They Have Changed Their Face

Italian jazz, Italian car factories and an invitation to meet the boss. That juxtaposition of the naked woman in the fur coat and the lifeless village. All surface style in the villa, executive toys clacking away. Great first appearance (complete with choir!) of Celli. The offer is made; there's a room full of ickle babies and a troupe of white fiats. It's a fascinating little flick. The allegory may be a bit heavy handed, but there's a real style here.

When searching for ways to describe "They've Changed Faces", I can only come up with opposites and contradictions. It's obscure and little known, but simultaneously it might be the most original and unique film ever to come out of Italy. I wouldn't label it as a horror film, and yet it features some of the most atmospheric and unsettling moments you'll ever witness. The plot and the characters are extremely weird and overall impossible to sympathize with, but the film is fascinating from start to finish and you do develop care for everyone. The whole thing is senseless and basically just a bunch of nonsense, however a lot of thought went into the script and it's full of clever and downright intelligent metaphors. And so on.

Alberto Valli is an inconspicuous employee in a large automobile company. His modest job status is perfectly illustrated by the floor he works on. One morning, he hears from the CEO that none other than the company's founder and Vice President, Giovanni Nosferatu, has summoned Alberto to his mansion in a remote mountain area. With a name like that, Alberto should know better than to accept, but he's honored and undertakes the journey. He meets up with a half-naked hitchhiker and a whole bunch of dead-silent mountain villagers before arriving at the estate. Nosferatu is a strange fella, or what else did you expect, but he does make some very impossible-to-refuse offers to Alberto.

There are many bizarre gimmicks in "They've Changed Faces", and the fact they remain unexplained only makes the film more intriguing. What is a topless hippie girl doing in the middle of nowhere? What is the meaning of Nosferatu's mute henchmen driving around the estate in white Fiat 500s? Why does Alberto leave behind a gorgeous naked girl and sleeps around with a creepy, asexual secretary instead? How brilliant is the idea of playing advertisements when sitting down in a chair or stepping into a shower?

The essence of the film, namely that old-fashioned Gothic vampires have evolved and now form the elite members of the business, media, advertisement, sports,religious, artistic world, is truly unique. Adolfo Celi is fantastic, as usual, but I would have preferred he had more screen time. The musical score by Amadeo Tommasi (also known for his excellent work for "The House with Laughing Windows) is the best thing in an already very good movie. Writer/director Corrado Farina's other cult-horror flick "Baba Yaga" might be more popular and better known, but personally I think this one is a much better film.

This Italian horror film is one that is most certainly coming at us from a decidedly different angle. Its director Corrado Farina was also responsible for the more well-known Baba Yaga but for my money They Have Changed Their Face is the better film. It's an adaption of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula but with some serious differences. In it the Dracula substitute is a powerful businessman called Giovanni Nosferatu. Like the book, he also lives in a remote mountainous region of Eastern Europe and the storyline also follows a hapless businessman who has been sent to see him. But aside from a similar basic story structure this film takes the material into very unusual places. Atypically for an Italian horror film this is a somewhat satirical movie. It's an allegory on capitalism, where the modern vampires have moved with the times and now prey on the public differently. Instead of sucking their blood, they suck the life from them with soul-destroying commercials and generally prey on the population with ruthless capitalism.

All this is well and good but what takes it up a level is the overall strangeness of the presentation. The vampire's house is a crumbling old building but inside it is very chic and modern. His henchmen drive around in white minis while sporting jump suits and helmets. While inside the house the hero is exposed to commercials; cumulating in an excellent later scene where a selection of newly developed adverts are shown to Mr Nosferatu in his board room. It's all very disconcerting and, to be honest, it's very hard predicting where this one is going to go. This is very inventive genre film-making that's for sure. The soundtrack by Amedeo Tommasi is great as well, with a variety of tones and themes. It helps set the atmosphere, which is one of real mystery. There is also a good cast too. Adolfo Celi is well suited to the role of Giovanni Nosferatu. But perhaps most interesting of all is Geraldine Hooper who was most famous for her turn as a male homosexual in Dario Argento's Deep Red. Frankly, it was only due to this film that I was even aware that she was not a bloke!

