Fiend Without a Face

Plot synopsis:
All is quiet as night falls at Air Force experimental station 6. A sentry (Sheldon Allan) stops to light a cigarette on his rounds when he hears strange noises coming from the woods. Hearing a scream coming from the woods the sentry runs to investigate. He finds the body of a man his face hideously distortedSometime later base security officer Al Chester (Terry Kilburn) and his Commander Major Jeff Cummings (Marshall Thompson) discuss the death. The FBIs report on the dead man indicates no criminal record of suspect connections. Chester suggests handing over the incident to the local authorities for investigations.They then check in with Dr Warren (Gil Winfield) who intended to do an autopsy on the man. Dr Warren reports Mayor Hawkins (James Dyrenforth) and Dr Bradley (Peter Madden) from the local county coroners department claimed the body before he could examine it.Col Butler (Stanley Maxted) calls Cummings to a meeting with Mayor Hawkins and the dead mans Sister Barbara Griselle (Kim Parker) Griselle and Hawkins point blank refuse to allow the military to conduct the autopsy. Butler then shows Barbara her brothers diary found where he was killed. Butler demands to know why her brother was keeping meticulous records of flight operations around the base. Griselle is furious at the invasion of privacy and Butlers very selective reading of the diary. She shows him pages of notes in the diary where her brother was tracking milk production of his herd and trying to correlate the falling production with the increasing aircraft activity.Later Cummings drives Barbara home; he apologizes for Butlers and explains the General had no real malice towards her brother, rather he was just doing his job. She takes the apology on face value and seems engaged by Cummings warm tones of reconciliationAn unknown time later, Cummings is supervising an experimental radar test at the base. It is hoped they can increase the range of current technology and begin directly monitor Soviet air activity in Siberia. The key to success is the amount of power they can run through the system. For this a small atomic reactor was built at the base.The test progresses normally and Cummings begins calling for more power to be delivered. His engineer warns they are in danger of overloading the reactor. Initially the technology begins to show promise before a sudden power drain kicks in. Butler is frustrated by the result. They know they are producing enough power, but beyond a certain point they are not delivering that power to the systemNearby at a farm owned by the Adams, Amelia Adam (Lala Lloyd) hears a strange noise in the barn. She goes to investigate and catches sight of something moving through the hay stored in the barn. Before she can react she is attacked and killed.Her husband, Ben (Meadows White) hears the commotion and runs to her aid. He in turn is attacked and defends himself briefly with a pitchfork against the unseen attacker before also being killedAt the funeral of Barbaras brother, people begin to hear about the double fatalities. Mayor Hawkins immediately blames the airbase and calls Butler with a series of accusations. Capt Chester tries to investigate but is ordered away from the crime scene by a local police officer,Howard Gibbons (Robert MacKenzie)Finally a joint autopsy is arranged, both Doctor Bradley and Warren have no trouble agreeing on their findings. All the victims have two small holes at the base of the skull. Further investigation shows that the entire brain along with the spinal cord is missing.Butler vows to get to the bottom of the mystery. He contacts the top medical and scientific experts in the Pentagon and instructs Cummings to get out among the villagers and see what they know.Cummings begins with Barbara. She works for Professor Walgate (Kynaston Reeves) transcribing his notes for scientific papers. Cummings is aware of Walgate and his extended interest in paranormal activity. Cumming senses a mutual attraction from Barbara, and begins to act on the emotion. Howard Gibbons interrupts the moment and an altercation occurs with Gibbons accusing Cummings of tom catting. Helen breaks up the fight and orders Cummings from the house.Cummings thinks he might have something and gets Chester to locate everything Walgate has published to see if any of his previous work can be connected with the deaths.Later that night Mayor Hawkins retires to bed when something invisible begins entering the house. Roused by the strange sounds Hawkins investigates and is killed instantly by an apparently invisible entity.News of Hawkins death set the town on edge. Constable Gibbons tries to calm the situation by arranging for a posse to go into the woods. Gibbons is convinced some sort of maniac is hiding in the woods. This seems to have the desired effect of getting the towns energy directed to something positive.Further background information about Walgate comes through from the FBI. He is considered eccentric but definitely a genius. Armed with this new information Cummings visits Walgate, he explains to the scientist the problems the deaths are causing. Walgate has worked out the reason for the base and the need for its own nuclear reactor. Although he gets every detail correct, Cummings admits to nothing.Walgate then focuses of the deaths and seems to take an unhealthy interest in the facial expressions of the dead. The professor suddenly turns very aggressive to Cummings. Barbara breaks up the conversation blaming Cummings dismissively and throws him out yet again.The posse Gibbons organized continues their sweep of the forest well into the night. Close to dawn, two of the men well away from the main group hear something odd in the trees. They go to investigate and get separated. One of the men becomes spooked and retreats shouting assistance.At daybreak the search parties return to the town without finding Howard Gibbons. A council meeting is called. Cummings is invited to the meeting to explain the Air Force position. He begins by reinforcing there no radiation involved and records and confirmed there are no missing military personnel to explain the deaths
