FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (1958)
Tagline: New Horrors! Mad Science Spawns Evil Fiends! ...Taking form before your horrified eyes!
(Sci-Fi, Horror, People Screaming) [PG]
Note – this movie did not have a rating, but I assigned a PG because you know…brains!!
Pull yourself together and help me with this…
In this one, we visit a town where there are some atomic experiments going on, and the government is completely dependent on people being quiet and not asking questions. Of course, they are very adamant about not accepting anything is even wrong or that they are involved. Kind of like how they expect us to act these days especially when it comes to anything medical. It turns out the experiments have generated an invisible monster terrorizing the town and picking people off one by one. The creature or creatures are invisible but they sound like they are chewing some hardcore cereal and beating a drum every time they get close to you, so that’s one warning sign to run. Will the town be able to overcome this multiplying menace before everyone one of them has their freakin brains sucked out?
Oh man, well this one is another sci-fi slow-mover. While we do get some screams early on, the producers picked another invisible creature for most of this, so we don’t really get anything awesome visually till near the end of the film. Cinematically I actually liked the sets and lighting. The score on this one is also pretty solid. When someone’s in an empty room it sounds empty and you can hear the echoes. We don’t have annoying sci-fi movie sounds playing for 74 minutes. The more dramatic parts feel dramatic and the acting enhances that.
The main actress is Kim Parker (best known for FIRE MAIDENS FROM OUTER SPACE) who plays Barbara. Kim had a very short Hollywood career but she’s pretty solid in this. We also get really great performances out of Marshall Thompson as Major Cummings (best known for IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE) and Terry Kilburn as Captain Al Chester.
Based on a pulp fiction magazine story called “The Thought Monster”, I am kind of shocked this movie takes the beating it does from some critics. I thought it was pretty freakin fantastic, but man oh man it’s definitely bizarre. I mean, there is nothing like brain-sucking invisible monsters and fistfights where the actors don’t even hit each other. One thing this script does right though is not going into tons of ultra-silly-sounding scientific nonsense to make it sound like a proper sci-fi flick. We mostly get atomic this and radioactive that…” bam, 50’s sci-fi”. I also like that they refer to the fiend as not only a "fiend" but as a “mental vampire”.
For some more good news here is that we do get actual brain creatures in this movie. It’s not like some other sci-fi flicks where something is invisible and it just never shows up at all. The effects are not great, but for the 1950’s the stop motion is totally fine even when the frame rate is just a bit too fast. I guess this was kind of like every other anti-atomic age movie, but it doesn’t feel preachy or like the filmmakers were trying to get the nation to stop being involved in the government or discourage becoming a mad scientist or any of that.
I gotta give this one a 6 out of 7. If you read my stuff you know I watch a ton of this crap, and this is one of the better ones.
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