Fiend Without a Face starts late one night in Winthrop in Canada near a US air force base as a local man Jauque Griselle is found dead in some woods by a sentry, the man's death remains unexplained & over the next couple of days more of the locals turn up dead. The US base & is nuclear reactor are being blamed by the townspeople & it's up to Major Jeff Cummings (Marshall Thompson) to try & uncover the real reasons behind the mysterious death's, he contacts Barbara Griselle (Kim Parker) & becomes suspicious of her elderly scientist boss Professor Walgate (Kynaston Reeves) who is conducting strange experiments in the field of telekinesis that have created thought creatures that live by absorbing radiation & eating people's brains. Trapped in the professor's house & surrounded by these creatures Major Cummings has to destroy the creatures before they multiply & take over the world...

This British production was directed by Arthur Crabtree & the script was based on the short story 'The Thought Monster' by Amelia Reynolds Long published in 1930 in an edition of Weird Tales, this 70 minutes film is surprisingly good actually & is a nice mix of sci-fi & horror. The script is lean & to the point despite a few goofs, a nuclear power plant reaching meltdown even though the fuel rods have been removed & then it is blown up with no significant damage to the surrounding area (hello, how about nuclear fallout?) & the fact that Major Cummings can't open the crypt door from the inside but Chester can open it easily enough from the outside? Also, if one of the creatures made it's way down the chimney & killed Melville why did none of the survivors in the room try to block the chimney afterwards? Overall though I can forgive some sloppy plotting because Fiend Without a Face has a lot going for it, it's brisk at only 70 minutes, it has it's fair share of creepy moments, the scientific aspect of the plot is fair easy to follow even if it doesn't make perfect sense, that character's are functional, the first fifty odd minutes serves as a nice little horror mystery with the unexplained death's while the last fifteen minutes goes for all out horror as the thought creatures are revealed & attack people stranded in a house in scenes that are reminiscent of The Night of the Living Dead (1968) complete with boarded up windows. I can see why Fiend Without a Face is still well know today, it's a good little film that makes the most of what it has & gives us a different sort of monster.

Although set entirely in Canada this was filmed in London in England, there's some grainy stock footage of real planes & the like but nothing too distracting. Director Crabtree manages to build up a fair bit of tension & suspense, I love the heart thumping on the soundtrack. The end siege is well handled & never lets up, it's worth watching the previous hour or so just for this standout set-piece. The thought monsters look cool, they are just human brains with antenna that crawl on the floor as they push themselves with their spinal cord like tails. The effect is somewhat lost when they start jumping around & flying through the air. During a time when most monster films simply used guy's in rubber suits it's nice to see that stop-motion animation was used here & while not perfect it's pretty good for the era. There's a bit of blood here whenever one of the monsters is shot but nothing graphic is shown happening to any of the people.

Supposedly shot on a budget of a mere £50,000 this opened in the US some six months before the UK, filmed in black and white the production values are alright if not amazing. The acting is OK apart from Constable Gibbons played by Robert MacKenzie who gives a truly terrible performance.

Fiend Without a Face is a nice little sci-fi horror film from the late 50's that is better than it had any right to be & stood the test of time quite well despite some goofs in it's science & plotting. I liked it, I liked the monsters, I liked the atmosphere & I liked it didn't tone down the horror elements especially at the end. Fans of classic sci-fi & horror should definitely give Fiend Without a Face a watch.

... which usually highlights the best films from around the world. So you'd expect and you would find "Seven Samurai", "The Third Man", and "Bicycle Thieves" among those films that are or have been in print by this group. But why this film?

I really don't know. Maybe just because it is a good representative of late 50s sci fi horror. In the 30s and 40s people were afraid of Dracula, Dr. Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man. In the nuclear age people are just not that afraid of a giant bat. And that's where this little film comes in.

It's got lots of angles covered. There is the American military installation in Canada. The military and the nearby farming community do not like or trust one another. There is nuclear power at the installation...to power the radars? I looked this up and this actually was a thing. The natives think that the nuclear power plant is effecting the milk production of their cows. One nearby villager is killed one night when he is nearby the military installation taking notes. Then three more locals are murdered. And in a most unusual way. Their brain and spinal column has been sucked out of their body through a tiny hole in their head. And whatever killed them is invisible. So now the Canadians think there is a crazy American soldier killing people on top of everything else.

So enter Major Cummings (Allan Thompson) to solve the mystery. And this film is so very 50s. Cummings openly takes speed so he can work late hours. His idea of romancing a gal is to walk into her house just because the door is unlocked to find her clad only in a bath towel. In fact, Cummings is so bad at romance a special sax score plays whenever it is supposed to be a romantic moment, because you'd never figure it out without that cue. And we are just waiting to see what this invisible killer looks like because it makes the weirdest "swishing" noises as it approaches.

To obviously be a B film with a low budget, it does what it does well, and manages to include as a clue a word that does not exist - "sibonetics". Did they mean cybernetics? I'd recommend this quirky little film that is home in both the Criterion Collection and MST3K.

This film is an odd addition to the otherwise highbrow Criterion Collection. Normally, you'd expect to see foreign and art films from this company, but occasionally a genre-defying film is released by Criterion. FIEND WITHOUT A FACE is essentially a 1950s monster/sci-fi film--and not the sort that snootier viewers would watch. Now I am NOT saying all viewers of Criterion films are snooty--I've seen at least half their offerings and I have hardly ever been called 'snooty'--at least in the last day or so.

The film is set in rural Canada during the 1950s. Since the arrival of a US air/missile defense base, strange going-ons have occurred. Cows are giving less milk and people are dying in the most inexplicable manner. They are found dead--with their brains and spinal cords sucked through two small holes in the base of the skull!!! How the US Air Force is responsible for THAT is beyond me, but the locals need someone to blame. So, it's up to Major Cummings to get to the bottom of these gruesome murders. The Major is stumped and can't establish any connection between the air base and the killings. Finally, with no other options, he decides that a strange retired professor who dabbles in research on telepathy MIGHT be responsible. And, in a strange twist, the use of the atomic power plant on the base may hold the key. I'd say more but I don't want to spoil the film.

Overall, despite having a cast of entirely unknown actors, the film does have a professional look about it and the actors did fine jobs. The footage of airplanes don't appear to be stock footage and the usual cheap and grainy shots. The sets also look good--as do the uniforms and equipment. So, technically speaking it is way above average for the genre and places it in the top 1/3 of sci-fi/horror films of the age--even once you see the monsters, it is a bit silly looking (to say the least) and you can also occasionally see the wires holding them. However, the sucking sound the creatures made is really pretty cool...and chilling. And watching them get shot or smashed was pretty neat. My biggest concern about the plot is the odd way they recommended killing off the creatures--it did seem a tad reckless to say the least and I hope that isn't how you are really supposed to turn off nuclear power plants!!

Overall, a very watchable film for lovers of the genre, though it's not among the very, very best of the era--and kids today might just laugh at the whole thing (young whippersnappers!).