Eles Mudaram de Rosto

When searching for ways to describe "They've Changed Faces", I can only come up with opposites and contradictions. It's obscure and little known, but simultaneously it might be the most original and unique film ever to come out of Italy. I wouldn't label it as a horror film, and yet it features some of the most atmospheric and unsettling moments you'll ever witness. The plot and the characters are extremely weird and overall impossible to sympathize with, but the film is fascinating from start to finish and you do develop care for everyone. The whole thing is senseless and basically just a bunch of nonsense, however a lot of thought went into the script and it's full of clever and downright intelligent metaphors. And so on.

Alberto Valli is an inconspicuous employee in a large automobile company. His modest job status is perfectly illustrated by the floor he works on. One morning, he hears from the CEO that none other than the company's founder and Vice President, Giovanni Nosferatu, has summoned Alberto to his mansion in a remote mountain area. With a name like that, Alberto should know better than to accept, but he's honored and undertakes the journey. He meets up with a half-naked hitchhiker and a whole bunch of dead-silent mountain villagers before arriving at the estate. Nosferatu is a strange fella, or what else did you expect, but he does make some very impossible-to-refuse offers to Alberto.

There are many bizarre gimmicks in "They've Changed Faces", and the fact they remain unexplained only makes the film more intriguing. What is a topless hippie girl doing in the middle of nowhere? What is the meaning of Nosferatu's mute henchmen driving around the estate in white Fiat 500s? Why does Alberto leave behind a gorgeous naked girl and sleeps around with a creepy, asexual secretary instead? How brilliant is the idea of playing advertisements when sitting down in a chair or stepping into a shower?

The essence of the film, namely that old-fashioned Gothic vampires have evolved and now form the elite members of the business, media, advertisement, sports,religious, artistic world, is truly unique. Adolfo Celi is fantastic, as usual, but I would have preferred he had more screen time. The musical score by Amadeo Tommasi (also known for his excellent work for "The House with Laughing Windows) is the best thing in an already very good movie. Writer/director Corrado Farina's other cult-horror flick "Baba Yaga" might be more popular and better known, but personally I think this one is a much better film.

Just like Baba Yaga, Corrado Farina's only other film made for cinema, They Have Changed Their Face is a quasi-horror film which is really a commentary on something else altogether, and although unlike that film there's no animation or boxing matches with Jesus, there's enough weirdness to carry the threadbare plot.

Alberto works for an automobile company and is delighted to find that the CEO of the company wants to speak to him. He travels to the top of the building where he discovers that the actual true owner of the company is a Mr Nosferatu (Adolfo Celi), who wishes to have Alberto visit his remote villa in the mountains. Alberto hasn't read Bram Stoker's Dracula and thinks there's nothing creepy about that at all.

Things do start getting creepy when the guy and the petrol station runs off when he asks for directions to the villa, and no one will speak to him in the village except a travelling hippy chick who is swanning around the place looking for a lift to somewhere more interesting. Alberto obliges, probably because he's a nice guy and probably not because this chick is walking around with her boobs hanging out.

She gives him the usual 'living free/non-conformist' jive these hippies like to bore people with, and then starts putting the moves on him, but Alberto is determined to see his boss. Laura (the hippy) elects to wait in the car for him while he makes his way up to one of the stranger villas to appear in Italian cinema. For starters, he's escorted to this house by two silent men driving tiny white cars. He's then ushered into the building by a very pale, tall woman who is Mr Nosferatu's secretary. She informs Alberto that Mr Nosferatu doesn't entertain visitors until the evening but in the meantime Alberto is free to relax and have a drink. Alberto (and the audience) quickly find out that the real purpose of the plot is for director Farina to make some sort of comment on the symbiotic relationship between consumer and the big corporations who offer us every product we desire. This is done subtly when Alberto's arse makes contact with a couch and an advert about the couch starts blaring from speaks on the wall. This also happens when he uses a certain shower gel and of course a 'Mr Nosferatu' brand johnny to shag Nosferatu's secretary.

