Fiend Without A Face simultaneously evokes the Grand Guignol of Hammer, the campy shocks of Roger Corman, and the visionary grotesqueries of The Brothers Quay. Adapted from an American pulp short story and shot in England, the images in this truly international production hav haunted two generations of film buffs and filmmakers alike.
In rural Canada, an experimental atomic-powered radar project helmed by U.S. Air Force Major Jeff Cummings has irate local farmers taking to the fields in protest. But when townspeople's bodies start turning up minus their brains, it's up to Cummings and local beauty Barbara Griselle to discover whether it's the airbase's atomic reactor or Barbara's boss Professor Walgate's psychic reseach experiments that are behind the grisly deaths. Each step they take brings them closer to battling ghastly "mental vampires" -- slithering, disembodied brains -- in a climactic confrontation that Famous Monsters Of Filmland said "will satisfy even the most jaded of the bloodthirsty."
Utilizing the kind of urgent, efficient filmmaking rarely seen in low-budget science fiction, director Arthur Crabtree assuredly guides Fiend Without A Face towards a final siege that's an unforgettable, inadvertently surreal orgy of grotesque special effects disturbing enough to have been cut from the film's original U.S. release. This new black and white transfer restores Fiend Without A Face to its original gory glory.
Also featured is Orson Welles' Ghost Story (Dir. Hilton Edwards. U.S./U.K. 1951. Color, B&W.), a restored version of the Oscar®-nominated short film "Return to Glennascaul," an evocative tale of a haunted night in the Irish countryside in which Welles starred while in Ireland during a break in the shooting of Othello. This unjustly forgotten, recently restored example of Welles' versatility is introduced by his biographer and friend, director Peter Bogdanovich.
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