curse of the faceless man

Director Edward L. Cahn made 29 feature films between years 1950 and 1960, all B-movie program-fillers with a production budget about equal to the craft services tab on most major studio releases. And yet movies like It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) and Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957) probably garner more attention today than in the year of their release. Arguing that Cahn is some sort of assembly-line auteur might be pushing it. But it does go to show that even in the rush-rush, rough-draft world of '50s genre filmmaking, these guys were pretty damn good at their jobs.

Curse of the Faceless Man (1958) is an obvious mash-up of Universal's Mummy films and the familiar Golem story, featuring an encrusted man dug up from the ruins of Pompeii and brought back to Naples as part of a museum display. But the lifeless stone man doesn't stay lifeless for long, using his lethal fists to take revenge on the Roman Empire that had kept him as a gladiator slave and pining after the reincarnation of his former frustrated love interest.

Starring a cast of obscure B-movie veterans and half-familiar TV faces (like The Six Million Dollar Man's Richard Anderson), there's not much about Faceless Man worth remembering except the Faceless Man himself. Looking like a papier-mâché school project, there is something undeniably creepy about the simplistic design, especially when Cahn catches him in transition from a static piece of statuary to a shuffling vehicle of revenge. Screenwriter Jerome Bixby (responsible for several Star Treks and the classic Twilight Zone episode, "It's a Good Life") concocts on interesting back-story for him, but also overstuffs the script with an endless amount of chatty exposition.

And yet the film's flaws are also a big part of its charm. And if you're poking holes in Curse of the Faceless Man's plot, you're probably not the target audience for Kino Lorber's latest hi-def edition. The Blu-ray offers up a very nice transfer along with a trailer gallery and audio commentary from horror cinema historian Chris Alexander, who himself often struggles to justify his admiration for the film. But sometimes adding another piece of rare '50s horror to one's collection is all the justification you need!