FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (1958)

DIRECTED by Arthur Crabtree.

SCREENPLAY by Herbert J. Leder.

STARRING  - Marshall Thompson as Major Jeff Cummings,  Kynaston Reeves as Prof. R.E. Walgate,  Michael Balfour as Sargeant Kasper,  Kim Parker as Barbara Griselle,  Terry Kilburn as Captain Al Chester.

PLOT  -  In the small Canadian rural town of Winthrop, mysterious deaths are occurring. Corpses are being discovered with thier brains and spinal cords missing, apparently sucked out via two puncture wounds at the back of the victim's neck.

The terrified townspeople believe that the nearby U.S. military base is to blame, as it is nuclear powered and has been carrying out experiments into nuclear radiation. This radiation is believed to be causing the hideous deaths. 

In a bid to diffuse the growing dissent with the locals and also to solve the mystery of the killings, Major Jeff Cummings is put onto the case. What he discovers is stranger and more horrifying than anything from his wildest nightmares.

For Jeff discovers that the radiation has amplified the mental powers of a nearby scientist - Professor Walgate - who was conducting experiments into telekinesis. Now the professor's rogue thought forms have taken on a malevolent physical form and fashioned themselves bodies made from the brains and spinal columns of thier victims. The brain creatures are feeding from the radiation and are on the rampage...growing stronger with each life that they take. Can Jeff and his colleagues stop these horrendous predators before they overload the base's nuclear reactor and cause the deaths of every man, woman and child in the small, peaceful town ?

DIALOUGE  - Jeff - "Its as if some mental vampire were at work."

PERFORMANCES - The performances in this film are varied to say the least and this is mainly down to a bizzare decision on the part of the films producers. 'Fiend Without A Face' is a British production with a predominantly English cast, filmed in an English location, and yet, the film's producers took the decision to set the film's story in rural Canada. This decision has the knock on effect that ninety-nine percent of the actors on screen have to struggle with putting on fake Canadian accents. Having met a few Canadians in the past, I can tell you that one thing that really annoys them is constantly being mistaken for Americans by the rest of the English speaking population of the world. Here, your average Cannuck would be let off lightly being mistook as one thier U.S. cousins, as the accents on display are all over the place. You get characters that sound Irish, Scottish and Northern all rolling thier R's in a vain attempt to sound like Canadians. It's so bad it makes Dick Van Dyke's infamous mangling of a London accent in 'Mary Poppins' look like a native born Cockney in comparison. Clearly, either the films budget didn't extend to hiring an accent coach or the producers just didn't care, but it's off-putting not to mention unintentionally funny as well.

Marshall Thompson - one of the only non-British actors in the film - puts in a workable performance as Jeff Cummings, building up an easy rapport with his female co-star, Kim Parker.

Kynaston Reeves as the Professor gives probably the best performance.As he's playing an expatriate Englishman he's not required to put on a fake accent. His Professor comes across as an eccentric but flawed man, unwillingly putting himself and those around him in danger with his own misguided scientific curiosity. He reminds me slightly of William Hartnell playing the original Doctor Who - he has similar genteel but waspish mannerisms. It's a good performance and it brings a touch of class to the proceedings.

SFX - The Brain creatures are the real stars of this film. The effects are achieved via stop motion animation and whilst stop motion always looks jerky, here that jerkiness only serves to accentuate the sheer unnaturalness of the mutated monstrosities.

The creatures are nicely designed too with thier pulsating stolen brains, tail like spinal columns and standard issue 50's monster antenna. I could even go so far as to say that they are something of a design classic...

Another noteworthy effects element in this movie is the gore. Yes, you heard that right - gore...lots of gore, and in a 1950's sci-fi movie to boot. In fact this film has, arguably, a strong claim to being the first sci-fi/horror film to utilise blood and guts as a means of shocking the audience. Brains get shot, splattered and hit with axes, its like a messy day in an abattoir . To make matters worse (or even better depending on your viewpoint), every time a brain creature bleeds it makes this squelching, oozing sound effect. Its very effective and is a highlight of the film.

SEX & VIOLENCE  - I've already mentioned the violence above, so I'll just leave these pictures here for you to mull over, and remember - this was 1958. Audiences had probably never seen the like before...

It must have - no pun intended - shattered thier minds.

RATING - This film is flawed but fun nonetheless. It also pushes the boundaries of what was respectable at the time and broke new ground in it's depiction of violence and horror.

It's also a quaintly niave film in regards to its total misunderstanding of what radiation is and what it could do. Don't forget, all the mutated brain monsters are being caused by radiation leaking from the air base's nuclear reactor. If this was reality and I was living in that town, vampiric brain mutants would be the least of my worries. I'd be more worried about my hair falling out whilst I vomited out my own intestines as I lay dying from radiation sickness. You could argue that the monsters serve as a metaphore for the dangers of nuclear power but the film's ending totally scuppers this.

For the creatures are defeated by Jeff blowing up the main reactor. The reasoning behind this hare brained resolution being that as the reactor is powering the creatures, therefore no reactor equals no more radiation, no more radiation equals no more brain mutants. Its utterly ludicrous of course. As we know from real life events such as the Chernobyl disaster, if anyone was to blow up a nuclear reactor, the entire countryside for hundreds of miles around would be completely irradiated for decades to come. It's not a deal breaker when it comes to enjoying the film, but it does show how little people knew back then about the very thing they where so terrified of.

This is a fun little film. 4 irradiated pretend Canadians out of 5. It's a gory little time capsule of a film.