Fiend Without a Face (1958)

A scientist’s thoughts materialise as an army of invisible brain-shaped monsters – complete with spinal-cord tails – who terrorise an American military base in Canada following atomic experiments in this British-made nightmarish chiller, directed by Arthur Crabtree for Amalgamated Productions.

This outstanding Quatermass-style sci-fi/horror hybrid is a special effects bonanza and a high-water mark in British genre filmmaking, despite the pseudo-American trappings and fading Hollywood actor Marshall Thompson taking centre stage.

A number of deaths occur in a farming village near USAF Interceptor Command Experimental Station No. 6, and postmortems reveal the victims were murdered.

The brains and spinal cords are missing from the corpses, with the only clue being two puncture marks at the base of each skull.

Air Force Major Jeff Cummings (Thompson) begins an investigation and becomes suspicious of Professor Walgate (Kynaston Reeves), a retired British scientist living near the airbase. Walgate is writing another book about his ongoing experiments with telekinesis, this time focussing on thought projection.

The scientist eventually admits he has succeeded in developing his mental ability and – in the process – has created a living thought projection.

Unknown to Professor Walgate, the nuclear power radar experiments underway at the nearby airbase have greatly enhanced his mental abilities to the point that his living thought projection has become a malevolent and invisible new life form which escaped from his laboratory and is now attacking humans as a means of replicating physical (though invisible) new versions of itself.

The invisible creatures eventually attack and kill the military personnel at the base to take control of the radar station’s nuclear reactor.

They dial up the power to hazardous levels causing all the creatures to become visible (they are revealed to be the missing brains and spinal cords stolen from their victims).

The creatures attack Walgate’s home – where most of the principal characters have gathered to discuss the crisis – and while some of the defenders are attacked and killed, well-aimed .45 semi-automatic pistol shots to the brains soon make short work of most of the attacking creatures.

Walgate is attacked and killed by his creation while Major Cummings escapes and heads to the airbase, where he saves the day by blowing up the radar installation, robbing the surviving brains of their high-energy food source, causing them to dissolve into puddles of goo and die.

Major Jeff Cummings
Marshall Thompson
Captain Chester
Terence Kilburn
Professor R.E. Walgate
Kynaston Reeves
Colonel Butler
Stanley Maxted
Sergeant Kasper
Michael Balfour
Barbara Griselle
Kim Parker
Dr Warren
Gil Winfield
Mayor Hawkins
James Dyrenforth
Constable Gibbons
Robert MacKenzie
Dr Bradley
Peter Madden

Director
Arthur Crabtree