DISEMBODIED BRAINS RUN AMOK IN FIEND WITHOUT A FACE
- FIEND WITHOUT A FACE
1958/Director: Arthur Crabtree /Screenplay: Herbert J. Leder / Cast: Marshall Thompson, Kim Parker, Kyanaston Reeves, Stanley Maxted, Terence Kilburn, Gil Winfield
This is a great little disembodied brain movie full of cold war paranoia and strange science gone awry angst. I could not figure out why these supposedly Canadian and American actors all had weird British or Irish sounding accents until I read that it was part of a series of British movies filmed during the late 50's that were supposed to be set in the States. It is on the Criterion Collection which as I understand tries to find and transfer the best quality prints possible. Well, the film looks great and is a barrel of fun. Plenty of unintentional laughs and some really disgusting looking brains that crawl like inch worms using their spinal cords. The story takes place on and around an American military base somewhere in western Canada. The characters are typical 50's sci-fi stereotypes... the dashing and sickingly noble hero and sexy but coquettishly innocent female lead who fall in love with each other after the obligatory cold period, the brilliant and ultimately altruistic scientist whose vision to help mankind turns against him and destroys him, and a whole slew of doofy supporting characters that hardly have a disembodied brain between the lot of them. The misguided doctor creates a machine that projects his thoughts as telekenetic energy and soon he can move small objects around his room. This is to suppose to help the world somehow. His thoughts soon evolve into an invisible and murderous power that is later made visible by increasing the level of radioactivity at the military base. The creatures are stop-action animated brains that spurt gobs of blood when shot or hacked with axes. One scene I really liked was when some Canadian redneck (played by a Brit) comes mumbling into a room where a meeting of the towns folk is going on. His brain has been drained by the one of the beasts and the expression on his blithering face is classic.
Definintly worth a look. Loads of fun and campy dialog that is taken seriously by the cast of bad actors. Check out the weird Jerry Lee Lewis lookin' guy that runs the nuclear power plant. This is a fine example of what I consider to be a thoroughly enjoyable campy, bad movie, worth watching over and over, while Neil Marshall's Doomsday is simply a bad movie and no fun at all. This is in the vain of Invasion of the Saucermen which I just watched and will do a post on as soon as possible. Good clean fun for the whole family. Well, maybe the Addams Family, but still good clean fun.
A little side project I have been working on for a while is my youtube site. I have been converting lots of video to suitable formats and learning how to do a few extra things to make the videos interesting. I will be honest, I am shameless and nab lots of other people’s trailers, but I try to nab only the best quality and then take credit for them. I usually do not nab clips and if I do I acknowledge it in some passing fashion. I am have the software now to get the scenes I want and money with them. I am working on some montage style videos with music I composed and recorded myself. I have made one Tetsuo experiment but will probably redo it before putting here on the Café because it got all grainy looking when it got to youtube. So, if you want o keep up with I am uploading or adding to favorites there please don’t be shy and drop by the Uranium Café Youtube site. So for now enjoy this first sampling form my site from Fined Without a Face. I did not make this clip, but thought it was so groovy I could not help snagging it and editing it a little. The actual credit goes to whoever, and much thanks my friend.
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