JoeKarlosi FACELESS (1994)Yet ANOTHER film about a doctor restoring his wife's face via skin grafts and abductions of beautiful girls. This one delivers the goods - that is to say there is lots of nudity, blood, and gore effects for those looking for it. One of director Jess Franco's better and more involving undertakings that I've seen (and I've seen a lot of bad ones). This also benefits from having an "all star cast" as far as these things go, with the likes of Caroline Munro, Anton Diffring, and Telly Savalas. Not great or even good, but decent. ** out of ****

Claudio Carvalho The renowned plastic surgeon Dr. Frank Flamand (Helmut Berger) owns the Clinique des Mimosas in Saint Cloud. While shopping in Paris during Christmas with his beloved sister Ingrid Flamand (Christiane Jean) and his lover and the head of the clinic Nathalie (Brigitte Lahaie), Dr. Frank is attacked with acid by a client that had her face partially destroyed by him in a unsuccessful operation. However, he sidesteps to the acid attack and the face of his sister Ingrid is totally deformed. Dr. Frank becomes obsessed to restore Ingrid's face and together with Nathalie and their dumb and retarded servant Gordon (Gérard Zalcberg), they kidnap beautiful women and Dr. Frank kills them expecting to prepare a solution to recover the beauty of his sister. When the addicted model Barbara Hallen (Caroline Munro) is kidnapped by Nathalie, her wealthy father Terry Hallen (Telly Savalas) hires the tough private eyes and his friend Sam Morgan (Chris Mitchum) in the United States of America and sends him to France. Meanwhile Dr. Frank summons the Nazi Dr. Karl Heinz Moser (Anton Diffring) that was well succeeded in sadistic experiments implanting faces in scarred pilots. Sam snoops the clinic and discloses the dark secret of the place. "Faceless" has the same storyline of 1960 "Eyes without a Face" by Georges Franju but revisited by Jesus Franco, with his usual bizarre situations and characters, with kink sex, rape, lesbianism, beautiful actresses and so on. The wooden face of the unconvincing Chris Mitchum is not well cast and the open conclusion is the weakest part of this film. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Sem Face" ("Faceless")

Witchfinder General 666 "Faceless" of 1987 is cult director Jess Franco's demented and ultra-gory 80s take on a classic Horror topic. In the heyday of European Gothic Horror some of the greatest genre films dealt with a mad scientist who was murdering young women in order to restore the life or beauty of one particular woman. Some of the most brilliant films with such a theme are Georges Franju's masterpiece "Les Yeux Sans Visage" ("Eyes Without a Face", 1960), Giorgio Ferroni's "Il Mulino Delle Donne Di Pietro" ("Mill of the Stone Women", 1960), or Franco's own "Gritos En La Noche" ("The Awful Dr. Orloff", 1962). With "Faceless", Franco brings this popular Horror-theme back, with less atmosphere, but with tons of more sleaze and demented gore. According to this site, the film is a remake of Franju's film, but it has just as many resemblances to "The Awful Dr. Orloff" (which, then again, was very clearly inspired by "Les Yeux Sans Visage").I have been a Jess Franco fan for many years now, especially of his earlier films, and my expectations for this one were quite high, simply because it has been recommended to me by fellow Franco-fans on several occasions as the best of his newer films. It must be said that Franco's impressive repertoire of 180+ films includes masterpieces and stinkers alike, and while "Faceless" definitely ranges in the better half of his output, I cannot deny that I was a tiny bit disappointed. As explained earlier, I am a big fan of Gothic Horror from the 60s, and Franco's films about the theme, "The Awful Dr. Orloff" and the sequel "Miss Muerte" ("The Diabolical Dr. Z", 1966) are doubtlessly the best ones he ever made. "Faceless" is a welcome return to this great premise, but while I reckon the difference in styles between the early 60s and the late 80s, I would have loved the film to be a little more atmospheric and in the style of these old films, in short: a little more 'Gothic'. That being said, "Faceless" is definitely a film that Franco-fans should not miss out on.Helmut Berger plays the ruthless prominent plastic surgeon Dr. Frank Flanard who, after his sister has been deformed by a disaffected former patient, has no scruples whatsoever in his dedication to restore her beauty... The cast includes several cult-actors including Helmut Berger, Telly Salavas, Franco-regular Howard Vernon (once again as a man called Dr. Orloff), Anton Diffring, who plays a demented Nazi-scientist, Christopher Mitchum (Robert's son), Caroline Munro and Pornstar/Exploitation actress Brigitte Lahaie, who plays the Doctor's mistress and ruthless assistant. The most spectacular aspect about "Faceless" is probably its ultra-demented nature and the truly gruesome gore-effects. Several scenes, such as the 'face-removal' sequence are sometimes hard to digest, even for trained Exploitation/Gore fans. Sadly, the film hasn't got the great style and atmosphere of Franco's early 'Mad Scientist' films, which were moody, creepy and accompanied by gloomy, Franco-typical scores. This film's score is its most annoying aspect, the same (TRULY terrible) 80s song is re-played over and over again. While I don't share the enthusiasm that fellow Franco fans seem to have about "Faceless", I will be the last one to deny that it is more than worth watching. Especially the gore-enthusiasts out there should have a blast. Recommended to Jess Franco fans.

