Faceless (1988)

Too much of everything

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Faceless (1987) *** (out of 4)After his sister has acid thrown into her face, Dr. Flamand (Helmut Berger) and his assistant (Brigitte Lahaie) start kidnapping women so that their faces can be placed on the sister. They end up kidnapping a model (Caroline Munro) so her father (Telly Savalas) hires a private investigator (Christopher Mitchum) to track her down.FACELESS is a very interesting film for director Jess Franco because throughout the decade he was making ultra low-budget movies and porn films. This here was considered his "comback" as he was given a very high budget, a great cast and familiar material to work with. The EYES WITHOUT A FACE/THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF subject matter is something the director dealt with throughout his career and when you put everything together he turned in a good movie here.I think the best thing the film has going for it is the terrific and familiar faces. Berger and Lahaie are both extremely good here displaying the coldness they have. You've got Mitchum who does a good job paying homage to the type of roles his father would have played. Savalas is fun in his few scenes here. As for Munro, she basically just has to be tied down to a bed and scream but it's still fun to see her. Fans of Franco will also enjoy seeing Howard Vernon playing Dr. Orloff and Lina Romay has a brief cameo as well.The film's higher budget allowed Franco to make a professional looking film and it looks just that. This film certainly proved what Franco could have done if he had the budget. I know some fans don't like this "classy" look but it's still interesting to see what he could do. The film also benefits from having some gory special effects with several scenes of faces being taken off their victims. While the effects aren't always believable they're at least gory enough to keep you entertained. There are some flaws including the non-stop playing of the title song as well as there being a few too many scenes so some editing would have helped.Still, FACELESS is a very interesting film for the Spanish director and it's certainly worth watching.

Dr.Frank Flamand(Helmut Berger)is a famous surgeon whose sister was badly scarred on her face.He wants to do everything to help her restore her beauty.With the help of Nathalie(Brigitte Lahaie)and sexually perverted Gordon Frank drugs and kidnaps young women to find the best candidate for face transplantation.When they kidnap an American fashion model named Barbara(Caroline Munro),her father(short cameo by Telly Savalas)hires a private detective named Sam(Christopher Mitchum)to find her.Jesus Franco's "Faceless" is perhaps among his most famous movies.There is plenty of soft-core sex and nudity plus some shockingly nasty gore.Two face removal scenes are especially memorable as is the syringe-in-the-eye bit.8 surgeries out of 10.Very solid and pretty sleazy splatter flick.

The classic French horror film "Eyes Without a Face" is reworked, Jess Franco style, in this enjoyably lurid exploitation drama. An incredible international cast of stars is gathered for a story in which there are many horrific highlights, including a hypodermic needle jabbed into an eyeball, a decapitation by chainsaw, a person being drilled while hiding inside a locker, and the disturbing sight of a face being surgically removed while the patient is alive and conscious. Franco guides the various trashy goings-on with a steady hand, always keeping things interesting and amusing. An American fashion model, Barbara Hallen (Caroline Munro) is kidnapped and a supposedly tough as nails private eye, Sam Morgan (the miscast Chris Mitchum) is hired by her father (Telly Savalas) to find her. The perpetrators did it in the attempt to find a donor face for Ingrid Flamand (Christiane Jean), the sister of renowned plastic surgeon Frank Flamand (Helmut Berger), Ingrid having been scarred by a vindictive former patient of Frank's, victim of an unsuccessful surgery. The eclectic group of actors also includes the stunning Brigitte Lahaie as Nathalie, Frank's nurse and lover and partner in crime, Anton Diffring as the distinguished Dr. Moser, Stephane Audran as the snoopy Mme. Sherman, Franco regular Howard Vernon as Dr. Orloff (a role he'd played for the director a number of times previous), and Franco's longtime partner Lina Romay as Orloff's wife. In addition to the trashier moments, there are also more humorous ones, as Sam threatens an effeminate photographer. On location shooting in Paris is a real asset. The soundtrack, however, gets a little repetitive with its use of that one pop song. Makeup effects are mostly quite impressive and exploitation fans will be pleased with the level of depravity on display. They'll also get a kick out of the mentally slow, hulking henchman Gordon (Gerard Zalcberg) employed by Frank and Nathalie. A number of the women present are real lookers, and it could only have made this film even better had they shown off more of their bodies. Still, this is fun stuff overall for trash fans, although the ending falls short of real satisfaction what with the way it leaves us hanging. Eight out of 10.

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.