Michael_Elliott 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.

Jacob Please regard this as an objective review because I'm one of those fretful viewers very hard to entertain to say the least however this movie really blew me away because it truly has something I've never seen in any other horror movie. ****PLOT SPOILERS COMING****YOU MAY WANT TO SKIP THIS PART**** A dissatisfied patient decides to take vengeance on her doctor (Helmut Berger) for the failed plastic surgery by splashing acid in his face, but accidentally hits doctor's sister mutilating her for life. After that Dr. Frank Flamand feels obliged to get her a new face by luring beautiful young women (I mean drop dead gorgeous young women) into his clinic and then together with his assistant and mistress Nathalie (Brigitte Lahaie) trying to transplant their faces to fit his sister. And since all the operations fail, we get to see many-many sick disturbing images. They also have there a deranged killer helping them to get rid of the dead bodies later who really likes his job, especially decapitating and dismembering dead bodies. One of those missing girls turns out to be a famous model (Carolyn Munro) whose wealthy businessman father (Telly Savalas) hires a private detective (Christopher Mitchum) to find her. ****PLOT SPOILERS END HERE**** What I mostly enjoyed in this movie was the beautiful and romantic Paris atmosphere that forms a rather existent and compelling mixture together with some of the most disgusting scenes I have ever seen. I have to say that to me even the most shocking scenes from movies like Cannibal holocaust (Ferox), Salo, Hostel etc. weren't as disturbing as the plastic surgery sequences of which this movie is plenty. But with all that extreme constant violence and perversion accompanied with the best love song ever by Vincenzo Thoma 'Destination nowhere' you're strangely enjoying every bit of this movie to the very last frame because it's very entertaining and has a great plot. Franco outdid himself doing this movie really. Although Franco isn't considered to be as successful in this genre as other euro-horror directors, to me with this movie he easily beats them all, because this movie is highly and far more interesting to watch than many other acclaimed masterpieces that are still masterpieces but were a bit boring to me, whereas watching this one you want to know what's going to happen next all the time. All in all Jess Franco created some unforgettable characters and simply marvelous movie and should be proud of it. And I'm really happy for him. Although I'm not a big fan of the horror genre, there are some horror movies I really love and watch them occasionally, but this one is distinguished even among them. Extremely entertaining and beautifully photographed, and as for the contents very well written and memorable. It's a movie you just want to keep going and telling the story, and when it does end, it still leaves you thinking what's going to happen next.

MARIO GAUCI I had watched a good part of this on late-night Italian TV: I caught it from the scene where the Stephane Audran character is dispatched – as it turned out, this occurred around the 36-minute mark so, obviously, I have to consider this as a first viewing! Back then, I didn't like it at all; even if the rating doesn't suggest it, I found it hard to hate a film like this: Franco revisits familiar territory with a bigger budget than usual and a surprisingly starry cast: apart from the afore-mentioned Audran, we also have here Helmut Berger, Brigitte Lahaie (a regular of the contemporaneous horror work of Jean Rollin), Anton Diffring (in his final appearance and whose best-known role also saw him play a demented surgeon – CIRCUS OF HORRORS [1960]), Telly Savalas (who had previously collaborated with another horror/Euro-Cult great – Mario Bava), Chris Mitchum, Caroline Munro (once a Hammer starlet), Gerald Zalcberg (Mr. Hyde from Walerian Borowczyk's DOCTEUR JEKYLL ET LES FEMMES [1981]), as well as two Franco stalwarts in Howard Vernon (his last stint playing "The Awful Dr. Orloff") and Lina Romay! However, much of the director's effort goes for naught alongside the dated 1980s chic look and cheesy disco soundtrack.That said, the contribution of the cast is variable to say the least – as a matter of fact, the film has even been ridiculed by the claim that the best performance comes from ex-porn actress Lahaie! Sure, her participation is just about the most successful element in it – infusing her character with a good balance of cold-bloodedness and sensuality (involved with Berger in the casual seduction of prospective victims) – but the latter isn't bad either (just a bit stiff), Diffring quietly imposing (his statement that he had been a collaborator of Josef Mengele at Auschwitz is hilarious, whereas Dr. Orloff learned his craft under Diffring himself at Dachau!) and the odd-looking Zalcberg undeniably effective as Berger's burly mute henchman (continuing Franco's obsession with such secondary characters). On the other hand, both Mitchum and Munro are out of their depth here, Audran clearly looks embarrassed, while a visibly-tired Savalas is saddled with a thankless role (at times, literally phoning in his performance)! The film is perhaps best appreciated by non-Franco fans, since there's curiously little of his trademark 'style' on this occasion: with FACELESS, the director may have demonstrated that he could work within the mainstream, but he was obviously more comfortable doing his own thing in a semi-improvised manner and with the barest of resources! Besides, an audience of gore-hounds not used to Franco's earlier work wouldn't have scoffed at his outrageous touches of violence here: amputated hands, hypodermic in an eyeball, scissors in the throat, driller to the forehead – not forgetting the grisly face-grafting scenes (the first operation, which goes horribly wrong, generates some real tension with Lahaie and Berger looking on bewildered as Diffring fumes at the impracticality of the material he has to work with)! All in all, however, the film feels too different to the quintessential Franco product – while offering nothing remotely new thematically – to emerge as anything but a curio. As I said, the incongruously glossy look and irritating minor characters (some of Berger's eccentric elderly patients and, especially, a pair of gay stereotypes intended to provide comic relief but which is actually both lame and offensive) ultimately unbalance its points of interest. I had considered purchasing Media Blasters' SE DVD, which includes a couple of Audio Commentaries (one of them by the director himself) – but, frankly, the film isn't deserving of such extensive discussion/reminiscing; besides, the disc reportedly suffers from the company's usual sloppy production (the soundtrack reverting to French for the closing line and the audio of the main feature drowning out the latter section of Chris Mitchum's Commentary track).

