| Faceless | |
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Faceless poster under French title |
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| Directed by | Jesús Franco |
| Produced by | René Chateau |
| Written by | René Chateau Jesus Franco Michel Lebrun Jean Mazarin Pierre Ripert |
| Starring | Helmut Berger Brigitte Lahaie Telly Savalas Christopher Mitchum Stéphane Audran |
| Music by | Romano Musumarra |
| Cinematography | Jean-Jacques Bouhon Maurice Fellous |
| Editing by | Christine Pansu |
| Release date(s) | France: 22 June 1988 |
| Running time | 98 min. |
| Country | France Spain |
| Language | English |
Faceless is a 1988 French slasher film directed by Jesús Franco. The film is about Dr. Flamand (Helmut Berger) and his assistant Nathalie (Brigitte Lahaie) who lure unsuspecting victims to use their skin to perform plastic surgery on the doctor's disfigured sister - a plot reminiscent of Franco's first film, Gritos en la noche (1961). Hallen (Telly Savalas), the New York businessman who hires private detective Sam Morgan (Chris Mitchum) to find his missing fashion model daughter Barbara (Caroline Munro). Other elements of the story include a Nazi doctor (Anton Diffring) and a chainsaw/power tool tormentor who are called in by Dr. Flamand.
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The film begins on a flashback. We see Dr. Frank Flammand (Helmut Berger), his assistant Nathalie (Brigite Lahaie) and Flammand's sister Ingrid (Christiane Jean). The night goes peaceful through a walk in Paris, until Flammand reaches the parking garage.
A former patient Mrs. Francoisis (Tilda Thamar), steps out of the shadows with a scar on her face from a failed operation. She plans on revenge by pouring acid all over the doctors face, but it misses Flammand and gets full force at his sister Ingrid in the face, resulting in severe burns, Francoisis drives away, as we are now in present time.
We are now at a photo shoot in Paris. Barbara Hallen (Caroline Munro) is taking photos with some other models. Nathalie walks in in disguise. She takes Barbara out to her car, where Barbara is drugged and brought back to Flammand's clinic. She is locked in a chamber in the basement, a heavily padded room, also in the furthest one down the hall. Nathalie goes in to check on a drugged girl, but the girl leaps up and starts choking Nathalie. Gordon (Gerard Zalcberg), who lives in the basement comes to the rescue and chops off the girls arms. While Flammand is upstairs, a patient Mrs. Sherman (Stephane Audran) is rolling out of her room on her wheelchair. She claims to know more about whats going on in this clinic than Flammand does. Flammand gets very suspicious and puts Mrs. Sherman back in her room.
Meanwhile in New York city, Terry Hallen (Telly Savalas) sits at his skyscraper office building. Terry is the father of kidnapped Barbara and is desperately awaiting reply from her, so he has hired a private detective Sam Morgan (Chris Mitchum) to go to Paris to try to track her down and bring her home. Once Morgan is in Paris, Sam is brought down to the morgue by Brian Wallace (Daniel Grimm) of the police department in Paris, to a decapitated body, but Sam knows it is not Barbara because this woman does not have a mole on the stomach like Barbara has.
Flammand and Nathalie go to see a surgeon Dr. Orloff (Howard Vernon) to try to perform a surgery. Flammand's plan includes to tear off one of his prisoners faces and paste it onto Ingrid, from which he has Barbara in mind. Orloff tells them to try to track down Nazi doctor Karl Heinz Moser (Anton Diffring), because he has changed his name, moved countries, running from the law with all of his illegal surgeries. Even though they plan on using Barbara, they return to find Barbara cut across the face because of Gordon abusing her.
Morgan goes to see the photo director of the night Barbara was kidnapped. The photo director Maxence (Marcel Philippot) soon starts giving answers under intimidation from Morgan. But Maxence's security man Doudo (Tony Awak) starts to fight Morgan, Morgan kicks him in the groin area and escapes.
Meanwhile, Flammand believes he has found a new woman to use for the operation, Melissa. After an orgy with Flammand, Nathalie, and Melissa, she is eventually drugged and locked in the closet.
Morgan phones Terry with no new information on Barbara, the only thing Maxence told him was that she was a prostitute in Paris and that she left with a golden watch.
After Moser arrives for the surgery, the face of Melissa gets destroyed because Moser had not planned on her flesh being as flexible as it was, so Flammand and Nathalie need a quick replacement. So they go to a club, and find actress Florence Guerin dancing in the middle of the dance floor with a circle around her, and they both nod in agreement. After Florence is tricked into going with Flammand and Nathalie back to the clinic, Flammand then drugs her, and hides her body. Morgan then receives the Barbara Hallen police records and also finds out that she used a credit card in a Paris suburb St. Cloud, so Morgan traces the credit card to Flammand's clinic. Barbara manages to escape the chamber by seducing Gordon, but then she runs out very quickly, locking Gordon in. Right as Morgan is about to walk out of Flammand's office, Barbara is dragged away by Nathalie. When Nathalie returns, Morgan recognizes the golden watch being worn by Nathalie, so when Morgan returns to his motel room, he overlooks the pictures, sees the picture of the watch, and heads back for the clinic.
One of the nurses who works at the clinic is completely unaware of Flammand's big plan and his basement, so she decides to sneak down into the basement, where she finds all of the girls locked up. Terrified, she runs into Gordon's room, and hides in the cabinet, but Gordon comes down and sees her gown in the door crack and locks the cabinet, and drills right through the nurses head. At this moment Moser, Flammand and Nathalie are performing the surgery on Florence. They give her a shot in the neck, silencing her, and her face is successfully pulled off and is shown to Ingrid.
Morgan returns to the clinic and goes into Gordon's room. He sees blood leaked all over the cabinet doors but then is attacked by Gordon. After a fight, Morgan eventually pushes Gordon into a series of metal hooks on the wall, impaling him. Morgan finds keys on the wall, walks across the hall, and finds the girls. He soon comes to the furthest door and finds Barbara. He walks in to untie and save Barbara, but as he is unstrapping her, Nathalie finds them and locks the chamber door on them. Flammand, Moser and Brigitte wonder what to do with the two that are locked in there, so they build a brick wall over Barbara and Sam's chamber. Sam tries to get through the window on the door in terror, but by the time the wall is built up to the ceiling, Barbara and Sam find themselves on the floor, gasping for air, and the doctors all propose on how they got away with getting Ingrid's new face.
But through the course of this, Terry receives one last message from Sam, claiming Terry, I traced Barbara to this clinic in Paris. I'm going in tonight to look for her. If I don't leave a message in 12 hours, send in the marines, Merry Christmas. Terry soon becomes suspicious of the message, and in French, says to his office executive Jenny, get me on the first flight to Paris!
The original ending of the film involved Sam successfully rescuing Barbara, and arresting Flammand, Nathalie, Moser, and Ingrid, with Terry going to Paris to pick them up. Jess Franco wanted a slightly different touch to make it different, so while switching the ending around, this time it is mentioned that Terry Hallen is going to Paris to the clinic, but it is left open, if he gets there in time to save them or not.
The soundtrack to the film was released on a Maxi single with the theme song, Faceless, by Vincenzo Thoma although it has been out of print and hard to find for many years now.
Two more of the songs used in the film by Thoma, Crystal Eyes and In the Heart of the City can be found on Romano Musumarra's soundtrack to Les Nouveaux Tricheurs which is an LP. The last two songs used in the film, both by Carol Welsman were Just Imagination and Mais Que Bonita. Just Imagination had its own Maxi 45T single, and the song Mais Que Bonita can only be found on the Just Imagination LP album, which only printed 500 to 900 copies.