The meeting is broken up when Gibbons stumbles into the meeting.He seems to be severely mentally retarded an incapable of normal speech. After the meeting Cummings confides to Barbara he thinks Walgate is behind the problems. For no apparent reason he tells Barbara he is going to investigate the cemeteryIn one of the vaults he finds a passage leading deep underground. He finds the newly interned body of the Mayor and Walgates favorite pipe. Suddenly from above he hears the vault door close, and realizes hes trapped. Finding two candles and begins to explore the vault in hope of finding another exit.At the base Capt Chester cant find Cummings. Calling Barbara he finds out that Cummings is probably at the cemetery. Chester stops to collect Barbara so they can continue on to the cemetery. Once there they hear strane thumping noises and realize Cummings trapped in one of the vaultsCumming then confronts Walgate over what has been occurring. He is convinced Walgate has developed some form of mind control. Walgate refuses to answer till Cummings shows him the pipe he retrieved from the vault. Walgate finally seen Cummings and intentionally locked him in the vaultWalgate explains he was examining the Mayor to determine the cause of death. Walgate seems to have a stroke and mutters something about shutting down the power plant before passing out. Cummings goes to Butler and after arguing Butler agrees to shut downAt the power plant the process for shut down commences and the technicians realize all the rods controlling the pile have been smashed. Butler immediately organizes emergency replacements. A call comes through; Walgate has regained consciousness and wants to speak to the base commander in person.Walgate explains his theory of thought amplification, he realized telepathy was not the answer and he needed to find a way to produce an entity powered by will power. He had been using electrical energy to power the process, after many failed experiments; he is in the middle of trying again when the house is hit by lighting. The extra power allowed him to turn the page of a book using only thoughtHe now understood that power was the key to the process, and began designing more powerful tests. His work progresses to a point where even a bigger power source was needed. When the airbase was constructed he worked out how to draw on the energy from the atomic powerEventually he created a life form based entirely on thought and hence invisible. One night, he discovers his lab in a shambles. Instinctively he knew his new creature had escaped. Instead of creating something to benefit man, hed created a fiend. He also believed there was more than one. When the first of the deaths occurred he decided that it was his fiends behind it.One of Butlers men sees a commotion outside and investigates. Butler tries to call the base but discovers the line has been cut. The solider outside screams and is instantly dead. Butler understands the danger and orders the others to begins to barricades themselves in the room.Walgate is asked how they can be rendered visible; he surmises that with enough power from the pile it could be done. Back at the installation one of the technicians becomes concerned at the fluctuations he is seeing in the power levels, as be checks instruments he is killed by one of the creatures.Now with unlimited power available, one of the creatures attains visibility. It is nothing more than a brain attached to a spinal cord and a number of tentacles protruding from the brain stem. It moves using a clumsy worm like motion.Back at the house another creature begins to attack, Melville (Launce Maraschal) becomes panicked at the enclosed situation. Looking outside, Butler sees all the creatures are now visible and at least three are attacking the house.They study the creatures for a short while then Cummings decides to try shooting the creatures. He kills one easily and while they concentrate on killing the others, one of the creatures drops down through the chimney and kills Melville.Cummings realizes they need to shut the power down. He volunteers to go because he knows the layout of the control room. Walgate also goes out to try and distract the creatures and improve Cummings chances. The creatures fall for Walgates decoy and Cummings escapes to safety. Cumming reaches the plant and breaks in as one of the creatures attacks him. Working his way to the control room he discovers a large number of base personal dead.Those still at the house realize the end may come soon. Theyre almost out of ammunition and the creatures seem to be massing for a final attack. At the last second as all their defenses collapse Cummings shuts down the control room with a bombSuddenly the remaining creatures writher in death then dissolve into nothingness. Cummings returns to the house and the waiting arms of Barbara. They kiss as the final credits rollChapman_glen@yahoo.com

Tags: insanity, cult, flashback

Review:
(Scaring people was obviously their plan.) Did they think the movie they were making was "cool"?The action-packed climax is pretty much the last fifteen minutes of the film.