It becomes clear soon enough that Farina is in piss-take mode as he makes fun of the Dracula story (Nosferatu does have a crypt, for instance, but also likes to shoot targets that yell when he hits one). Alberto is the Jonathan Harker character who tries to escape as things get stranger, but is lured back by the secretary, and of course the promotion of a high-level promotion.

The best bit for me was when Nosferatu has a board meeting to discuss the mass-marketing of LSD and is shown three different adverts. One makes fun off Jean Luc-Godard's socio-political style, and best of all there's a Fellini pastiche where a clown plays a trombone in the middle of a field while his mother and father look on. It's nearly, but not quite, as fun as Baba Yaga, this one.

I don't know if I haven't to even mention the quality of Adolfo Celi's acting. He seems to pull any character without any effort whatsoever, so even a vampiric corporate fat cat comes across naturally and charming.

And that hippy in the car? Farina saves the best joke for last...

A nice surprise. I was expecting something like a typical 70's, European arthouse horror movie. And this was much more than this. Whereas it's indeed creepy and eerie , THEY HAVE CHANGED THEIR FACES works also as an allegory against consumerism and materialism, presenting the Vampires as ruthless capitalists who aim not only to the neck of their victims but mostly to their minds and souls. (There are Jean-Luc Godard, Herbert Marcuse etc mentions!). There are also similarities with Carpenter's THEY LIVE. Regardless of viewer's political stance, this is a meaningful and interesting movie which most of 70's horror fans will enjoy. It's not so much about capitalism, it's more of manipulation and control of the masses by greedy, powerful people, a story much older than capitalism.

In any case, there is a clever script, some intense scenes, above average acting for this genre and a strong ending. Not a great movie, yet it deserves more recognition.

A largely unknown but highly rewarding Euro-Cult gem that transposes the ancient Transylvanian vampire legend into the commercialized industrial age of 1970s Italy; director Farina is perhaps best-known (if at all) for the Carroll Baker-starring adult comic-strip adaptation BABY YAGA (1973) – a film which I was kind of lukewarm on at first glance but would now love to revisit (for the record, I do own the Blue Underground DVD of it). The mostly anonymous cast is headed by distinguished character actor Adolfo Celi (playing the all-powerful tycoon Giovanni Nosferatu) and whose underlings include one Harker, one Van Helsing, etc.!; the hero of the piece is played by Giuliano Disperati (who reminded me of a less handsome version of Hurd Hatfield) and their female counterparts are essayed by Geraldine Hooper (as Celi's androgynous secretary) and red-headed hottie Francesca Modigliani (portraying a bare-breasted hippy who hitches a ride in Disperati's car and stays on). Obviously, Jean-Luc Godard had already paid similar tribute to F.W. Murnau's Silent vampire masterpiece in his own iconic neo-noir/sci-fi opus ALPHAVILLE (1965) by naming the Howard Vernon character as Professor Nosferatu von Braun; the beauty of Farina's – and co-writer/assistant director/editor Giulio Berruti (who would go on to direct the middling nunsploitation/slasher KILLER NUN [1978]) – concept, however, is that (as the film's very title implies) vampires have nowadays changed their faces and instead of sporting bloodied fangs and enveloping cloaks, they don suits, haunt business boardrooms and prey upon millions of gullible TV viewers via puerile (but obviously effective) commercials! The film's initial stages have a deceptively light-hearted air about them: predating the amiable "Fantozzi" comedy series of movies by four years, Disperati cannot believe his luck in being invited to meet the elusive President of the firm he works for (who inhabits the 20th floor on which, apparently, only a handful of people have ever been to); when Disperati is invited to Nosferatu's country house, he is made to listen to commercials whenever he gets to sit on the sofa or take a shower! Even so, the subtle choral music on the soundtrack ominously underscores the sinister air of the rural surroundings – represented by Nosferatu's omnipresent watchdog army of white Fiat 500 which 'accompany' every visitor to the villa. Needless to say, the usual expected elements of vampire movies are also present in the mix here: the crypt housing Nosferatu's decaying coffin; the midnight secret meeting of the Vampire and his acolytes (here made up of, among others, a Renfield-like advertising agent dreading his boss' reaction to his clips and even an ecclesiastical authority who imparts his blessing on the latter's work vis-a-vis censorship issues, etc.). Despite Disperati's apparent shooting of Nosferatu (whose main relaxation activity is taking target practice on moaning puppets!), the eventual climactic defection to the cause – conformism to the consumerist mentality – of both hero and (the sadly largely absent) heroine does not really come as a surprise and concludes the movie on a satisfying ROSEMARY'S BABY-like coda.

