Fiend without a Face - Criterion Collection
by Arthur Crabtree
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Gil Winfield, Marshall Thompson, Michael Balfour, Shane Cordell, Terry KilburnDirector: Arthur Crabtree
DVD: 2 Layers, Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, NTSC, Special Edition, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.66:1
Running Time: 74 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-01-30
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Fiend without a Face - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: Oh yeah!! The birth of explicit gore.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one sweet cult sci-fi/horror masterpiece.
Mixing some excellent gore effects with an intelligent, original script and fine acting?? Man, it doesn't get any better than that! I can suck up this stuff all day.
A town gets thrown into an anxious frenzy after several unexplained deaths. The residents suspect some radioactive contamination from the Air Force base as the cause. It's soon discovered that a mad scientist has been pilfering atomic energy to propel his experiments--specifically designed to materialize mortal thoughts. Of course there were some adverse effects. His efforts unleashed a swarm of insidious and invisible creatures who like to feast on human brains and spinal fluid. Oh yeah, good times.
This movie is only 74 minutes long, and has some awesome stop-motion effects that were way ahead of it's time(released in '58). And of course there is the gore--a great bloody brain-splattering climax that no doubt inspired countless notions of graphic effects in cinema. Plus I think this film led the way for Romero, the finale has some people trapped in a farmhouse fighting for their lives.
I wouldn't label this movie as campy, like I noticed some other reviewers did. There is no attempt at tongue-in-cheek humor, no bad acting, or corny dialogue. It does fall a little short of generating a seriously creepy atmosphere like in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, partly because of it's short length. The excessive gore at the end in unexpected for a B&W film.
Highly recommended for lovers of gore and sci-fi. This price is a little bit steep though.
Summary of Fiend without a Face - Criterion Collection
Fiend Without a Face contains one of the most indelible images to emerge from sci-fi/horror movies of the atomic age: malevolent human brains, creeping like caterpillars on spinal-cord tails, choking the life out of their helpless victims! If that weren't enough to make any genre enthusiast drool with sick delight, the movie's also got an above-average plot (as B-movies go) and made genre history as an international success, independently produced in England, set in Canada, starring an American (Marshall Thompson), with magnificently grotesque special effects created in Germany!The mystery begins near an American Air Force base in Manitoba, where unexplainable deaths are somehow connected to the base's atomic reactor, which is being used to power an experiment in advanced long-distance radar. Thompson (who later starred in the TV series Daktari) plays Major Cummings, who discovers that the lethal monsters--slurping, unseen "mental vampires"--are actually the horrific byproduct of thought-control experiments conducted by hapless, retired professor (echoes of Forbidden Planet's "monster from the Id"). Once visible, the fiendish brains are everywhere, attacking our heroes from every angle (in a scene that may have inspired Night of the Living Dead), and sputtering puddles of blood when riddled by bullets. This climactic scene--a triumph of latex rubber fiends, eerie sound effects, and stop-motion animation--was a gory breakthrough in 1958, and it's still a worthy precursor to every gross-out monster movie that followed in its trendsetting wake. Beware the faceless fiends! --Jeff Shannon
A scientist's thoughts materialize as an army of invisible brain-shaped monsters (complete with spinal-cord tails!) who terrorize an American military base in this nightmarish chiller, directed by Arthur Crabtree (Horrors of the Black Museum). This outstanding sci-fi/horror hybrid is a special effects bonanza, and a high-water mark in British genre filmmaking.
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