Fiend Without a Face -
The atomic age gave everyone plenty of new things to fear, which movies materialized into everything from giant lizards to giant ants. This is a prettt good entry in this subgenre that manifests them into something perhaps even scarier: entities that cannot be seen until its too late. They're just another reason why the residents of Canadian farming town Winthrop are angry, the main one being that the U.S. built an Air Force base on their property. If it's not their planes scaring the animals, it's their nuclear plant threatening to irradiate everyone. When someone mysteriously ends up dead near the base, it's up to Major Cummings (Thompson) to investigate.
The most striking aspect of this movie you will pick up on pretty quickly is its boldness, such as in having an unfavorable stance towards American imperialism. I was not surprised to learn that this is a British production, in other words. While our hero is an American major, I am used to the Americans in movies like this being treated with kid gloves even when they are at least partly responsible for the monster's existence. My favorite, not to mention darkly funniest example of this is the airplanes drowning out a pastor's sermon during a funeral for the first victim. That boldness extends to the violence, with credit going to the actors for making what the fiends do to their victims as painful as it sounds - in short, it involves spine removal and brain ingestion - and to the animators who make the demise of the fiends' visible form as bloody and gruesome as possible. It's not surprising that the movie received an X certification from British censors at time of release. If you prefer horror that is eerie and suspenseful, though, the movie also has that covered pretty well. A scene in which Cummings explores a cemetery and gets stuck in a crypt put me on edge, as does one where the locals hunt for whatever is picking them off in the creepiest forest this side of
Deliverance.
Despite standing out in some ways that other '50s monsters do not, it's in line with the average one in too many other ways for me to consider it great. There's the clichéd love interest, professorial talking head, aforementioned gang of not-so-bright locals, etc. Also, with the possible exception of Reeves' Professor Walgate, I found the typical performance to be bloodless and indifferent. If you're a devotee of this subgenre, however, you should seek it out. Just be prepared for the odd sensation of not having your American patriotism restored afterwards.
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