This very cool, very weird movie surprised me with its cleverness and depth, and how entertaining and often hilarious it is. That's the nutshell. Now I'm going to get a bit heady.

They Have Changed Their Face is not going for subtlety, and in fact assiduously avoids it. One of its strengths is how intentionally, unabashedly on the nose it is with its core analogy and themes. The script compares vampirism so closely with capitalism and consumerism from the opening minutes that the analogy is almost erased, with the two represented things being almost literally one in the same. The movie's "Dracula" figure is an oligarch, owner of a vast network of companies and puppet master of a global network of politicians, artists, and religious leaders. He is also a fascist, which, especially combined with the hypercapitalism dimension, makes the movie even more anti-conformist.

It's a sad commentary on the current state of humanity how well this movie has aged. It perfectly foreshadowed the rise of 21st century fascism and late-stage capitalism, and even the current social and individual psychosis of "mass narcissism" demonstrated on social media platforms, through so-called reality shows, and in a certain president and among his sycophants (not to mention, you know, the whole fascism thing), etc. Mass narcissism is the actual term used by the oligarch-vampire, whose name is hilariously literal: Mr. Nosferatu. A speech, or maybe more accurately, sales pitch, he gives our Johanthan Harker figure earlier in the movie about the masses, and his plans for them-is practically the dictionary definition of fascism. Those plans include fomenting that mass narcissism by, among other things, manipulating and compelling consumers to buy what he wants them to buy. We even learn in the opening minutes of the movie that Van Helsing has sold out and works for Mr. Nosferatu. That is sooo dark and savvy, and reflects the level of astute satire at work here.

That astuteness and directness is also evident during a business gathering filled with overlapping conversations. Among others, we catch this moment: "Bergman and Godard are slaves! The only free cinema is advertising. Advertising cinema is cinema vérité." So, it turns out that what we're watching, while ostensibly a "horror" movie-it certainly has some elements of horror-is closer to European art cinema, including the particular kind of social and political satire we see in some of the films of that era.

They Have Changed Their Face is also well-paced for the most part, has a good score, and is genuinely entertaining on the fundamental level of story, with a bit of conspiracy plot and a decent amount of suspense.

Two shortcomings I would mention: There are ways in which the story, plot, and directing could have brought in some additional traditional horror and vampire elements, which I think would have been a strength and not a distraction with respect to the art film ethos and themes (e.g., fate vs choice) of the film. In addition, the ending, while adequate, felt like a couple of shots-not even necessarily scenes-were left on the cutting room floor which could have clarified in just a few seconds of screen time some plot points and main themes.

That said, this film fits the definition of a hidden gem. It's pretty well-rated on IMDb and Letterboxd, but is nonetheless underrated. I've never seen it included in any lists of overlooked flicks, top vampire movies, and the like, and as far as I've seen it's never included in discussions of vampire movies. While utterly different from vampire floicks like Dracula's Daughter (1936), The Vampire's Ghost (1945), Curse of the Undead (1959), Blacula (1972), Ganja & Hess (1973), and Let the Right One In (2008), I would include They Have Changed Their Face among those as one of the most unusual vampire movies out there.

As of July 2025, They Have Changed Their Face is available to stream for free on Tubi.

Side note re. The capitalism theme: The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) has the count posing as a property developer in modern London, but the movie does nothing particularly interesting with that odd idea.