1958: FIEND WITHOUT A FACE

What’s it about?

A U.S. air force outpost in Manitoba conducts experiments with atomic powered long-range radar, but can’t seem to generate enough power to keep their equipment working consistently. Meanwhile, mysterious deaths near the air base cause the locals (already suspicious of the Americans) to question whether they want the GIs there at all. Things only get weirder when autopsies of the victims reveal that their brains and spinal cords have been removed through tiny holes in the back of their necks.

Military investigators -- convinced that the atomic reactor can’t be the cause of the deaths -- begin to zero in on a local scientist who is researching telekinesis and other mental phenomena. After some hemming and hawing, the scientist breaks down and confesses that he siphoned power from the atomic reactor to aid him in experiments that he hoped would create physical manifestations from thought alone. It seems that one of these invisible manifestations is responsible for the spate of deaths, sucking out its victims’ brains and spinal cords in an attempt to reproduce itself. As the monsters grow more and more numerous, they take control of the power plant and jolt themselves with enough juice that they take a fully physical form and finally become visible. Meanwhile, a handful of desperate humans barricade themselves in a farmhouse surrounded by the brain monsters -- and then things get crazy.


Illustration copyright 2009 Dennis J. Reinmueller


Is it any good?

Let me put it this way: I cannot imagine anybody watching the last fifteen minutes of this movie and being disappointed. The first hour is a decent sci-fi procedural that alternates between invisible monster attacks, the official military investigation, and vigilante action by the angry Canadians. It’s pretty standard stuff, with its fair share of both neat moments and silly ones. But nothing in that part of the movie can prepare a person for the exuberant insanity of the last fifteen minutes. It starts with frightened people looking out the windows as disembodied brains and spinal cords menacingly climb the trees outside, and only gets crazier from there.

Why the monsters look like brains and spinal cords is never really satisfactorily explained. That’s what the scientist who was doing the thought-materialization experiment envisioned, and that’s what appeared. But as to why he decided to envision that -- well, who cares? The important thing is that everything about them is totally creepy. They are, after all, essentially motile internal organs with little eyestalks waving around on top. The way they inch along the ground is creepy. The way they sound as they approach is creepy. The way they fly through windows -- well, that’s hilarious actually.




I’m not even really sure what else to say about the movie because after you see the ending the rest of it just doesn’t matter anymore. The fiends are rendered in a combination of stop-motion and rubber prop effects, both of which are done fairly well. Although they are very squicky and creepy, they are not particularly scary and there were definitely moments during the climactic fight at the end where I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. So this is neither the tense claustrophobic horror of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968), nor is it the cruddy campiness of an Ed Wood movie. But it has its own brand of unabashed audaciousness that makes it both utterly indelible and completely unique. And even though this is far from the best movie of the decade, it is still absolutely something that every fan of 1950s sci-fi or horror should see for themselves.




What else happened this year?

-- Vincent Price gave his budding career as a horror icon a big boost by starring in THE FLY, one of my favorite movies of all time.
-- Meanwhile, Steve McQueen was fostering his own career by starring opposite a blob of purple silicon jelly in, well, THE BLOB.
-- ATTACK OF THE 50 FT WOMAN is one of the cheapest and worst sci-fi movies I have ever seen, but somehow it is still considered a camp classic.
-- I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE puts its own spin (and social commentary) on the bodysnatcher premise by swapping a bridegroom for an alien invader on the eve of his wedding.

If you only watch one sci-fi movie from 1958...

It ought to be either THE BLOB or THE FLY.