Faceless (1988)

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

FACELESS (1994)Yet ANOTHER film about a doctor restoring his wife's face via skin grafts and abductions of beautiful girls. This one delivers the goods - that is to say there is lots of nudity, blood, and gore effects for those looking for it. One of director Jess Franco's better and more involving undertakings that I've seen (and I've seen a lot of bad ones). This also benefits from having an "all star cast" as far as these things go, with the likes of Caroline Munro, Anton Diffring, and Telly Savalas. Not great or even good, but decent. ** out of ****

"Faceless" of 1987 is cult director Jess Franco's demented and ultra-gory 80s take on a classic Horror topic. In the heyday of European Gothic Horror some of the greatest genre films dealt with a mad scientist who was murdering young women in order to restore the life or beauty of one particular woman. Some of the most brilliant films with such a theme are Georges Franju's masterpiece "Les Yeux Sans Visage" ("Eyes Without a Face", 1960), Giorgio Ferroni's "Il Mulino Delle Donne Di Pietro" ("Mill of the Stone Women", 1960), or Franco's own "Gritos En La Noche" ("The Awful Dr. Orloff", 1962). With "Faceless", Franco brings this popular Horror-theme back, with less atmosphere, but with tons of more sleaze and demented gore. According to this site, the film is a remake of Franju's film, but it has just as many resemblances to "The Awful Dr. Orloff" (which, then again, was very clearly inspired by "Les Yeux Sans Visage").I have been a Jess Franco fan for many years now, especially of his earlier films, and my expectations for this one were quite high, simply because it has been recommended to me by fellow Franco-fans on several occasions as the best of his newer films. It must be said that Franco's impressive repertoire of 180+ films includes masterpieces and stinkers alike, and while "Faceless" definitely ranges in the better half of his output, I cannot deny that I was a tiny bit disappointed. As explained earlier, I am a big fan of Gothic Horror from the 60s, and Franco's films about the theme, "The Awful Dr. Orloff" and the sequel "Miss Muerte" ("The Diabolical Dr. Z", 1966) are doubtlessly the best ones he ever made. "Faceless" is a welcome return to this great premise, but while I reckon the difference in styles between the early 60s and the late 80s, I would have loved the film to be a little more atmospheric and in the style of these old films, in short: a little more 'Gothic'. That being said, "Faceless" is definitely a film that Franco-fans should not miss out on.Helmut Berger plays the ruthless prominent plastic surgeon Dr. Frank Flanard who, after his sister has been deformed by a disaffected former patient, has no scruples whatsoever in his dedication to restore her beauty... The cast includes several cult-actors including Helmut Berger, Telly Salavas, Franco-regular Howard Vernon (once again as a man called Dr. Orloff), Anton Diffring, who plays a demented Nazi-scientist, Christopher Mitchum (Robert's son), Caroline Munro and Pornstar/Exploitation actress Brigitte Lahaie, who plays the Doctor's mistress and ruthless assistant. The most spectacular aspect about "Faceless" is probably its ultra-demented nature and the truly gruesome gore-effects. Several scenes, such as the 'face-removal' sequence are sometimes hard to digest, even for trained Exploitation/Gore fans. Sadly, the film hasn't got the great style and atmosphere of Franco's early 'Mad Scientist' films, which were moody, creepy and accompanied by gloomy, Franco-typical scores. This film's score is its most annoying aspect, the same (TRULY terrible) 80s song is re-played over and over again. While I don't share the enthusiasm that fellow Franco fans seem to have about "Faceless", I will be the last one to deny that it is more than worth watching. Especially the gore-enthusiasts out there should have a blast. Recommended to Jess Franco fans.

This is one of Jess Franco's most entertaining and best achieved films, a remake or rather rif-off of Franju's Les Yeux sans Visage, featuring a swank French plastic surgeon whose sister is hideously disfigured (in an acid attack intended for him) and who resorts to kidnapping and cutting the faces off of beautiful girls in order to facilitate a phiz transplant. One of the girls he kidnaps is the cocaine-snorting daughter of a rich American businessman, who sends a private eye to find out what's happened to his girl. The story of the face surgeries and the private investigation operate as a two-strand culminating narrative.The film is an absolute scream, full of John Waters-style campy dialogue and confrontations, gratuitously nasty sexual violence, explicit surgery scenes involving the cutting off of faces and as bizarre a cast of international curiosities as you could hope to find. Helmut Berger, a long way from Visconti, is suitably sexy, louche and sleazy as the plastic surgeon whose kinky relationship with his blonde wife proves him a total swinger; Telly Savalas is a picture of cheque-book worry as the businessman in search of his daughter; Christopher Mitchum is a very cut-price version of his dad as the private eye; and Stéphane Audran has a delightful supporting role as a suspicious patient at the clinic, whose keeping an eye on the sinister events lead to her being poked in the peeper with a syringe. Best of all is Anton Diffring as a Nazi death-camp surgeon, shipped in to help with the operation.Diffring's character gives a speech half-way through which almost elevates the film from campy fun into the realms of true provocation. He pours scorn on modern France which sees itself as so humanitarian but which earns millions in dosh from its arms industry. There's a sense in which he is striding from a nightmare past to judge the film's core obsession with our society's beautiful veneer, the violence which creates it and the ugly blood-and-bone truth behind it - the most gobsmacking scenes involve the gorgeous women stripped of their faces, swivelling their eyeballs and chattering their teeth as they lay there, a bloody mess.Faceless gets high marks by having not a single boring moment in it, and by offering an almost Verhoeven-like journey into a pulp world of swank nightclubs, wealthy swinging, violence and gore. This is a portrait of a glossy, faceless modern world of night, where predators roam and prey and there's little hope in sight.

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.