This is said to be one of the better films directed by the late Jesús, or “Jess,” Franco (1930-2013). He clearly spent a greater-than-average amount of care on the French made FACELESS, as, unusually, Franco only directed one other film in 1988 (in ‘86, by contrast, he turned out twelve). Franco and writer/producer René Chateau also got Telly Savales, Caroline Munro and Claude Chabrol’s ex-wife Stéphane Audran to appear (which by 1980s Euro-movie standards were impressive gets), as well as the French porn star Brigitte Lahaie.
FACELESS (1988) Trailer
FACELESS is a loose remake of Franco’s seminal AWFUL DR. ORLOFF (Griotos en la noche, 1961), which was itself a remake (rip-off, actually) of Georges Franju’s EYES WITHOUT A FACE (Les yeux sans visage, 1959). The poetic charge of Franju’s film wasn’t entirely absent from THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF, which for all its overt trashiness was strikingly lensed, but is nowhere to be found in the artless and perfunctory FACELESS (which includes a cameo by the earlier film’s headliner Howard Vernon, together with the famed Euro scream queen—and Franco’s second wife—Lina Romay).
The eminent plastic surgeon Dr. Flamand (Helmut Berger) witnesses acid thrown in the face of his sister Ingrid (Christiane Jean) by an outraged former patient who was looking to attack him. Flamand becomes determined to replaced Ingrid’s deformed visage with that of a beautiful woman, to which end he has his assistants Nathalie (Lahaie) and Gordon (Gerard Zalcberg, whose character was named after Stuart Gordon) drug models and lock them in padded cells at Flamand’s secluded clinic. Residing there is Ingrid, who’s grown into an erotomaniac, meaning that whenever the dimwitted Gordon screws up (which is often), he’s punished by being sent to Ingrid’s room and “doing whatever she wants.”
Enter Sam Morgan (Chris Mitchum), a private detective hired by Terry Hellen (Telly Savalas), an American billionaire whose daughter Barbara (Munro) is among the kidnappees. Morgan finds his way to Flamand’s clinic, amid a succession of brutal killings meant to silence Flamand’s enemies.
What’s most surprising about FACELESS is its restrained sexual content. Given that it was directed by Franco, and made for the French sexploitation market, I’d have expected a far greater quotient of orgies, nudity and S&M than what the film offers. FACELESS certainly contains all those things, but, unusually for Franco, the story and characters are kept center stage.
What Franco does provide, and in great abundance, is nastiness. The film’s gory rundown includes a close-up eye poke with a syringe, two graphically depicted face-lifts, a decapitation that occurs while the skeletal victim tries to speak, scissors through a man’s neck (an effect Franco himself admitted was “not very effective”) and a drill through a forehead. The problem is that most of those effects were already accomplished in the aforementioned EYES WITHOUT A FACE and the Lucio Fulci films ZOMBIE (1979) and CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980), and were in all cases done much better.
Vital Statistics
FACELESS (Les predateurs de la nuit)
ATC 3000/Les Films del loa Rochelle
Director: Jess Franco
Producer: René Chateau
Screenplay: “Fred Castle” (René Chateau)
Cinematography: Maurice Fellous
Editing: Christine Pansu
Cast: Helmut Berger, Brigitte Lahaie, Chris Mitchum, Telly Savalas, Stéphane, Christiane Jean, Anton Diffring, Caroline Munro, Howard Vernon, Tilda Thamar, Florence Guerin,
Gerard Zalcberg, Henri Poirier, Laurie Sabardin, Amelie Chevalier, Marcel Philippot, Tony Awak