Fiend Without a Face gets the title of
“Best Killer Brain Movie Ever”not that it has lots of competition but for those of you who don't think your life would be complete without venturing into the realm of killer brain movies, this is a great film to get your feet wet. With its home on the Criterion Collection it has gathered an impressive fanbase for a small British sci-fi
film, produced to compete with the American efforts. While the film is
very much a product of the late 1950s, it’s filled with variations that build up
to something special and also yield some scary ass implications.
We open
with a sequence of a soldier patrolling a military base that specializes in radiation, when suddenly, some invisible force breaks the poor guy's neck . After that, the small town within the base’s
vicinity is in a panic, while the other soldiers are intent on ruling out the base's
radiation as the cause of death. Jeff Cummings, one of the air force Majors
finds these events deeply unsettling. Jeff for the most part comes off like a
real fuckup, he’s dopey and nobody really seems to like him. It’s actually quite
funny that most of his initial attempts to get to the bottom of things result
in him getting yelled at or punched in the face. Jeff’s efforts fail to produce
any results as bodies start to pile up, including locals and town's own Mayor. So there’s a professor whose title isn’t
really expanded upon but he’s a professor of something alright…..and he while
his intentions are good it’s not long before he’s caught snooping around the
grave sites of one of the victims.
But
enough of my sarcastic shit, because the final third of the film is actually a
lot of fun. So the professor turns out to be behind everything. He’s
experimenting with the telekinetic side effects of the radiation. When he recounts the events that led up to all the nonsense it’s actually one
of the bits in the film that’s genuinely cinematic. The professor began his
experiments with telekinesis but things took a malevolent turn when mental
energies combined with the doses of radiation take on a life of their own. The
segment where the professor recounts how these creatures came to life is a
terrific sequence where each of his experiments builds off of the last as
things become gradually and gradually more menacing. The sequence consists
of him just moving a bunch of mechanical shit, but its shot in a way that actually
makes these devices look intimidating as hell. During this process the professors thoughts make the next step and take physical form, growing into the invisible creatures who've been killing everyone.
The film truly takes off when
the beings become increasingly intelligent, banning together and attacking the remaining humans in a sequence that no doubt
inspired the siege in Night of The Living
Dead . The professor concludes that the radiation levels be increased to make
the beings visible and boy are they a bunch of unsavory little bastards. They're basically brains, that have evolved to spout eyeballs and spinal cords (suck out of their victims).Even
if you find the first two-thirds of the movie corny or dated or whatever, every
horror fan should take in the film for its final moments especially those who
miss practical stop motion affects and those interested in seeing some the
earliest gore affects. It's fantastic whenever one of the fiends is shot, plenty of brain
matter sprays out and makes a nasty deflating sound; an element that British apparently censors
took issue with thanks to the amount of gore in the final section.
I
enjoyed this movie but didn’t realize the impression it made upon me until
recently. On The Daily Show last week
John was interviewing Richard Dawkins and asked him if he thinks religious
strife or our own technological advancement will be our own undoing. Dawkins
cited a popular hypothesis that states in either case mankind has a 50/50 chance of
surviving the 21st century. Dawkins continued to talk about the
responsibilities we all have because Science is the most effective method for
good or evil. Throughout the conversation my mind just kept wandering back to
the possibility of 150 million of these little motherfuckers overrunning
everything.
I'll send Richard a copy of the film and see what he thinks.
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