Faceless

A wealthy father hires a private eye to go to France and track down his missing daughter. Her disappearance can be attributed to a plastic surgeon's secret set-up, in which he and his assistant kidnap young ladies and keep them in the clinic's basement. A year ago his sister was disfigured by acid and now he's doing his best to restore the beautiful face she once bestow with the help of an ex-Nazi surgeon. While, that's going on, the private eye is getting closer to finding the connection between the missing girls and the doctor's hard work.

When I hear the name Jess Franco, I think of sleazy euro-trash by reputation. Although some might classify it as art. Now I finally got around to watching one of his films and "Faceless" wasn't bad at all. Actually I found it quite intriguing, although at times rather bland to begin with, but it gets better in the latter half by rallying up tension and ghastly makeup effects with surprising results and an oddly unexpected conclusion. Mixed into the straightforward material is an inventively malevolent idea (taken from 'The Awful Dr. Orloff') covered with manipulative erotic overtones and cold sadism. It was hard to take it all rather seriously because of the nature of certain reactions, developments and questionably hokey FX. Despite this factor the far-fetch storyline and splatter element was quite fun and extremely out-there in providing some uncomfortable moments (like what was going on in the operation room). The script was okay, but that's where I thought it got bland and was reasonably stiff when it went for that melancholy vibe.

On hand Franco chips in with a very 80's soundtrack that has that silky touch that goes down well with the flick's upbeat tempo and overall style. He definitely has a fine eye for detail. The budget shows up immensely, especially with the make-up, but more so with the calibre of actors involved on the project. Telly Savalas is only in an effectively special guest appearance. It's the classy Helmut Berger and very enticing Brigitte Lahaie that stick in mind. Their chemistry and villainous nature just oozes off the screen. Caroline Munro also provides a valuable addition to the line-up. Anton Diffring, Florence Guerin, Howard Vernon and Christopher Mitchum (who likes his gum) are all reasonable too.

This Euro joint by well renown Franco is well worth a look and a good stepping stone into his long career

Spanish exploitation/sleaze/horror king Jess Franco's "Faceless" (Spanish, French, 1988) is one of his more interesting works and has a remarkably bigger budget, too, when compared to some of his older and duller films, like "El Sádico de Notre-Dame" (1974) with its numerous aka titles to name just one. Faceless has a very typical story that is like in his 1962 classic horror film "Gritos en la noche" aka "The Awful dr. Orloff" and like in that film, Howard Vernon plays "Orloff" in Faceless, too. The plot however is very thin but still the film never feels boring or too long thanks to some interesting elements in the film.

A beautiful French female gets her face ruined by some crazy woman who throws acid on her face. Her determined brother is a doctor and promises to restore her beauty and make her look an attractive girl again. This he will achieve by kidnapping young females to his clinic with the help of his nurses and a Morpho-like monster (referring to the Orloff classic from 1962), and it is not too long before they kidnap a model girl whose father starts to worry about his daughter's disappearance and so he sends a one-faced cop to France to search for her. So there's nothing too special or never-seen in the plot but still Franco manages to maintain our interest with pretty good actors, pacing and (of course) graphic gore all of which are not always present in his other, worse, movies.

This is not a typical Franco flick at all as it hasn't got gratuitous nudity and plenty of it. Of course, since this is directed by him, there are lusty characters who crave for sexual pleasure almost all the time and this animality side of human nature is a real theme in some of his classics, most notably his 1981 women-in-prison film "Sadomania - Hölle der Lust" and the 1977 classic "Liebesbriefe einer portugiesischen Nonne" aka "Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun", both of which depict humans as pretty much animals living only to satisfy their instincts for violence and especially sex, the latter film also having some commentary about church and hypocrisy that can be related to it. But these things are not so "deep" in Faceless anymore and the brief scenes of sexual intercourse and playings feel a little forced and unnecessary but fortunately they are as mentioned very brief.

There's one very interesting character here, and that is the nazi doctor who has done some horrifying experiments on living humans back in the war camps, and he is sent to complete the face transplantation for the girl. There are also some interesting issues about superficiality inside modern society in which external beauty is the most important thing for some/most, and this accompanied with the presence of the most wicked of them all, the nazi doctor, gives the film a fair amount of thoughts about rotten and disturbed society and how far its inhabitants may be ready to go in order to reach the selfish goal and save their own skin (not pun) at the expense of others. As the real life atrocity nazi character is there it all becomes more harrowing and haunting, especially when he indeed looks quite scary physically, too.

The ending leaves some things open but still it is pretty effective and crystallizes the theme of the film described above. It is obvious this film is so easy to sit through as it really has something more than just graphic gore and face mutilation, things that would have been the only things in this film if some less ambitious director had made it. And Franco always (well, almost) seems to be very interested to add something deeper in his (exploitation) films which is nice.

The gore and exploitation elements are pretty strong and present throughout the film. A needle gets plunged into the victim's eye in a zooming Franco close-up, a character gets drilled to the head in a pretty outrageous scene, but the most outrageous scenes involve the facial experiments and how good the special effects are here. It is "a little" more graphic than in John Woo's "Face Off" (1997), and Franco this time really is able to concentrate on the details and close-ups as there are nothing to be shamed of in the effects work this time. The gore and amount of it is pretty extreme so no matter what themes they had in mind, exploitation was still the main thing and those scenes pretty much the reason this film was made for in the first place.

Faceless is easily among the easiest to watch and more noteworthy films of film maker Jess Franco. It has not laughable over-acting, it has some professional actors in it, too (like Telly Savalas in a role of the father of the missing girl), it has some genuinely interesting issues which all are presented in a form of a traditional almost plot-free but well paced gore film. One major negative side for me is the awful 80's disco/pop soundtrack that plays throughout the movie and its various night club scenes and sounds like Wham or George Michael and so it is not a great delight to my ears. The plot is also full of holes and things that don't get explained (like what is in fact the status of a murder clinic of that kind?!) but still it could be much worse and ridiculous and Faceless is a respectable 5/10 achievement by the legendary Spaniard.

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.

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.

"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.