Fiend Without A Face

You know what's weird? Every movie I've reviewed this week has gotten shorter each time. The Blob was almost an hour and a half, Invasion Of The Body Snatchers was an hour and twenty minutes, now this movie is an hour and fifteen minutes.

Fiend Without A Face, a very well done movie for it's time with an interesting concept and a grotesque monster. The plot follows an army major trying to uncover what has been killing the civilians around their military base and boy howdy, is the explanation a doozy. A scientist was conducting psychic experiments to be able to do ordinary tasks, think of it like a more scientific way of using the Force. But one day the scientist became too ambitous and created a being of pure thought. Throughout the entire movie you never see the monster until the very end, being an object of thought it is invisible and they are truly horrific and is stated that they look very akin to the human brain. They suck people's brains out of their skull! That's pretty gruesome for 1958! And since they cannot be seen, all you hear is the disgusting sucking sound which makes my stomach churn. But when it really gets going is about 10 minutes before the end, a radiation spike causes the creatures to become visible and are horrific to look at. Imagine a human brain, imagine it had a spinal cord tail that allows it to move about similar to how a caterpillar moves, imagine it had antennae to seek out people. That...is disturbing. I got to say this film had some gore in it for the 1950s, long before we saw flesh eating zombies in George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead, we saw brains being shot, smashed with an axe, and even dissolving. Ugh, it's nasty! Just to see these things squirt blood everywhere after being shot makes me wonder how audiences reacted to it back then. True it's in black and white, but you can only imagine how much more gross this would have been in color. I would recommend this movie just for the last 10 minutes, it's a special effects marvel that needs to be seen to be believed.

Next week, we shall be looking at a few more well known, true horror movies that really deserve more attention.

The Blob (1958)

I forgot how good this movie was.

Alright, tonight's movie is the 1958 sci-fi classic, The Blob starring Steve McQueen in a role that made him famous. Now I gotta say, this is a classic movie without a doubt in my mind, but watching it again I really loved it. It's one of the greatest examples of 50s science fiction movies, with outstanding writing, not just in concept but in execution, great acting, and a terrific movie monster to top it all off. The plot follows Steve McQueen while one night a meteor hits, and out comes an alien blob hell bent on absorbing every human on Earth. It's up to good old Steve to stop this alien menace, and try his damndest to warn the whole town before it turns into a big red jelly mark on the map. Now this was Steve's first big movie before he got super famous a few years later, and he does great work in this movie. He's a regular guy, thrust into this crazy situation, and has to deal with it. You believe every word he says, and gives immense likeability and even some good depth to a rather ordinary character. Now this movie is about an hour and a half long, and the pacing is just right. You see the blob, and you see it well, but not as much as you might expect. It does a good job of keeping you in suspense to when you see the blob again. And all the supporting cast does wonderful work as well, every one of them is an intelligent, well rounded character while in most other science fiction movies of the time they would be as smart as a bag of rocks, and are there just to go through the meat grinder, but here they contribute a great deal to the movie, whether it be plot progression or to give some pretty decent character development to each other. It's truly a cult classic, and created a remake in 1988, and the event known as Blobfest, a yearly little shindig in Phoenixville where the movie was made with tons of great stuff to do, see how they made the movie, reenact the famous movie theater scene, and view the original blob itself in all it's gelatinous glory. This is a fun flick, and you get the vibe from the opening credits. Classic and ingenious title screen, and the blob has it's own theme song and it is truly spectacular. 4 stars, check it out!

And tomorrow we revisit another classic science fiction movie. They're already here, and you are next.