Fiend has everything that a 50's Sci-Fi movie should have; a really square hero that saves the day, a beautiful female lead that falls for him, atomic power misused, and an invisible monster that sucks the brains out of its victums.It is the stop motion animation at the end when the monster(s) become visible that really makes this film work.
Marshall Thompson, that staple of fifties B movies, does yeoman duty in this film by not only starring in it, but actually taking over the reins of director when the "real" director Arthur Crabtree showed up on Day 1 and refused to direct!
People begin to die from the surrounding countryside by having their brains and spinal chords sucked out by what lead actor Marshall Thompson calls "mental vampires." Thompson, quickly flirting with the sister of one of the dead men, does his usual adequate job playing detective trying to prove that the new base is not responsible for the deaths.
There is some great stop motion effects in this movie for the brain monsters.
The plot to "Fiend Without a Face" appears absurd on paper today; it was probably also perceived as somewhat absurd in 1958, although the collective cultural consciousness at that time was less judgmental when it came to films about walking, moving brains and "mental vampires." The plot hinges on a US-Canadian military base that becomes inundated with creatures that are the offspring of a local atomic experiment, and Marshall Thompson is in charge of investigating a string of mysterious deaths as a result.In some ways just as hokey as you'd imagine, and in others ten times more sophisticated than you could ever predict, "Fiend Without a Face" is a prime example of '50s sci-fi schlock done right.
Accentuated by some impressive use of stop-motion animation in creating the animated brain-things is one major highlight of the film, coming into full focus as it reaches its finale.
Classy black-and-white cinematography provides the usual appropriate framing of darkness and shadows common to the horror films of this era, and there are some great compositions on display here.Overall, "Fiend Without a Face" is everything you'd probably expect from a film about killer brains, but the fact remains that, at the end of the day, it's quite simply a really well-made film.
On the whole, though, Fiend Without a Face is simply a well-done sci-fi/horror amalgamation and does not necessarily deserve the full, Criterion treatment.Yes, the idea that atomic energy's greatest harm to mankind lies within our own psyches is interesting, but it's not as interesting as the paranoia of conformism that drove Body Snatchers.
Fiend Without A Face is a movie that should not be forgotten, but it's also a film that should not be elevated to the level of greatness (which in some ways a Criterion edition somehow does).That said, if you have a passing interest in horror or sci-fi, or the 1950s, you will enjoy this film (it's short, sweet, and very much to the point).
Walgate (Kynaston Reeves), a retired scientist that lives in town, and he discloses the scary secret."Fiend Without a Face" is a silly, naive, trash sci-fi with bad acting and a ridiculous screenplay.
"Fiend without a face" is a solid example of 50's sci-fi, that kind of lovely low budget film in the same vein of "It!
Expressionistic Lighting and Mood are used in the Military Radar Room Scenes to Enhance the Paranoia.The Film Opens with the Attacks by "Fiends Without a Face" that are Invisible "Mental Vampires" that Lurch and Latch on to Innocent Town Folks and the Slurping, Eerie Sound-Effects leave No Doubt that They are a Force to be Reckoned With.Experiencing the Terror are the Usual Display of Fifties Characters.
The Military General in Charge of the Nuclear Plant that says "Remove more rods, damn the risks, we've got to make this work, I have to answer to the Pentagon." (paraphrasing).There's the Wiry Haired Absent "Minded" Professor Fiddling About Conjuring Mind Control Thought Entities with the Help of Nuclear Radiation and the Perky Female Assistant that Bounces from the Shower Dripping Wet with a Towel Covering only the Censored Parts and is Ready for Action, but She's more Body than "Brains" ("My head is buzzing with all of these big words.") Horrifying Things Happen even before the Disembodied Brains Complete with Spinal Cords make the Third Act the Undisputed Highlight of All 1950's Brain Movies.
The locals are convinced it has something to do with the nuclear power plant, the army not so, especially since the unseen foe's modus operandi is to suck out the brains and spinal cords of its victims!A mental vampire.
