Sem Face

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.

FACELESS (Jesus Franco - France/Spain 1988).

As usual with a Jess Franco film, the background stories from cast and crew are much more interesting than the film itself, which is pretty crappy. But, relatively speaking, it's one of his better films, with an interesting cast consisting of Helmut Berger, Telly Savalas, Chris Mitchum and legendary French porn queen Brigitte Lahaie. Franco had a relatively large budget to spend for this film, around one and a half million francs ($250,000). It all looks very glossy, very eighties, including the soundtrack with the strangely hypnotic song 'Destination nowhere.'

The film itself is good for quite a few laughs; Chris Mitchum's encounter with the muscled bodyguard "Dudu" or "Doodoo". The inexplicable presence of a drag queen in Helmut Berger's clinic, a joke Franco spontaneously made up on the set, even Helmut Berger looked a little disturbed after entering the room (Franco probably didn't tell him who or what was in the room). An electric doll (the stand-in for a body) that runs wild due to some electric failure, with its teeth clappering up and down like wild. Why fix it? Just keep it in the movie. No one will notice. Sure...

The extras are always the most interesting part of Franco-DVD's. Chris Mitchum is a likable and intelligent guy, who tells some amusing anecdotes about the start of his movie career. He also reveals that - due to some misunderstanding - he was in an outrageously expensive hotel suite in Paris, that cost more than $30,000 in total during the whole shoot, more than one-tenth of the total budget. The interview with Jess Franco is strange and he stays clear of saying anything specific about his work, which is a smart thing. He does manage to discuss the work of Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Frederico Fellini and Helmut Berger, all within five minutes! The teaming of these names in one interview in such a short time must be a first.

A somewhat atypical entry in Franco's oeuvre with a (relatively speaking) coherent plot, less hanky-panky than usual, but some shocks and gore, and plenty of (unintended) laughs.

Camera Obscura --- 5/10

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

The renowned plastic surgeon Dr. Frank Flamand (Helmut Berger) owns the Clinique des Mimosas in Saint Cloud. While shopping in Paris during Christmas with his beloved sister Ingrid Flamand (Christiane Jean) and his lover and the head of the clinic Nathalie (Brigitte Lahaie), Dr. Frank is attacked with acid by a client that had her face partially destroyed by him in a unsuccessful operation. However, he sidesteps to the acid attack and the face of his sister Ingrid is totally deformed. Dr. Frank becomes obsessed to restore Ingrid's face and together with Nathalie and their dumb and retarded servant Gordon (Gérard Zalcberg), they kidnap beautiful women and Dr. Frank kills them expecting to prepare a solution to recover the beauty of his sister. When the addicted model Barbara Hallen (Caroline Munro) is kidnapped by Nathalie, her wealthy father Terry Hallen (Telly Savalas) hires the tough private eyes and his friend Sam Morgan (Chris Mitchum) in the United States of America and sends him to France. Meanwhile Dr. Frank summons the Nazi Dr. Karl Heinz Moser (Anton Diffring) that was well succeeded in sadistic experiments implanting faces in scarred pilots. Sam snoops the clinic and discloses the dark secret of the place.

"Faceless" has the same storyline of 1960 "Eyes without a Face" by Georges Franju but revisited by Jesus Franco, with his usual bizarre situations and characters, with kink sex, rape, lesbianism, beautiful actresses and so on. The wooden face of the unconvincing Chris Mitchum is not well cast and the open conclusion is the weakest part of this film. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Sem Face" ("Faceless")

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.