Monster without a face

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Movie
German title Monster without a face
Original title Fiend Without a Face
Country of production United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 1958
length 74 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Arthur Crabtree
script Amelia Reynolds Long (original)
Herbert J. Leder (adaptation)
music Buxton Orr
camera Lionel Banes
cut RQ McNaughton
occupation

Monster without a face (in the original Fiend Without a Face ) is a British science fiction - horror film of Arthur Crabtree from the year 1958th

action

A particularly powerful, nuclear-powered radar system is being tested at a remote US Air Force base near the Canadian border. However, there are puzzling energy collapses, although more and more is being extracted from the nuclear reactor , which is already working at its limit . Another problem is posed by the residents of a nearby village who, when managing the base, increasingly complain angrily about aircraft noise and fear the dangers of radiation exposure. The situation comes to a head when several people are mysteriously killed. Both the local and the military doctor are puzzled after autopsies: all victims have bite wounds on their necks, and the victims' brains seem to have been sucked out this way.

Liaison officer Major Cummings, who has been assigned to shed light on these incidents and to reassure the population, comes across a strange, reclusive neurology professor named Walgate through Barbara Griselle, sister of one of the victims. As it turns out, Walgate is researching methods to enable telekinesis and initially pretends not to be able to make sense of what has happened on the base and in the village. Only when more and more deaths were occurring and Cummings was putting pressure on Walgate, he reported that he had found a way to divert electricity from the nuclear reactor for his experiments, which opened up unimagined possibilities for him. Through the materializing power of imagination he created invisible beings, which, however, contrary to his assumption, he could not control and which continue to multiply. Their food is electrical voltage and human brain, although they themselves have the shape of human brains.

In the meantime, the beings have brought the base under their control and continue to power up the reactor, so that a core meltdown threatens. Cummings and Barbara barricade themselves with a few others in Walgate's house and use clubs and firearms to fight off the savage attacks of the brain eater. Cummings knows that you have to turn the juice off of the beings, so he, encouraged by a passionate kiss from Barbara, hits the base and blows up the transformers with explosives. The battle is won and Cummings can eventually prevent the meltdown as well.

Origin and reception

Director Crabtree, who had achieved fame and fortune in the 1940s with melodramas and elaborate costume films, shot a few horror B-movies at the end of his career without the support of large studios . The cheaply produced independent film became a lucrative sensation both in Great Britain and in the USA because of the shock effects that were unusually drastic for the time and clever advertising. The film was released in Germany on May 20, 1959, and in France one year later.

Fiend Without a Face is now considered to be one of the most worth seeing “brain movie” copies of the science fiction / horror films that were very popular in the 1950s. On the Rotten Tomatoes film rating portal , around two thirds of the film reviews are positive. By contrast, the film was largely panned by contemporary, especially British, critics. The lexicon of international films also says ungraciously: "A staging and mentally top-class horror shocker who thoughtlessly exploits real (nuclear) fears and drapes them with surprisingly clear disgusting effects for the time it was made."

background

Stop-motion technology was used to animation the brain-eating monsters . Large parts of the corresponding scenes were staged in Munich by the German stop-motion artists Florence von Nordhoff and Karl-Ludwig Ruppel. The post-production was done by the Briton Peter Nielsen.

Protagonist Marshall Thompson became internationally known for his leading role in the series Daktari .

World premieres

  • USA: July 3, 1958
  • Great Britain: December 1958
  • Germany: May 20, 1959
  • Austria: November 1959

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James Rolfe: Monster Madness Camp Cult series
  2. ^ Bill Warren: Keep Watching the Skies: American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties , Volume II (1958–1962), McFarland & Company 1986
  3. ↑ Fiend without a face on allemovie.com
  4. ↑ Fiend Without a Face on rottentomatoes.com
  5. ↑ Monsters without a face on Zweiausendeins.de Filmlexikon
  6. ↑ World premieres according to IMDb