Fiend Without a Face (1958)
Directed by Arthur Crabtree

Film Review

Amidst the slew of sci-fi B-movies that bombarded cinemas on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1950s, the minor British offering Fiend Without a Face managed to hold its own, not because of its plot, which is drearily formulaic to a tee, but because it boasts one of the most disgusting monster creations ever to be projected onto a cinema screen, one which guaranteed the film an X-certificate for its original UK release.  Despite its American feel (most of the cast hail from the United States and Canada), the film was in fact entirely made in England, by the newly founded independent company Amalgamated Productions.  The latter had the foresight of releasing it as part of a double bill with another genre film it made at the same time, The Haunted Strangler, starring Boris Karloff.  Together, these two films grossed over six hundred thousand dollars, a more than three-fold return on the modest production cost.

Whilst it deals with what were then endemic concerns about the dangers of atomic power, the film was in fact based on a story written almost three decades earlier - Amelia Reynolds Long's The Thought Monster, which first appeared in print in Weird Tales magazine in 1930.  It was directed by Arthur Crabtree who had absolutely no previous experience with the sci-fi genre and in fact almost walked away from the film when he realised it featured monsters.  Crabtree started out as a cinematographer in the 1930s, working on several Will Hay comedies and period melodramas for Gainsborough Pictures, including Fanny by Gaslight (1944).  It was whilst working for Gainsborough that he made the transition to director with Madonna of the Seven Moons (1945) and Caravan (1946).  Fiend Without a Face was the last but one film that Crabtree made for the cinema, followed by Horrors of the Black Museum (1959).

Arthur Crabtree's antipathy for the sci-fi genre and his reluctance to direct this particular film is apparent throughout virtually the whole of Fiend Without a Face.  Most of the film consists of static, unimaginatively blocked scenes with wooden actors spewing wordy exposition and failing to look like normal human beings as they do so.  In the first half, the pace is unbearably lethargic, the succession of stock sci-fi clichés muddled through as routinely as someone reading out a washing list in their sleep.  Even though people keep mysteriously dying, there is no sense of urgency or menace - it's about as exciting as a soap opera set in a funeral parlour.  But then, just when you've given up on it, the film suddenly comes to life in its final third, as the threat finally becomes real and the unseen monsters acquire a corporeal (and thankfully visible) presence - but even then the actors still seem incapable of showing any genuine emotion and just stand about looking like shop window displays.

Fiend Without a Face would have long passed into obscurity had it not been for its one saving grace - the terrifying final onslaught from the 'brain creatures' (referred to on-screen as 'mental vampires').  Based on human brains still attached to the spinal chord, these hideous monstrosities move with astonishing ease, zipping swiftly across the ground like gigantic headed millipedes before hurling themselves into the air to land on the backs of their victims, where they proceed to suck out their brain matter.  Slurp.  Before we see them in all their vomit-inducing glory, we are alerted to their presence by an ominous heartbeat accompanied by a horrible squelching noise.

Even by today's standards, the brain creatures appear frighteningly realistic, superbly well realised using the technique of stop motion animation, which had been previously used on the sci-fi classics The Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933).  And as if the brain creatures were not in themselves disgusting to look at, we are repeatedly subjected to the sight of them being exploded by bullets, their insides spilling out in one gory, stomach-turning mess that is guaranteed to put you off your next meal.  With so little going for it on the writing, acting and directing fronts, Fiend Without a Face has minimal chance of rating as a sci-fi classic, but it scores sufficiently highly on the yuk-factor scale to justify a mention in any self-respecting catalogue of horror films.

Film Synopsis

A U.S. airbase in Canada is resented by the inhabitants of the nearby town of Winthorp, who insist that noise from jet aircraft is adversely affecting livestock and milk yields.  Senior staff at the airbase are more concerned with recurring power drains to its atomic reactor, which have started disrupting the deployment of a new radar system that can reach as far as Siberia.  And then the killings start.  The victims are found in the vicinity of the airbase, with their brains and spinal chords missing.  It isn't long before the base's atomic reactor is blamed for these strange deaths.  In the course of his investigation, Major Jeff Cummings meets Professor Walgate, who has retired to the area ostensibly to write a book.  In truth, Walgate has been secretly conducting experiments to prove his theory that solid objects can be moved by the power of thought alone.  In the course of his experiments, Walgate has created an invisible monster that feeds on human brains, absorbing power from the air base's atomic reactor to grow and multiply...