At his secluded chateau in the French countryside, Professeur Génessier – a brilliant, obsessive doctor (Pierre Brasseur) – attempts radical plastic surgery to restore the beauty of his daughter’s disfigured countenance – at a horrifying price.
With the help of his lover/assistant, Louise (Valli), Génessier abducts and peels the faces of young women. He then grafts the victims’ flayed visage on his daughter Christiane’s badly scarred face, which in the meantime is hidden and protected by a featureless plastic mask.
Effectively imprisoned by her father, who feels responsible for the car accident in which she was disfigured, the infantilised Christiane (Edith Scob) is like a caged baby bird waiting to find its wings.
Eyes Without a Face, directed by the supremely talented Georges Franju, is rare in horror cinema for its odd mixture of the ghastly and the lyrical, and it has been a major influence on the genre in the decades since its release.
There were reports of audience members fainting during the facial surgery scenes, and there are images here, in clinical monochrome, of terror, of gore, and of inexplicable beauty that once seen can never be forgotten.
Dr Génessier
Pierre Brasseur Louise
Alida Valli Edna Gruberg
Juliette Mayniel Inspector Parot
Alexandre Rignault Paulette Merodon
Béatrice Altariba Dr Jacques Vernon
François Guerin Christiane Génessier
Édith Scob Dr Lherminier
Michel Etcheverry Henri Tessot
René Génin Juliette
Birgitta Juslin
Director
Georges Franju
Related Posts
Bargee, The (1964) The Bargee follows the misadventures of womanising barge worker Hemel Pike (Harry H. Corbett) - "the Casanova of the canals"…
Collector, The (1965) Veteran Hollywood director William Wyler was scouting locations for The Sound Of Music when a suspenseful script of John Fowles' macabre bestselling debut…
Night Of The Generals, The (1967) The film begins in German-occupied Warsaw in 1942. A prostitute is savagely stabbed to death and a witness spots the…
Brides of Fu Manchu, The (1966) Miraculously escaping death in a fiery explosion set by Nayland Smith, Chinese criminal mastermind Dr Fu Manchu (Christopher Lee) and…
Guess Who's Coming To Dinner (1967) Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn are unforgettable as the perplexed parents in this landmark 1967 movie about mixed marriage. Joanna…
Face of Fu Manchu, The (1965) Fu Manchu (Christopher Lee) is sentenced to death by beheading in China in front of his captor, Scotland Yard’s Commissioner…
Oblong Box, The (1969) Vincent Price lords it suavely around a gloomy 19th-century manor. And in typical gothic cinema style, there's a room at…
Run a Crooked Mile (1969) Richard Stuart (Louis Jordan), who teaches French at a London school, is involved in a hit-and-run accident and chases a…
With the help of his lover/assistant, Louise (Valli), Génessier abducts and peels the faces of young women. He then grafts the victims’ flayed visage on his daughter Christiane’s badly scarred face, which in the meantime is hidden and protected by a featureless plastic mask.
