Fiend Without a Face (1958)

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

This movie had a lot of potential but the dialogue and long periods of silence we're equally boring and I found myself not paying attention, often singing Eyes Without A Face in my head. Then the old guy starts explaining everything and I snapped and had to fast forward. Other than that it's a typical old b-movie, scientist action heroes and a female lead that had no reason to be there.

It's debatable whether there really are spoilers in my review;I've tried to keep things non-specific.Marshall Thompson, along with Kenneth Tobey and Richard Carson are my favorite 50's sci-fi leads that was one of the big pluses of this movie. On the other hand it seemed rushed and too short. The love interest, which I normally like in Sci-Fi's was a bit distracting. The blossoming relationship developed very unevenly, flip-flopping twice - initially they are immediately attracted to each other then she (wrongly)gets so mad that she doesn't want to see him again, then suddenly for no reason they are in love again. This was just another aspect of the general rushed feeling of the movie and the movie could have been a good 15 minutes longer. There were a number of missed opportunities where there could have been more action scenes - ie.wide spread panic in the town and even some more kinetic rushing around with jeeps going air borne in a rush to save the day! Lots of times people get attacked but just stand around staring when they should have been running or picking up something to kill these extremely vulnerable creatures. There were a number of scenes that could have used more actors such as the power plant(which was shown as being huge) that had only one person working there! The stop motion effects and the female lead's tight fitting, stretched to the limit sweater were the highlights of the movie, the low was the female lead's distracting receding hairline, even her bangs couldn't hide it. The main actors were good but some of the second leads were awfully wooden. My DVD was put out by Criterion and was pretty good quality except for the scenes in the woods; they were quite dark but fixable with the VLC's on the fly video editing features. Not a great B movie but not a bad one either.

Fiend without a Face is a little better than the title would suggest, as long as you have low standards. It's about an invisible menace terrorizing a military base and surrounding town in Canada, and it stars Marshall Thompson, late of First Man into Space.Thompson plays Major Cummings, who's in charge of a nuclear-powered program run at the base, a program intended to enhance surveillance techniques and allow the U.S. to spy on the Soviets at a greater range. The trouble is that even when maximum nuclear power is exerted, the images returned by the spy plane soon fades.At the same time, the locals are a mite anxious about having a nuclear program nearby (some things never change). The constant takeoffs and landings of the various aircraft scares the cows, annoys farmers, and so on. And then a bunch of cows winds up dead, and no one can figure out why. The carnage is only beginning, though – soon prominent citizens and soldiers alike are meeting their demise, with their brains apparently – I am not making this up – sucked out of their skulls through two holes in the back of the head.Oh, and there's a love interest. There has to be. How could our hero save the day if there were no love interest? Here she's played by Kim Parker, for whom movie this was undoubtedly a career highlight.So this is a low-budget, 1950s monster movie. Except you can't see the monsters, hence the "without a face" part. They're like Predator, if Predator was merely a brain and a spinal cord and kind of shuffled on the ground like an inch worm. Still, when these monsters are invisible, they're effectively scary, which is a nice respite from the low-budget effects.

...from the paranoid Fifties, "Fiend Without a Face" never achieved quite the iconic status of films like "Forbidden Planet," from which it cribs unashamedly, or "Invaders From Mars" or "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers," ditto, but its disembodied stop-motion brain monsters left an indelible impression on countless young viewers, myself included. The vantage point of a half century renders its script bemusing at best, right from an opening scene of an Air Force guard sneaking a smoke while on duty to the climactic attack of scads of carnivorous flying brains whose repeatedly flatulent expirations by bullet serve well to illustrate the silliness of the goings-on. The cast is mostly competent, the contrived romance has the good sense to stay out of the way of things, and the production does fairly well with its slim budget. Like others, I am bemused that Criterion picked this one up, but thankful they did a nice job with it. Notable for its themes of military incompetence, fear of atomic energy, and the hubris of scientists. Recommended.