The distributor, thinking us stateside slobbering popcorn-gobblers wouldn't get sufficiently aroused by the subtler, original French title, dubbed it "The Horror Chamber Of Dr. Faustus".....and then badly dubbed it in English......
Who the hell's Dr. Faustus? Cause whoever he is, he doesn't appear in the movie......
There is a doctor, however. An ego-puffed, arrogant prick who caused his daughter's horrible facial disfigurement by driving like an ego-puffed, arrogant prick......
Self-important turd that he is, he tries to heal his kid's ruined face by kidnapping equivalent young girls and literally de-facing them........lifting off and grafting their entire mugs on to his daughter's ravaged head.
Things don't go well for Doc Douchebag, even with the loyal help of his creepy woman assistant, who's in charge to abducting the girls and looks like she's auditioning for a future part as a Bond villainess.
First of all, you can tell the emotionally and physically destroyed daughter is coming unglued in a hurry, nursing bottomless rage and resentment against Daddy. And you just know that garage kennel full of snarling dogs whom Doc Dickweed experiments on will sooner or later figure into the finale.......
In 1962, when we viewed this in a neighborhood theater packed with rowdy teens and pre-teens, all of us, along with the entire world cinema audience, went bonkers watching the film's signature moment.........one of Doc's victims getting her face extracted off her like a rubbery mask.
Ewwwwwwww.........went the whole world simultaneously. And 60 years after the film's release, our reaction hasn't changed.......
What has changed, watching the uncut original French language version, is a deep appreciation for the dark artistry of film's director, Georges Franju.......
Franju suffered the same ridicule and derision for "Eyes Without A Face" that celebrated British director Michael Powell went through for his "Peeping Tom" released the same year.
High-toned, cinema culture-vultures sneered at horror films as a rule.........and any quality director who dared to make them was forced to run through a critical gauntlet.....and risk their careers.
But in America, we rubes dearly loved our scary movies........and we elevated Hitchcock to a Movie God for "Psycho".......
It took the passage of decades for Franju's film to achieve classic status......and everything that made it so........the deliberate, dreamlike atmosphere of the filmmaking, the jaunty but eerie score by Maurice Jarre.......and the film's iconic player Edith Scob as the terribly scarred daughter, practically floating through the film wearing a white plastic mask shaped to the delicate contours of her face........a sight to inspire both pity and fear........
Still requiring a strong stomach, "Eyes Without A Face" will stay with you forever.....to BQ, that makes it a 4 star (****) movie buff must.
Oh, we forgot to mention........that 2nd movie on the double feature bill was "The Manster".......about a guy visiting Japan who grows a second head. We promise to review that one eventually.......but only after three or four whiskey sours.......
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