Faceless
European filmmakers tend to do things a little bit differently than we do around here, especially when it comes to horror, injecting their films with enough blood, sex and grime to keep the fans coming back for more. Perhaps the Citizen Kane of the Euro Horror genre is this 1988 release, renowned for its all star cast under the direction of the legendary Jess Franco (a.k.a. Uncle Jess) and for some truly shocking and visceral bits of gore along with loads of psychological insight into the minds of many of the repulsive characters on display here. Austrian star Helmut Berger takes the lead role as a prominent plastic surgeon with his own clinic who also lives the grand life in Paris even as on the side, he coldly kidnaps young girls to create ample amounts of adrenochrome to feed to the wealthy old nobility family members which keeps them morbidly young. Unfortunately, Dr. Berger is not a very good plastic surgeon as one day a scarred up old woman from a botched facial job comes at him with pure sulfuric acid, chucking it into his own face before it is intercepted by his brave and beautiful sister (Christiane Jean) who takes the acid full on in the mush and has her face melt off right there in the parking garage. The crazywoman gets away and now we have a scarred and melted sister to repair, a prospect that terrifies Berger since he not only is now distracted from his adrenochrome empire, but he is limp and impotent to boot. Fear not, for Dr. Berger has his Head Nurse Nathalie at his side. As played by the incredible Brigitte Lahaie (long credited as being the first French female porno superstar), Nathalie has everything in order, helping to set up victims, giving positive reinforcement to her distraught girlfriend (the sister), and projecting a completely amoral outlook on life and humanity despite being so lusciously beautiful to look at, truly one of the great female villains of all time. Eventually, Berger decides he needs to bring in a Nazi doctor to do this job right, and off he heads to the guy who refers Nazis to you when you need one in a pinch, The Awful Dr. Orloff himself, Howard Vernon, reprising a horror villain role which had been its own European franchise at one time with Orloff having been a disciple of the very real Mengele (and is also a black magic practitioner who conducts a ceremony on camera). Orloff goes through his rolodex and comes up with a winner, a frizzled old Nazi Doctor (Anton Diffring) who obsesses over the conditions under which the soon to be dead donors are kept in order to ensure the most seamless removal of some part of them. Hence, the conditions to be met here require more kidnapped girls alongside the usual adrenochrome donors, and Lahaie has the best henchman in the business helping her, a mute, possibly retarded driver / handyman named Gordon (Gerald Zalcberg), who has a penchant for occasionally raping the various kidnapped girls even though he’s not supposed to. That applies to the first girl grabbed, a coked up fashion model (legendary genre beauty Caroline Munro), who is deemed to be perfect for the operation until Gordon rapes her, answering her taunts with shots to her face and damaging the skin beyond immediate repair, rendering Munro to be unworthy for the procedure as she is revalued for the adrenochrome program instead and Gordon is punished for his sins by the deformed sister before going back to work. However, this whole operation has pissed off Munro’s billionaire father in New York (Telly Savalas), so Gordon’s worse nightmare is produced in the form of one Chris Mitchum, Robert’s sniveling son with half of his dad’s screen presence and none of his talent, here playing a private detective sent by Savalas to find his wayward daughter and bring her home. Mitchum goes gay bashing first thing in Paris, knocking around the flamingly queer photographer who was the last one to see Munro alive before having the most awkwardly staged fistfight in history against the photographer’s muscular boyfriend. While Mitchum rolls around in the mud, Lahaie and Gordon are out making moves, grabbing a hooker from a nightclub and feeding her to the Nazi Doctor to remove her face, but a simple mistake with the anesthesia leads to the disgruntled old man callously ripping the poor girl’s face off and exclaiming that the skin is no good, leaving Gordon a deformed plaything to fool around with. Lahaie then spends time with the sad, tormented sister (who admittedly is the only one feeling any remorse over those losing their lives for her cause) who finally blurts out that she just wants a man to love her as if she were a normal girl. Lahaie fetches her a gigolo who instead recoils in horror at the deformed girl with a still beautiful body which leads to his throat being sliced and his balls being removed in mid twitch. On to victim number 3, a famous actress whom Nazi Doctor finds to be more than acceptable, taking her face off clean (and showing it to her still seeing eyes in order to taunt her) before tossing the rest of her into the trash and then enjoying cocktails for a job well done. Obviously, the horror of the movie comes from the tried and true Nazi tradition of showing just how much abject cruelty a human being can bestow onto other human beings with no remorse or loss of sleep over their actions whatsoever. We try and look to Lahaie’s icy blonde for the answers, but her outlook on life is more apathetic than anything, callously wearing stolen jewelry from her victims and then even snatching Munro’s credit card for a shopping spree, charging it up and giving Mitchum’s detective his first clue in years, heading in that direction towards Gordon’s Playhouse Of Sex And Fun, but will he make it on time? Will his boss Savalas buy a new yacht with the payday from this movie?? And strangest of all is an appearance by Stephane Audran (arguably the biggest name actress in French history) sliding in here and giving a nuanced performance as a nosy patient who finds out about the Freemasonry infecting the clinic before a Happy Accident befalls her and life moves on. As crazy as it all sounds (and it is), those in the mood for extreme horror (and gore) will find a lot to savor here as the international flavor of the genre takes on its full effect…
8/10