capkronos I readily admit that I am not a Jesus Franco fan, especially after sitting through such mind-numbing drivel as OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES, REVENGE IN THE HOUSE OF USHER and MARI-COOKIE AND THE KILLER TARANTULA. However, he did make a handful of OK genre films that, while wildly uneven, at least managed to merge the director's excesses to create an entertaining film. While FACELESS has myriad production woes (loopy plotting, big holes in the story, a very out-of-place/silly pop tune that is repeated about twenty times...), it is surprisingly good in other areas; particularly the excellent casting, the professional photography, the high production values (René Château produced and it was released through his own company), the location work in and around Paris, the fittingly gruesome make-up effects and some effective sick/trashy passages. By dropping the empty pretension that plagues much of his other work, Franco basically gives the intended audience a more straight-forward horror story sparked by exploitation elements hearkening back to Euro-trash cinema of the past, notably to the 1959 classic EYES WITHOUT A FACE and Franco's own AWFUL DR. ORLOFF (1961).Crazed Parisian plastic surgeon Frank Flamand (Helmut Berger, who played the title role in DORIAN GRAY back in 1970) wants to restore the beauty of his distraught, slightly disturbed, facially-scarred sister Ingrid (Christiane Jean), who had acid thrown in her face by one of his disgruntled former patients. His clinic is not only a place to work on wealthy older women (including acclaimed French actress Stephane Audran of all people!), but also (in a hidden wing of the hospital) a place to keep beautiful young ladies prisoner in padded cells. He plans on removing their faces and transplanting them onto Ingrid once he gets the technique down. Aiding him is his icy blonde nurse/lover Nathalie (former Euro porn queen Brigitte Lahaie), a hulking, perverted, semi retarded behemoth with shaved-off eyebrows named Gordon (Gérard Zalcberg) and Dr. Orloff (Howard Vernon, only in one scene), who sends him some help in the form of Nazi war criminal/doctor Dr. Karl Heinz Moser (Anton Diffring), who had previously caught fire experimenting on full face transplants. Meanwhile, New York City detective Sam Morgan (Christopher Mitchum) is on the case after Terry Hallen (Telly Savalas!) hires him to find his missing, troublesome, pampered, drug-addicted model daughter Barbara (Caroline Munro). Guess where she disappeared to?There's plenty of all-around sleaze to keep trash movie fans glued to the screen... Rape, heavily implied incest, voyeurism, necrophilia, threesomes, male gigolos, lesbians, a flamboyant fashion designer, bad disco dancing, decapitation by chainsaw, a needle piercing an eyeball in close-up, two full face scalpings (one of which is extremely messy!), scissors stuck in a neck and much more. Interestingly (and surprisingly) in the uncut version I saw, there is almost no nudity. It was shot in English, with only some of the supporting actors dubbed. The ending was unexpected and right out of Poe. And like I mentioned before, the cast is excellent.It's hard to imagine a classier and more sophisticated couple of sick-o's than Berger and Lahaie. Both look great cruising the club scene for victims, engaging in kinky scenarios and lashing out violently at victims in the calmest, coolest fashion imaginable. I was particularly impressed with Lahaie. Of course she looks gorgeous (and naturally gorgeous, at that), but she also has great presence as a villainess. She is dubbed in this film, but it's easy to see why she has received mainstream work along with the sex films. Diffring (who has the most incredible pair of eyes in show business) adds his usual stamp of class and a much needed injection of credibility to his final role; a virtual replay of his famous CIRCUS OF HORRORS character. Even though he has nothing to do but sit behind a desk, Savalas is the consummate professional and doesn't embarrass himself. Neither does Munro, who spends most of her scenes in a cell trying to fend off Gordon and gets to show more emotion than usual. The only bad performance out of the principles is Mitchum, who is dull and one-note throughout. Florence Guerin (in an in-joke appearance as herself) and Lina Romay as Mrs. Orloff (she has one line of dialogue) are also here, albeit briefly. The DVD has very good interviews with Franco, Munro and Mitchum, audio commentary from Franco and Romay, partial audio commentary from Mitchum and some trailers.