Fiend Without a Face (1958)

An okay-to-good '50s monster romp which suffers from a lack of action in the first hour - but more than makes up for it in a thrilling finale which involves a bunch of people being trapped in a farmhouse while the monsters mass and attack outside. Before this we have to put up with a bunch of unlikeable, clichéd characters shouting and fighting each other. Firstly there are the dumb, heavily-accented "country folk" who blame the murders on the new scientific research station in their midst; then the wooden, stern military officers who romance the ladies and save the day.Marshall Thompson stars in this film, and he puts in the same stoic, expressionless performance as he did in FIRST MAN INTO SPACE, playing exactly the same character too. Nobody else figures much in the story, which is populated with the kind of stock characters you always see in these '50s flicks - the female assistant with the tight sweater, the old fuddy duddy scientist, and the military chief who absolutely will not, no, cannot, listen to reason.Although supposedly set in America, this was filmed in England, and works wonders on a tight budget. To liven up the snail pace of the first hour we have a few creative death sequences which manage to be effective despite having no special effects at all. You see, these monsters are invisible, so the actors and actresses have to pretend to be attacked. What makes these potentially-laughable attacks work are the gloopy, gooey sound effects loudly imposed over the on screen action. Things move on to a shot of an invisible monster moving through bushes, a door and then a house, all achieved with some clever effects a la THE INVISIBLE MAN.Viewers need to take a break from reality while watching this, as the explanation for the creation of the monsters has to be one of the most unbelievable I've ever heard - I won't go into it here because it's too confusing. Thankfully, when the monsters do eventually become visible, they're nicely designed, all brains and tentacle and slithery tails (also doubling as spinal cords, as it happens). The superb ending sees a ton of these "fiends" shot at, and they bleed strawberry jam all over the place and rot away in some surprisingly graphic moments which foreshadow the disgusting disintegrations which marked the destruction of the disturbing demons in THE EVIL DEAD. The stop motion effects used to animate them are brilliant, and a must-see.This exciting finale has obviously been quite influential in the genre - check out the scene where the heroes barricade themselves in a room, hammering planks over the windows while the monsters mill around outside - recreated almost shot-by-shot in Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. I've no doubt that the designers of the facehugger in ALIEN saw these monsters beforehand too. Check out the hilarious bit where the old fuddy duddy runs outside and is immediately devoured by three of the creatures. "He was a brave man" says one bystander - stupid, more like! Usually I would rate this film higher, but it's only average because the first hour (below average) outweighs the final twenty minutes (superb).

Let's see. We have an air base where nuclear power is used to create a radar blanket surround the north pole. They are having trouble getting this to work properly. We have a nuclear power plant functioning in a small town. Suddenly, bodies start showing up with their brains and spinal cords sucked out of their bodies, with expressions of terror. The townspeople blame the soldiers that live among them. Apparently, it makes sense that a GI who has gone berserk would suck the brains out of people. They also blame the Air Force for their cows not giving much milk. Well it turns out that some scientist has been stealing the radiation before it gets to those planes to do some experiments in telekinesis. Like Walter Pidgeon in "Forbidden Planet," his mind has created invisible creatures. Anyway, these invisible things, when fed with enough nuclear energy, become corporeal. They look like mosquito larva with big brains and spinal cords that move like inch worms. Does this sound a bit bizarre. It is fun but don't think too much.

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.

(28%) While it does have something to offer in its final quarter, this is too dry and badly paced to be anything other than a 1950's B-movie sci-fi fan's favourite. The cast are quite capable, but they play every scene so damn seriously that they almost deserve a medal for keeping a straight face during some of the more clunky writing and quite stupid monster attacks. The monsters themselves are for a good portion of the movie totally invisible, but when they actually do show up in visible form the movie finally becomes something to enjoy as essentially human brains with spines attached start attacking the main characters making this almost worth watching. Anyone with any interest in bad old movies (Robot monster, Manos, etc) should give this a look, even if it is actually a lot better made than the lower end and therefore less fun.