Delightful creations that look like brain snails with spinal cords that leap around and attach themselves to the victims necks.The effects are nifty for the era, the gore equally so, while the sound effects, and Orr's brilliant musical score, are of a real high quality.
Daft for sure, but not insultingly so like so many cheaply turned out films of the time, this is a 50s sci-fi horror fan's fun bag ticket for a good night in.
Good Fifties Sci-Fi. Fiend Without a Face rises above the typical 50s matinée fare with decent special effects, a suspenseful plot, and some surprisingly gruesome violence for the era.
Not showing the creatures in the first half is classic good horror, and reminds one of more high-end films like Jaws or Alien.When you do finally see the creatures you almost wished they stayed invisible.
Gene Roddenberry must have seen this.This story has a whole lotta elements: nuclear power, defense technology (in the form of high tech radar and planes), those pesky rooskies, telepathy, monsters, god-like creation supported by lightning, and "sibonetics." Our heroes are locked in a house with boarded up windows as the "mind zombies" attack.You'll have to judge for yourselves whether it matches what you need for pleasure, but it surely influenced scifi and monster pictures that followed.The thing I like about these is how they portray the mad scientist.
An above-standard 1950s sci-fi/horror, steeped in Cold War paranoia, with some surprisingly gory scenes and commendable special effects.In a remote part of Canada, a joint Canadian/American atomic testing site is in hot water with the locals, who blame the constant air traffic for scaring their livestock and disrupting the milk flow of their cows.
Following the deaths of other nearby residents in quick succession, the locals - believing that the deaths have been caused by either radiation from the base, or from a mad GI who has gone renegade - have enough, but so does Major Cummings (Marshall Thompson, 1925 - 1992), who begins an investigation into the deaths, determined to take the heat off himself and his colleagues.The special effects in this film earned it much publicity and controversy at the time.
The story makes little sense, the script and acting is typical of the budget-horror genre, and the first two thirds is pretty boring as the base personal and the local townies fall prey to an unseen menace BUT the third act, where the creatures are revealed as animate central nervous systems: tentacled brains perched on the end of whip-like spinal columns, is well worth the wait.
Don't expect great acting or expensive visual effects, or even a very coherent script, but it's still a good time for anyone who loves old sci-fi movies.
As dead bodies missing brains and spinal cords begin to mount, the staff at a nearby nuclear power plant try to prove that radiation poisoning is not to blame while a scientist questions if telekinesis is responsible in this low budget horror film.
THEN the film kicks into high gear.The fiends look like brains with a spinal cords attached!
The monsters themselves are for a good portion of the movie totally invisible, but when they actually do show up in visible form the movie finally becomes something to enjoy as essentially human brains with spines attached start attacking the main characters making this almost worth watching.
This time playing a Air Force officer stationed in Canada.The slightly daft townsfolk are convinced the base is responsible for their cows not producing enough milk and some people dying from bizzare circumstances!Soon enough it's found to be the work of Mental-Vampires!(OOHH)Conjured up by a noted if crusty old professor!There some good moments in this movie especially when a certain individual get's lost in the creepy woods,look for it!The climatic battle scene with the nasty little brains against Marshall and his cohorts is a riot, and should not be viewed while eating(you'll find out why!).Still this movie does have some 50's appeal to it..
It's about an invisible menace terrorizing a military base and surrounding town in Canada, and it stars Marshall Thompson, late of First Man into Space.Thompson plays Major Cummings, who's in charge of a nuclear-powered program run at the base, a program intended to enhance surveillance techniques and allow the U.S. to spy on the Soviets at a greater range.
Fiend Without a Face (1958) ** (out of 4) At a military base in Canada people start falling dead with their brains and spinal cords apparently sucked out.
The brain creatures start using their own intellects to create more creatures?Okay, so the idea sounds totally ridiculous -- but it's good for a little fun, especially if your a stop motion fan with a forgiving nature.
These monsters are killed at the end when Major Cummings blows the power plant up, causing the brains to disintegrate.Fiend Without a Face is rather gory for its time and the brains look impressive.The cast is lead by 1950's sci-fi regular Marshall Thompson (It!, the Terror From Beyond Space).
Continuing my occasional series of "Films that Seriously Creeped Me Out as a Kid," we turn our attention to Arthur Crabtree's "Fiend Without A Face," a lovely little British cold-war thriller from back in the good old days when everything had to do with radar and atomic radiation.We open on a top-secret American radar base located way out in East Nowhere, Canada.
