Fiend Without a Face (1958) Reviews

• Excellent 50s SciFi Yarn - A Must See For Lovers of the Genre

  marydot522005-05-17

  I first saw this movie in the early sixties on a double bill with The Haunted Strangler. Being a young lad, I was not paying attention to the details of the movie, but rather was impressed with the overall "spookyness" (is that a word)? Anyway, I remember the contrail of the B-52(sometimes a B-47 was used, who would notice)flying high overhead during the radar experiment. For some reason, I always thought of this as being some type of alien craft circling high overhead, ready to rain crawling, slimy,invisible brains down onto an unsuspecting Canadian population. I remember that when I got home from the theater, I boarded up my bedroom windows by jamming Lincoln Logs in between the panes. I WAS FREAKED OUT. I mean, after all, how do you defend yourself against invisible creeping cerebral sucking brains? I'll take Godzilla any day (you can see that big boy coming from miles away). Well, I just watched Fiend Without A Face again for the first times in forty years. Although I better understand the plot now, and know that those nasty flying gobs of brain matter did not come from outer space, it still is a great movie. My wife was upset at me after I boarded up our bedroom windows, this time with 2 x 4s. You gotta watch this 50s masterpiece. Respectable acting, thoughtful plot, and hokey special effects that you just gotta love.

• Horror with brains!

  roddmatsui2004-10-31

  This is one of those scary flicks I saw in the early 70's when I was very young (six years old, probably), and probably it was the scariest thing I saw at that time. Certainly, there was no other film like it. I really wonder what sort of attitude the filmmakers had when this was being made. Were they giggling fiendishly, thinking of all the people they would scare with these images? (Scaring people was obviously their plan.) Did they think the movie they were making was "cool"? The action-packed climax is pretty much the last fifteen minutes of the film. The brain creatures attack the people in the house, and pretty soon, bullets are flying, axes are being swung, and brains are being sucked. In my mind, this completely, mind-blowingly over-the-top ending scene seemed to go on forever, like a seriously bad nightmare. It was so repellently real. The creatures have no eyes, and they sort of "sense" your presence electrically to zero in on you, before flying up at you and clamping themselves onto the back of your neck. The depiction of this was pretty effective, and it still surprises me how well thought-out the creature imagery was here. Surprisingly realistic. It still works, quite well! Go see it.

• This is 50's sci-fi at its best

  larryloc2001-08-26

  Fiend has everything that a 50's Sci-Fi movie should have; a really square hero that saves the day, a beautiful female lead that falls for him, atomic power misused, and an invisible monster that sucks the brains out of its victums. It is the stop motion animation at the end when the monster(s) become visible that really makes this film work. Without the animation by Peter Neilson and Ruppell this would be just another 50's atomic caution tale.

• Killer brains on the loose

  chris_gaskin1232005-05-09

  I've seen Fiend Without a Face a couple of times and enjoyed it. Despite it being set in Canada, this is a British made movie. A series of strange deaths where peoples' brains and spinal cords are sucked out of their bodies are the responsibility of strange brain monsters with tentacles and spinal cords attached. These are the result of a mad scientist's experiments that have gone wrong. These monsters are invisible at first but appear as they get stronger by absorbing nuclear energy from a nearly power plant. These monsters are killed at the end when Major Cummings blows the power plant up, causing the brains to disintegrate. Fiend Without a Face is rather gory for its time and the brains look impressive. The cast is lead by 1950's sci-fi regular Marshall Thompson (It!, the Terror From Beyond Space). I haven't heard of any other of the other stars. This is a must for 50's sci-fi fans like myself. Great fun. Rating: 3 and a half stars out of 5.

• brain stem cell research

  march9hare2004-11-08

  A fringe scientist involved with mind over matter experiments unwittingly unleashes a horde of horrible, invisible, brain-sucking whatchamacallits in this 1958 thriller that isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. Although Canadian sci-fi films are usually an oxymoron, this one is at least entertaining, even though it makes use of the standard fifties cause celebre: atomic radiation. As a payoff for the audience, we finally get to see the "fiends" when the power from the conveniently nearby nuclear reactor is cranked up to reveal them as. . .brains. With brain stems. And antennae. And some surprisingly good stop-motion animation. Marshall Thompson, that staple of fifties B movies, does yeoman duty in this film by not only starring in it, but actually taking over the reins of director when the "real" director Arthur Crabtree showed up on Day 1 and refused to direct! It seems that Crabtree angrily told the producers "I don't do monster movies" and walked off the set, whereupon Thompson, to his credit, stepped up to the plate. Crabtree came back, a few days later, and the rest, as they say, is history. All in all, "Fiend without a Face" may not be in the same league as, say, "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms", but it's not really all that bad, either. Make a big bowl of popcorn, or get some decent pizza, and enjoy.