Faceless

Lesprédateurs de la nuit (Jesus Franco - 1987)

Thumbs up for this one! This is pure pulp fiction at its most charming.

Restoring a woman’s face to its former beauty demands kidnapping pretty girls and skinning them alive. Franco has been dabbling with that theme before in "The Awful Dr. Orloff”. In Faceless the “gothic” old school approach to horrors is replaced with contemporary French thriller-look. It’s interesting to see a Franco-film with qualified cinematography and production value, but his preference for grittier, documentary-like aesthetics is also evident in some scenes.

The classical “mad” doctor is replaced with a more contemporary amoral doctor. Helmut Berger gives a credible impersonation of a psychopath with aristocratic attitudes. Interesting enough it not the only the doctor that’s a cold fish as there is a generally cynical tone throughout the entire enterprise.

The cast is a treat in itself: Brigitte Lahaie, Caroline Munro, Howard Vernon (a short appearance as a character by the name Dr. Orloff), Helmut Berger, Telly Salavas and the Nazi-actor par excellence Anton Diffring.

Christopher Mitchum is cast in the role as the protagonist. If he has inherited any skills of his father, Robert, it does not show here. On the other hand it’s a role that’s hard to bring to life as it’s an investigator-type of character operating on the outside of the main narrative. His investigation is shown in short segments inserted into the movie at regular intervals and only catches up with the drama at the very end.

Lahaie does not show much skin, but she is exceptionally well placed in the role as a homicidal hospital manager. Munro is sexy, but it’s the extras that have to undress and provide the exploitation value. Anyway, the most prominent exploitation element here is gore. I had to look away a couple of times when facial skin was removed. The few but gruesome gore scenes are another thing that reflects upon Franco’s unwillingness to compile a commercial package aimed at a broader audience. Here he has a budget and a star cast and every possibility to potentially make a break at the box-office, but then he inserts over the top unpleasant scenery that scares off the general audience and gives the film an unprofitable age restriction.

As in most of Franco’s efforts to make straight genre movies there is a wooden and un-organic feel to it. To a large extent this is due do the rather uninspired dubbing of voices, but the main reason is Franco’s lack of “fingerspitsgeful” for what’s appropriate in a conventional sense. His output is always at odds with conventional cinema, but in this film it provides an effect of estrangement that suits the movie very well.

The sordid fictional universe, the cast, the cheesy score and the delightful “it’s only a movie”-feel to it makes this as one of the finest achievements in Franco’s later career.

Viewed on DVD / Shriek Show  / 16:9