MARIO GAUCI I had watched a good part of this on late-night Italian TV: I caught it from the scene where the Stephane Audran character is dispatched – as it turned out, this occurred around the 36-minute mark so, obviously, I have to consider this as a first viewing! Back then, I didn't like it at all; even if the rating doesn't suggest it, I found it hard to hate a film like this: Franco revisits familiar territory with a bigger budget than usual and a surprisingly starry cast: apart from the afore-mentioned Audran, we also have here Helmut Berger, Brigitte Lahaie (a regular of the contemporaneous horror work of Jean Rollin), Anton Diffring (in his final appearance and whose best-known role also saw him play a demented surgeon – CIRCUS OF HORRORS [1960]), Telly Savalas (who had previously collaborated with another horror/Euro-Cult great – Mario Bava), Chris Mitchum, Caroline Munro (once a Hammer starlet), Gerald Zalcberg (Mr. Hyde from Walerian Borowczyk's DOCTEUR JEKYLL ET LES FEMMES [1981]), as well as two Franco stalwarts in Howard Vernon (his last stint playing "The Awful Dr. Orloff") and Lina Romay! However, much of the director's effort goes for naught alongside the dated 1980s chic look and cheesy disco soundtrack.That said, the contribution of the cast is variable to say the least – as a matter of fact, the film has even been ridiculed by the claim that the best performance comes from ex-porn actress Lahaie! Sure, her participation is just about the most successful element in it – infusing her character with a good balance of cold-bloodedness and sensuality (involved with Berger in the casual seduction of prospective victims) – but the latter isn't bad either (just a bit stiff), Diffring quietly imposing (his statement that he had been a collaborator of Josef Mengele at Auschwitz is hilarious, whereas Dr. Orloff learned his craft under Diffring himself at Dachau!) and the odd-looking Zalcberg undeniably effective as Berger's burly mute henchman (continuing Franco's obsession with such secondary characters). On the other hand, both Mitchum and Munro are out of their depth here, Audran clearly looks embarrassed, while a visibly-tired Savalas is saddled with a thankless role (at times, literally phoning in his performance)! The film is perhaps best appreciated by non-Franco fans, since there's curiously little of his trademark 'style' on this occasion: with FACELESS, the director may have demonstrated that he could work within the mainstream, but he was obviously more comfortable doing his own thing in a semi-improvised manner and with the barest of resources! Besides, an audience of gore-hounds not used to Franco's earlier work wouldn't have scoffed at his outrageous touches of violence here: amputated hands, hypodermic in an eyeball, scissors in the throat, driller to the forehead – not forgetting the grisly face-grafting scenes (the first operation, which goes horribly wrong, generates some real tension with Lahaie and Berger looking on bewildered as Diffring fumes at the impracticality of the material he has to work with)! All in all, however, the film feels too different to the quintessential Franco product – while offering nothing remotely new thematically – to emerge as anything but a curio. As I said, the incongruously glossy look and irritating minor characters (some of Berger's eccentric elderly patients and, especially, a pair of gay stereotypes intended to provide comic relief but which is actually both lame and offensive) ultimately unbalance its points of interest. I had considered purchasing Media Blasters' SE DVD, which includes a couple of Audio Commentaries (one of them by the director himself) – but, frankly, the film isn't deserving of such extensive discussion/reminiscing; besides, the disc reportedly suffers from the company's usual sloppy production (the soundtrack reverting to French for the closing line and the audio of the main feature drowning out the latter section of Chris Mitchum's Commentary track).