Les prédateurs de la nuit

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.

Jess Franco's "Faceless" is late 80's euro-exploitation with the typical storyline of early 60's euro-exploitation! Namely, a celebrated surgeon who kidnaps and kills beautiful women in order to restore the beauty of his own sister who's face got horribly deformed in a very banal acid-accident. Franco, among other prominent horror directors, already made similar movies in the 60's, like "The Awful Dr. Orloff" which he still refers to whenever he has the opportunity. In fact, "Faceless" is pretty much a remake of that film but, since it's the 80's, our director can now insert a lot more nauseating gore and sexually perverted sub themes. The result is one of the most energetic Franco movies ever, with enough sleaze and sadism to satisfy even the sickest puppies among us! There are extremely graphic facial operations that'll nearly make your stomach turn, random bloody executions and an uncanny sidekick (Gordon) who feasts his lusts on the female corpse-leftovers. In between all the sickness, Franco takes the time to create a stylish and truthful portrait of the Parisian night life and the dialogues are much more adequate that usually in his films. Last but not least, "Faceless" is blessed with one of the greatest ensemble-casts in exploitation cinema ever, with Anton Diffring ("Circus of Horrors"), Brigitte Lahaie ("Island Women", "Fascination"), Helmut Berger ("Salon Kitty", "The Damned") and Caroline Munro ("Maniac", "Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter"). The biggest names regretfully only appear in cameos, like Telly Savalas and Franco-regular Howard Vernon ("The Sadist Baron Von Klaus", "Miss Muerte", "Zombie Lake"...). My advise: see this film!!

A plastic surgeon is hanging out in Paris with his sister and girlfriend when they are cornered in a parking garage by an disgruntled former patient who is angry that her face ended up deformed due to his incompetence. She throws acid in his direction, but he ducks and it ends up landing in his sister's face. He makes a vow to restore his sister's former beauty by capturing beautiful women and slicing off their faces to find the right fit for her.

For a Jess Franco film, Faceless feels a bit more mainstream and big budgeted than many of his previous films. There's still some jarring editing, odd camera placements, and scripting issues, but it's one of his more cohesive movies. For those who revel in Franco's typical trashy elements, there's still more than enough of that with elements of lesbianism, rape, maybe incest, and tons of insanely unconvincing gore.

International b-movie and trash film legends like Brigitte Lahaie (in a cold, creepy performance), Helmut Berger, Caroline Munro, and Telly Savalas star with Chris Mitchum as the lead who's on the hunt for Munro's drug addled model thanks to father, Telly Savalas. Savalas is in, maybe, 5 minutes of the movie and does all his acting from behind the same desk, so you can tell they shot all his scenes in one day.

There are many strange Euro horror film touches such as a patient of Berger's putting on 3 lbs of makeup before he enters and singing to him as he checks up on her and a deliriously weird sequence where one of Munro's gay fashion photographers is approached at his home by Mitchum who threatens to shatter an expensive vase unless he gives him tips on where Munro is. Just when you think it can't get any funnier, the gay photographer calls on his bodyguard/maybe lover named - I kid you not - DooDoo - and a buff, muscle bound guy appears out of nowhere and tries to fight Mitchum only to be turned into a sobbing mess when he's kicking in groin. You can't make this stuff up.

Faceless also has the guts to end on a really downbeat note that I was expecting, especially after all the silliness that came before it. It's a light, but entertaining entry in the Euro horror cannon and it's worth a watch.

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.

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.