Scalpel

So many times since I bought this Blu-ray, I've picked it up and then put it down again. A low budget film featuring facial surgery, maybe not. And then I watched it! Great film, full of surprises, not least of which is that the early exposition is dealt with so smoothly. From the brutal and explicit beginning, through the background story, the surgery and all, we are skilfully informed as the pictures fade into each other and we have arrived at the beginning of the tale that we expected to be the ending. Set in Georgia we get wonderful pictures of green and gold burial grounds and overgrown ruins. An atmosphere of creepy otherness develops alongside shades of incest. More a dramatic tale with tinges of the Italian gallo than a horror, this is nevertheless horrific and not without surprises. One particular surprise towards the end really caught me off guard and is followed quickly by the chase through the woods of a skimpy bikini clad women that almost as surprising as it is stunning. And then surprising again! It is a tragedy that director John Grissmer only made one other film and that almost a remake of this. Robert Lansing is effective as the leading man but Judith Chapman is an absolute revelation. Her career seems to have been more in TV and it is true that the interiors here sometimes look more like TV but Chapman is marvellous in a difficult role and always convincing. This is an underrated film that seems to offer little but does quite the opposite with great location shooting, some stunning key scenes and some real shocks.

The master of the icy stare that could freeze your blood, dumpy actor Robert Lansing made a lot of movies watchable, including "The 4-D Man" and many others. Such is the case with SCALPEL, a slice of southern sleaze from Georgia. When he's not busy chewing the scenery, casually talking about plastic surgery, or yelling "Go get her, GOD DAMN IT!" to a hired killer, he is just rolling in the part of Dr. Reynolds, your friendly neighborhood psychotic plastic surgeon. The rest of the fortunately small cast seems uninterested in what's going on, mainly there to collect a paycheck to buy some more of those gaudy 1970's outfits, although Arlen Dean Snyder is good in his role as the suspicious Uncle Bradley. Without Lansing, this film would have probably been long forgotten. We still need the DVD though! Get this thing a widescreen transfer!

The topless stripper (Judith Chapman or a body double?) who gets her face bashed in at the start of the movie looks great topless from the shoulders down. Later, Judith Chapman gets chased through the woods in a hip-hugging red bikini. This is one of my favorite bikini scenes!

This movie has a great plot. It's fast paced and fun. And it's full of surprises. There's lots of southern flavor here, even a funeral with a jazz band playing and lots of people actually dancing at it. This movie is a classic. It's best to see only the uncut version.

An old man has died, cutting out his only son from his will, as well as his other relatives, leaving five million to his granddaughter Heather. Uncle Bradley, the only son, is understandably angry. So is Dr. Reynolds, the old man's son-in-law and father to Heather. Dr. Reynolds is a plastic surgeon with definite psychotic tendencies when it comes to his family. He evidently had killed his wife, making it look like an accidental drowning while swimming, and also killed his daughter's boyfriend, making it look like an accidental drowning as a result of drunkenness.

Heather, however, isn't around to claim the inheritance. No one has seen her for a year.

Bradley and Dr. Reynolds almost run over a go-go-dancer with their car. She'd been ejected by a bouncer from a club in only her panties and high heels, and the bouncer had smashed her face into a wall several times for reasons unknown. The two men don't know where she came from, and take her to the hospital. Without telling Bradley, the Doctor rebuilds her face so she looks like his daughter, books a phony airline flight for her, then takes her home and teaches her how to impersonate Heather. They'll split the five million evenly. They begin a sexual relationship as well, making the Doc quite the pervert for being able to do that with his daughter's exact likeness!

Complicating things are the fact that the phony Heather can't play piano like the real one, Bradley grows suspicious, and the real Heather quietly shows up again.

Curiously, the other film directed by John Grissmer, Blood Rage, also deals with identical twins - though the characters are actual identical twins played by one actor, here they're identical by virtue of surgery and played by one actress. The fake twins are more or less act the same in False Face (which I saw on video as Scalpel), while in Blood Rage they're more pronouncedly different.

One of the chief problems with the movie for me was that it felt overlong. It was fairly engrossing, but at the same time nothing terribly special.