Fiend Without a Face first started out as a story that appeared in Weird Tales (possibly the best fantasy/horror fiction magazine ever) back in 1930 as “The Thought Monster” by Amelia Reynolds Long. The film’s director, Arthur Crabtree, also gave us Horrors of the Black Museum in 1959.
A lone sentry on patrol hears a crunching, slurping sound in the woods and goes to investigate. A farmer out checking on his cows in the early morning is attacked and the sentry arrives seconds later to find a dead man and no sign of the killer. Official cause of death: Heart Failure. The Air Force wants to do an autopsy but his daughter, Barbara (Kim Parker), won’t allow it and hands the body over to the local authorities.
The Adams farm comes under attack and the old couple die as horribly as Farmer Griselle did. The Air Force get control of the bodies and an autopsy shows they had their brains sucked out of their heads and that the spinal cord is also missing. Major Cummings (Marshall Thompson) checks in on Farmer Griselle’s daughter and ends up in a fight with Constable Gibbons. Gibbons gets the mayor’s OK to search the woods for the “mad G.I.” and seconds after leaving his house the mayor meets the same fate.
The major encounters Barbara again at the home of Professor Walgate (Kynaston Reeves), where he gets the cold shoulder from her and not much information from Walgate. All the members of the search party return to town except Gibbons. They organize a town meeting with the major and Gibbons makes his horrific return from the woods. He is now completely insane. Cummings informs Barbara of his suspicions about the professor and while checking around the local cemetery, is locked in a tomb. When he doesn’t return, Barbara calls Captain Chester (Terence Kilburn) and together they rescue him in the nick of time.
The major confronts the professor with his pipe that he found in the tomb and he comes clean about his work on “Thought Materialization” and the creatures it spawned, a creature that looks like a human brain and feeds on intellect but is invisible to the human eye. The decision is made to shut down the power plant but it’s been vandalized to the point where it can’t. The professor’s house comes under attack and as the radiation level reaches the danger zone, the creatures begin to materialize. There are hundreds of them all around the house. Convinced that destroying the power plant will take away their source of energy and kill them, the major and professor make a run for it under cover fire but the professor falls victim to his own creation. Once inside, Major Cummings sets the fuse and escapes with seconds to spare before the building is destroyed and the creatures melt away.
Considering the time this was made (1958), the movie was remarkably graphic in its use of gore. Every brain that got shot was shown bubbling black blood and collapsing in on themselves. Shot in England, Canada, and even Germany (the stop motion animation effects) the script itself is fairly standard but the special effects–especially the sound effects–are fantastic work for its time. So do yourself a favor…watch and enjoy the Fiend Without a Face. You’ll be glad you did.
Next month, with any luck, we’ll find out why Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things!