Major Jeff Cummings is having no end of problems - his atomic-boosted radar experiments are going nowhere, the townsfolk are convinced that non-existent fallout from the nuclear reactor is harming their livestock, and an unseen attacker is killing off the locals by sucking their brains and spinal cords out the back of their necks - which, somehow, is supposed to be the Air Force's fault, as well.Fortunately, the first victim has a cute sister, Barbara, who works as a secretary for the local retired mad scientist, Prof.
He's been siphoning the atomic radar to power his secret experiments in "materializing thought." Working together, they determine that invisible creatures accidentally created by Walgate's experiments are responsible for the killings, and that the cows are growing accustomed to the sound of the jets and will soon return to normal milk production.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Fans of classic sci-fi & horror should definitely give Fiend Without a Face a watch..
The story is full of scientific nonsense about atomic power creating "mental vampires", invisible monsters that suck people's brains out.
'Fiend Without A Face' is a very silly but enjoyable b-grade monster movie, and if that's your scene, I highly recommend it.
This being said, I was under 10 years old when I first saw 'Fiend Without a Face' on a local movie horror program in the 1960's.
Ask Jon Mulvaney why he considered "Fiend Without a Face" interesting and unique enough to make it part of his CRITERION collection.The first half of the film is generally horrific, as Marshall Thompson tries to learn the secret of the bizarre, brutal murders by the invisible monsters.
The physical essence of an intelligent vertebrate is its brain and spinal column, and that's what the scientist envisaged."Fiend Without a Face" is one the most, pardon the pun, thought provoking scifi-horror films of the 50s, and is worth a "7"..
Though it gets going slowly (the "fiends" remain invisible throughout most of the movie, putting in a corporal appearance only toward the end, when gorged on atomic power), it's the stop-motion animation siege at film's end that makes this one so noteworthy.
The stop-motion brain with spinal cord monsters are impressive for the time.
It scared the hell out of me the first time, and even now manages to elicit the odd shudder.It is set in Canada, where an experiment is underway at an Air Force Base to develop long-range radar with nuclear power.
For as long as the protagonists can't yet figure out what kind of evil force is responsible for the eerie murders "Fiend without a Face" is rather suspenseful and compelling, and after that  when we discovered it's paranormal brains with a spinal tail  the movie is just sheer hilarious to watch.
Fiend Without a Face proves to be one of more memorable efforts from this era thanks to its innovative script, neat direction from Arthur Crabtree, and a charming cast, but most of all perhaps, because of its cool creatures—disembodied brains, with spinal cords for tails, that suck their victims' heads dry.For much of the film, these monsters—the result of experiments in thought materialisation by well-meaning scientist Professor Walgate (Kynaston Reeves)—are completely invisible (but remain threatening due to the creepy noises that they make before attacking); however, after receiving an extra power boost from a nearby atomic plant, they finally appear in all their hideous glory, looking just a bit like like face-huggers that have been to university.US Major Jeff Cummings (Marshall Thompson) leads the desperate battle against the crawling brains, only pausing to make moves on the prof's shapely assistant Barbara Griselle (stunning actress Kim Parker); eventually, after an impressive stand-off against the creatures (a scene that utilises some fun stop-motion animation and plenty of 'goop'), Jeff stops off at a nearby handy-dandy dynamite depot and eliminates the beasties by blowing up the power station (rather strangely, he doesn't seem the slightest bit concerned about the very real possibility of a radiation leak as a result!).A little note of interest: although the film is set on a US air-base in Manitoba, Canada, it was actually shot in Walton-on-Thames in the UK (which, incidentally, is where I did my school work experience as a teenager)..
FIEND WITHOUT A FACE is essentially a 1950s monster/sci-fi film--and not the sort that snootier viewers would watch.
He believed that science fiction was beneath him and walked off the set at one point, with star Marshall Thompson finishing the direction of the movie.If you like 1950's atomic science fiction, scenes of people boarded in a room trying to hide out from pulsating brains and stop-motion blood and guys, well, this is the movie for you..
However, Major Cummings (MARSHALL THOMPSON) discovers that the eccentric Professor Walgate (KYNASTON REEVES) has created monsters that thrive on human brain in order to survive during his experiments with electrical thought transference and he found a way of diverting some of the atomic power from the air base in order to boost his electrical apparatus...FIEND WITHOUT A FACE is a pretty tedious sci-fi shocker from b-movie specialists "Eros Films".