The story has been used many times before - mostly in films made in the sixties; films such as Eyes Without a Face, Circus of Horrors and Franco's own The Awful Dr Orloff (which gets a nod in this film), but never before has this sort of been given as much blood, gore and nudity as it gets in Faceless. The film begins with the disappearance of a model named Barbara Hallen. Her father hires a private detective to find her, and while on her trail in Paris; the detective eventually makes his way to a private clinic where strange experiments have been going on. The not so good doctor has a woman whose face he wants to fix - and he's using skin from young women to do it!

The film's biggest plus point has to go to the scenes of gore! Sequences that see things such as a needle in the eye, a drill through the skull, a chainsaw decapitation and numerous surgery sequences are well done, and bound to delight gore fans. The cast is also a standout element of the film, as Franco recasts Howard Vernon in the role of Dr Orloff, and we've also got performances from the likes of Telly Savalas, Anton Diffring and Jean Rollin's beautiful frequent collaborator, Brigitte Lahaie. The story isn't massively strong, but it's not bad either as Franco strings a few different threads together and that, along with the gore and skin going on throughout, tends to ensure that the film is always interesting. The music that Franco has chosen is good in that it suits the style and feel of the film, but Franco uses the central song a bit too often, and it starts to grate after a while. Overall, Faceless might not do much for fans of serious films, or for those that dislike Jess Franco in general; but Faceless is one of the better films that the director has worked on, and comes recommended to the right sort of people.

Jess Franco's "Faceless" is late 80's euro-exploitation with the typical storyline of early 60's euro-exploitation! Namely, a celebrated surgeon who kidnaps and kills beautiful women in order to restore the beauty of his own sister who's face got horribly deformed in a very banal acid-accident. Franco, among other prominent horror directors, already made similar movies in the 60's, like "The Awful Dr. Orloff" which he still refers to whenever he has the opportunity. In fact, "Faceless" is pretty much a remake of that film but, since it's the 80's, our director can now insert a lot more nauseating gore and sexually perverted sub themes. The result is one of the most energetic Franco movies ever, with enough sleaze and sadism to satisfy even the sickest puppies among us! There are extremely graphic facial operations that'll nearly make your stomach turn, random bloody executions and an uncanny sidekick (Gordon) who feasts his lusts on the female corpse-leftovers. In between all the sickness, Franco takes the time to create a stylish and truthful portrait of the Parisian night life and the dialogues are much more adequate that usually in his films. Last but not least, "Faceless" is blessed with one of the greatest ensemble-casts in exploitation cinema ever, with Anton Diffring ("Circus of Horrors"), Brigitte Lahaie ("Island Women", "Fascination"), Helmut Berger ("Salon Kitty", "The Damned") and Caroline Munro ("Maniac", "Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter"). The biggest names regretfully only appear in cameos, like Telly Savalas and Franco-regular Howard Vernon ("The Sadist Baron Von Klaus", "Miss Muerte", "Zombie Lake"...). My advise: see this film!!

The renowned plastic surgeon Dr. Frank Flamand (Helmut Berger) owns the Clinique des Mimosas in Saint Cloud. While shopping in Paris during Christmas with his beloved sister Ingrid Flamand (Christiane Jean) and his lover and the head of the clinic Nathalie (Brigitte Lahaie), Dr. Frank is attacked with acid by a client that had her face partially destroyed by him in a unsuccessful operation. However, he sidesteps to the acid attack and the face of his sister Ingrid is totally deformed. Dr. Frank becomes obsessed to restore Ingrid's face and together with Nathalie and their dumb and retarded servant Gordon (Gérard Zalcberg), they kidnap beautiful women and Dr. Frank kills them expecting to prepare a solution to recover the beauty of his sister. When the addicted model Barbara Hallen (Caroline Munro) is kidnapped by Nathalie, her wealthy father Terry Hallen (Telly Savalas) hires the tough private eyes and his friend Sam Morgan (Chris Mitchum) in the United States of America and sends him to France. Meanwhile Dr. Frank summons the Nazi Dr. Karl Heinz Moser (Anton Diffring) that was well succeeded in sadistic experiments implanting faces in scarred pilots. Sam snoops the clinic and discloses the dark secret of the place.

"Faceless" has the same storyline of 1960 "Eyes without a Face" by Georges Franju but revisited by Jesus Franco, with his usual bizarre situations and characters, with kink sex, rape, lesbianism, beautiful actresses and so on. The wooden face of the unconvincing Chris Mitchum is not well cast and the open conclusion is the weakest part of this film. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Sem Face" ("Faceless")

FACELESS (Jesus Franco - France/Spain 1988).

As usual with a Jess Franco film, the background stories from cast and crew are much more interesting than the film itself, which is pretty crappy. But, relatively speaking, it's one of his better films, with an interesting cast consisting of Helmut Berger, Telly Savalas, Chris Mitchum and legendary French porn queen Brigitte Lahaie. Franco had a relatively large budget to spend for this film, around one and a half million francs ($250,000). It all looks very glossy, very eighties, including the soundtrack with the strangely hypnotic song 'Destination nowhere.'

The film itself is good for quite a few laughs; Chris Mitchum's encounter with the muscled bodyguard "Dudu" or "Doodoo". The inexplicable presence of a drag queen in Helmut Berger's clinic, a joke Franco spontaneously made up on the set, even Helmut Berger looked a little disturbed after entering the room (Franco probably didn't tell him who or what was in the room). An electric doll (the stand-in for a body) that runs wild due to some electric failure, with its teeth clappering up and down like wild. Why fix it? Just keep it in the movie. No one will notice. Sure...

The extras are always the most interesting part of Franco-DVD's. Chris Mitchum is a likable and intelligent guy, who tells some amusing anecdotes about the start of his movie career. He also reveals that - due to some misunderstanding - he was in an outrageously expensive hotel suite in Paris, that cost more than $30,000 in total during the whole shoot, more than one-tenth of the total budget. The interview with Jess Franco is strange and he stays clear of saying anything specific about his work, which is a smart thing. He does manage to discuss the work of Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Frederico Fellini and Helmut Berger, all within five minutes! The teaming of these names in one interview in such a short time must be a first.

A somewhat atypical entry in Franco's oeuvre with a (relatively speaking) coherent plot, less hanky-panky than usual, but some shocks and gore, and plenty of (unintended) laughs.

Camera Obscura --- 5/10

I absolutely LOVE this film. It certainly isn't representative of Franco's work (for example, the camera doesn't focus ONCE on convulsing naked women!) but in my mind that is a totally positive thing when you consider some of the abysmal dirge he cynically churned out previously. The budget is very high and the whole production looks so polished. The locations and lighting are, for once, top notch, and the score is superb, including a great textbook exploitation film theme song.

This is the requisite Euro-tosh sleazy thriller, and there is plenty of juicy sex and violence for those who like that kind of thing. Incest, lesbianism, drug use, gore (superbly realised as well- some of the best "wet" gore effects I've seen in a film of this type!)- it's all here in abundance. This is precisely the sort of film I love because of the tacky, grimy atmosphere. Good story for once as well, and somehow they even managed to get Telly Savalas onto a sound-stage for a day to film some pointless dialogue scenes!

Recommended, most definitely... even if you aren't a fan of Franco.