Curse of the faceless man

1958

Who’s in this?

Richard Anderson as Dr. Paul Mallon. Anderson was in lots of films and shows in the 60’s and 70’s, but is most known for having played Oscar Goldman in both the Sic Million Dollar man and the Bionic Woman.

Elaine Edwards as Tina. She worked regularly in a lot of tv from the early 50’s through to the mid-60’s. As far as genre films go she was also in the 1959 film the Bat with Vincent Price.

Adele Mara as Maria. She began as a singer and dancer as a teen before eventually moving into appearing in a number of westerns.

Here I’ll knock that belly fat off of you.

What’s this about? So a long time ago Vesuvius erupted and the city of Pompeii was covered by junk or ash or some such crap. Flash forward to the 1950’s and a 2,000 year old body is found. It looks like a dude covered in dried oatmeal. Like anything old they cart this body off to a museum but not before the faceless old lumpy guy kills the truck driver who was hauling him. Then the faceless main character goes all stiff again so no one would be the wiser. The some people stand around yacking and one old timer goes on about some curse or other. Everyone else poo-poos such rot and goes about their business. One woman has dreams and does a painting of the faceless guy and on top of that she has dreams that call her too him or rather to finish painting a picture of him. While painting she see him rather slowly. Soon there’s more faceless man attacks-yay and more narration and bland talking – boo. There’s one guy who tries shooting the lumpy attacker in the crotch area with no effect like he has a groin area of steel. Old no nose carries off the blonde painter on the anniversary of Vesuvius because he believes it’s still the old days and he can save this woman who he believes is his love from back then. No it doesn’t make nay more sense on the screen than it does to write it here. The police and the girl’s associates follow the frumpy fossil to the water. He knocks down some police and obviously there was only money in the budget to put fake blood on one of the two cops, but then the ancient antagonist enters the water and he turns into powder. Unfortunately the water to old mummy powder ratio is too much and his ashy remains are washed away. The woman is saved and all is right again in this wacky world. Roll the credits and stop that doofus narrator from talking.

Uh, I just woke up and my face seems to have fallen off.

The negatives-The narrator doesn’t really add to the film, if anything it’s distracting and dull. Despite being just over an hour long this film is still extremely slow. The action is brief and they stand around way too much. The explanation of the plot early on is fine, but then they just yammer on adding nothing to the story. The ending was just okay and the cheapo effects didn’t help.

The positives-The basic idea had merit. It’s pretty much a mummy movie and borrows some from Universal Mummy plots. Most of the main cast do okay, but they just were not given enough to do. I like the title a lot, it really drew me in when I first heard of this film.

This film could have been good, but the lack of ideas let the film down. It had some moments, but not enough of them and after about 35 minutes I was having trouble caring anymore.