Faceless

Franco’s FACELESS and THE AWFUL DR. ORLOFF are variations of EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1960), but while FACELESS lacks the haunting melancholy of Franju’s classic, it compensates with explicit (if admittedly hokey) gore and the kind of sheer perversity the Spanish director was known for. Although the film isn’t a pure slasher like his BLOODY MOON (1981), it’s close enough to be reviewed here. Franco had a much bigger budget than usual, and FACELESS looks much glossier than most of his films from that period. It also benefits from a dream team in front of the camera, with Berger (who is surprisingly restrained given the material) and Lahaie fantastic as the immoral couple behind the chaos. Caroline Munro—who was somewhat of the Queen of Horror Trash Cinema in the UK and Europe at the time—was knocking forty when she made this and certainly appears more convincing as a mature fashion model than she did as a teenager in the previous year’s British slasher SLAUGHTER HIGH (1987). Anton Diffring—despite being Jewish—once again plays a Nazi with cool, detached composure. Also notable is Gérard Zalcberg as the hulking janitor Gordon, whose lack of eyebrows makes him extra creepy. Howard Vernon, who played Dr. Orloff in four previous Jess Franco films, makes a cameo here, as does Franco’s wife and muse, Lina Romay. 
 
As with BLOODY MOON, Franco had spent the budget on the gore SFX, so he wanted to see every drop of blood and displaced sinew up there on the screen. None of it is particularly convincing (maybe not helped by Franco’s tendency to linger on the mayhem), but gore fans will enjoy scenes where a nosy patient (Stéphane Audran, who appeared in Luis Buñel’s THE DISCREET CHARM OF THE BOURGEOISE (1972)) gets a syringe inserted into an eyeball in gruesome detail, plus a curious nurse having her head drilled with possibly the biggest drill bit ever seen on screen. The film goes full Grand Guignol with the face transplant surgery sequences, which leave the poor victim’s eyeballs swivelling in a sea of gore, quite literally faceless—reaching its zenith with Gordon chainsawing off the head of a still living, skinned victim in unflinching detail.
 
Part of the joy of fans of this kind of Eurotrash from the 1970s and 1980s (myself proudly included) is the collection of little vignettes and eccentric characters that Franco peppers his film with, from the aging German actress who seductively drapes herself across a hospital bed in front of Dr. Flammand and then bursts into song, to the uber-camp fashion photographer Maxence (Marcel Philippot)—in a performance where he faints at the sight of a Ming vase being smashed after a fight between his boyfriend and the private eye, which could be offensive if it weren’t so ludicrous and tongue-in-cheek. Franco adds in some light sleaze (with Flammand watching his sister have sex with a man voyeuristically through a hidden camera) and morally bankrupt characters (the sister has no qualms about other young women dying as long as she can restore her beauty). Although the film never ventures into the more explicitly pornographic terrain that Franco regularly plumbed at this time (as it were). The cherry on the cake is a louche George Michael sound-alike 80s ballad (by Italian crooner Vincenzo Thoma)—that plays every time we see Paris at night (which happens so often that it will be etched into your mind months after watching).
 
Seemingly shot in English, its French title is LES PRÉDATEURS DE LA NUIT (which translates to THE PREDATORS OF THE NIGHT). In its uncut version, it would never have been approved for home video release in the UK, and distributors probably didn’t even try, given that the director’s previous BLOODY MOON ended up on the video nasties list. It was filmed between December 1987 and January 1988 in and around Paris, so it is technically a Christmas movie. Eat, drink, and be FACELESS!