This is one of the most original Italian genre pictures from the 70's. It's one that certainly needs to be seen by a far wider audience.

A nice surprise. I was expecting something like a typical 70's, European arthouse horror movie. And this was much more than this. Whereas it's indeed creepy and eerie , THEY HAVE CHANGED THEIR FACES works also as an allegory against consumerism and materialism, presenting the Vampires as ruthless capitalists who aim not only to the neck of their victims but mostly to their minds and souls. (There are Jean-Luc Godard, Herbert Marcuse etc mentions!). There are also similarities with Carpenter's THEY LIVE. Regardless of viewer's political stance, this is a meaningful and interesting movie which most of 70's horror fans will enjoy. It's not so much about capitalism, it's more of manipulation and control of the masses by greedy, powerful people, a story much older than capitalism.

In any case, there is a clever script, some intense scenes, above average acting for this genre and a strong ending. Not a great movie, yet it deserves more recognition.

This very cool, very weird movie surprised me with its cleverness and depth, and how entertaining and often hilarious it is. That's the nutshell. Now I'm going to get a bit heady.

They Have Changed Their Face is not going for subtlety, and in fact assiduously avoids it. One of its strengths is how intentionally, unabashedly on the nose it is with its core analogy and themes. The script compares vampirism so closely with capitalism and consumerism from the opening minutes that the analogy is almost erased, with the two represented things being almost literally one in the same. The movie's "Dracula" figure is an oligarch, owner of a vast network of companies and puppet master of a global network of politicians, artists, and religious leaders. He is also a fascist, which, especially combined with the hypercapitalism dimension, makes the movie even more anti-conformist.

It's a sad commentary on the current state of humanity how well this movie has aged. It perfectly foreshadowed the rise of 21st century fascism and late-stage capitalism, and even the current social and individual psychosis of "mass narcissism" demonstrated on social media platforms, through so-called reality shows, and in a certain president and among his sycophants (not to mention, you know, the whole fascism thing), etc. Mass narcissism is the actual term used by the oligarch-vampire, whose name is hilariously literal: Mr. Nosferatu. A speech, or maybe more accurately, sales pitch, he gives our Johanthan Harker figure earlier in the movie about the masses, and his plans for them-is practically the dictionary definition of fascism. Those plans include fomenting that mass narcissism by, among other things, manipulating and compelling consumers to buy what he wants them to buy. We even learn in the opening minutes of the movie that Van Helsing has sold out and works for Mr. Nosferatu. That is sooo dark and savvy, and reflects the level of astute satire at work here.

That astuteness and directness is also evident during a business gathering filled with overlapping conversations. Among others, we catch this moment: "Bergman and Godard are slaves! The only free cinema is advertising. Advertising cinema is cinema vérité." So, it turns out that what we're watching, while ostensibly a "horror" movie-it certainly has some elements of horror-is closer to European art cinema, including the particular kind of social and political satire we see in some of the films of that era.

They Have Changed Their Face is also well-paced for the most part, has a good score, and is genuinely entertaining on the fundamental level of story, with a bit of conspiracy plot and a decent amount of suspense.

Two shortcomings I would mention: There are ways in which the story, plot, and directing could have brought in some additional traditional horror and vampire elements, which I think would have been a strength and not a distraction with respect to the art film ethos and themes (e.g., fate vs choice) of the film. In addition, the ending, while adequate, felt like a couple of shots-not even necessarily scenes-were left on the cutting room floor which could have clarified in just a few seconds of screen time some plot points and main themes.

That said, this film fits the definition of a hidden gem. It's pretty well-rated on IMDb and Letterboxd, but is nonetheless underrated. I've never seen it included in any lists of overlooked flicks, top vampire movies, and the like, and as far as I've seen it's never included in discussions of vampire movies. While utterly different from vampire floicks like Dracula's Daughter (1936), The Vampire's Ghost (1945), Curse of the Undead (1959), Blacula (1972), Ganja & Hess (1973), and Let the Right One In (2008), I would include They Have Changed Their Face among those as one of the most unusual vampire movies out there.

As of July 2025, They Have Changed Their Face is available to stream for free on Tubi.

Side note re. The capitalism theme: The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) has the count posing as a property developer in modern London, but the movie does nothing particularly interesting with that odd idea.