Fiend Without a Face starts late one night in Winthrop in Canada near a US air force base as a local man Jauque Griselle is found dead in some woods by a sentry, the man's death remains unexplained & over the next couple of days more of the locals turn up dead. The US base & is nuclear reactor are being blamed by the townspeople & it's up to Major Jeff Cummings (Marshall Thompson) to try & uncover the real reasons behind the mysterious death's, he contacts Barbara Griselle (Kim Parker) & becomes suspicious of her elderly scientist boss Professor Walgate (Kynaston Reeves) who is conducting strange experiments in the field of telekinesis that have created thought creatures that live by absorbing radiation & eating people's brains. Trapped in the professor's house & surrounded by these creatures Major Cummings has to destroy the creatures before they multiply & take over the world...
This British production was directed by Arthur Crabtree & the script was based on the short story 'The Thought Monster' by Amelia Reynolds Long published in 1930 in an edition of Weird Tales, this 70 minutes film is surprisingly good actually & is a nice mix of sci-fi & horror. The script is lean & to the point despite a few goofs, a nuclear power plant reaching meltdown even though the fuel rods have been removed & then it is blown up with no significant damage to the surrounding area (hello, how about nuclear fallout?) & the fact that Major Cummings can't open the crypt door from the inside but Chester can open it easily enough from the outside? Also, if one of the creatures made it's way down the chimney & killed Melville why did none of the survivors in the room try to block the chimney afterwards? Overall though I can forgive some sloppy plotting because Fiend Without a Face has a lot going for it, it's brisk at only 70 minutes, it has it's fair share of creepy moments, the scientific aspect of the plot is fair easy to follow even if it doesn't make perfect sense, that character's are functional, the first fifty odd minutes serves as a nice little horror mystery with the unexplained death's while the last fifteen minutes goes for all out horror as the thought creatures are revealed & attack people stranded in a house in scenes that are reminiscent of The Night of the Living Dead (1968) complete with boarded up windows. I can see why Fiend Without a Face is still well know today, it's a good little film that makes the most of what it has & gives us a different sort of monster.
Although set entirely in Canada this was filmed in London in England, there's some grainy stock footage of real planes & the like but nothing too distracting. Director Crabtree manages to build up a fair bit of tension & suspense, I love the heart thumping on the soundtrack. The end siege is well handled & never lets up, it's worth watching the previous hour or so just for this standout set-piece. The thought monsters look cool, they are just human brains with antenna that crawl on the floor as they push themselves with their spinal cord like tails. The effect is somewhat lost when they start jumping around & flying through the air. During a time when most monster films simply used guy's in rubber suits it's nice to see that stop-motion animation was used here & while not perfect it's pretty good for the era. There's a bit of blood here whenever one of the monsters is shot but nothing graphic is shown happening to any of the people.
Supposedly shot on a budget of a mere £50,000 this opened in the US some six months before the UK, filmed in black and white the production values are alright if not amazing. The acting is OK apart from Constable Gibbons played by Robert MacKenzie who gives a truly terrible performance.
Fiend Without a Face is a nice little sci-fi horror film from the late 50's that is better than it had any right to be & stood the test of time quite well despite some goofs in it's science & plotting. I liked it, I liked the monsters, I liked the atmosphere & I liked it didn't tone down the horror elements especially at the end. Fans of classic sci-fi & horror should definitely give Fiend Without a Face a watch.
This British production was directed by Arthur Crabtree & the script was based on the short story 'The Thought Monster' by Amelia Reynolds Long published in 1930 in an edition of Weird Tales, this 70 minutes film is surprisingly good actually & is a nice mix of sci-fi & horror. The script is lean & to the point despite a few goofs, a nuclear power plant reaching meltdown even though the fuel rods have been removed & then it is blown up with no significant damage to the surrounding area (hello, how about nuclear fallout?) & the fact that Major Cummings can't open the crypt door from the inside but Chester can open it easily enough from the outside? Also, if one of the creatures made it's way down the chimney & killed Melville why did none of the survivors in the room try to block the chimney afterwards? Overall though I can forgive some sloppy plotting because Fiend Without a Face has a lot going for it, it's brisk at only 70 minutes, it has it's fair share of creepy moments, the scientific aspect of the plot is fair easy to follow even if it doesn't make perfect sense, that character's are functional, the first fifty odd minutes serves as a nice little horror mystery with the unexplained death's while the last fifteen minutes goes for all out horror as the thought creatures are revealed & attack people stranded in a house in scenes that are reminiscent of The Night of the Living Dead (1968) complete with boarded up windows. I can see why Fiend Without a Face is still well know today, it's a good little film that makes the most of what it has & gives us a different sort of monster.
Although set entirely in Canada this was filmed in London in England, there's some grainy stock footage of real planes & the like but nothing too distracting. Director Crabtree manages to build up a fair bit of tension & suspense, I love the heart thumping on the soundtrack. The end siege is well handled & never lets up, it's worth watching the previous hour or so just for this standout set-piece. The thought monsters look cool, they are just human brains with antenna that crawl on the floor as they push themselves with their spinal cord like tails. The effect is somewhat lost when they start jumping around & flying through the air. During a time when most monster films simply used guy's in rubber suits it's nice to see that stop-motion animation was used here & while not perfect it's pretty good for the era. There's a bit of blood here whenever one of the monsters is shot but nothing graphic is shown happening to any of the people.
Supposedly shot on a budget of a mere £50,000 this opened in the US some six months before the UK, filmed in black and white the production values are alright if not amazing. The acting is OK apart from Constable Gibbons played by Robert MacKenzie who gives a truly terrible performance.
Fiend Without a Face is a nice little sci-fi horror film from the late 50's that is better than it had any right to be & stood the test of time quite well despite some goofs in it's science & plotting. I liked it, I liked the monsters, I liked the atmosphere & I liked it didn't tone down the horror elements especially at the end. Fans of classic sci-fi & horror should definitely give Fiend Without a Face a watch.