Eyes Without A Face (1960)

Episode 93, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Today’s film is the 1960 French film Eyes Without A Face. How’s your French, Craig? 

Craig:  Nonexistent. Oh. Nonexistent is how my French is. 

Todd:  I thought maybe 

Craig:  So these names are gonna be fun. 

Todd:  Yeah. I know. I was just thinking that myself. I thought maybe you could pronounce, like, the original title or something. Leosan 

Craig:  No way. 

Todd:  Or something like that. Yeah. No. I I took Spanish. 

Craig:  Me too. 

Todd:  Well, this this is a film I’ve been wanting to see for quite some time. It, it’s a classic, and it’s on many people’s lists as a sort of top 100 horror films. And I really didn’t know anything about it going in, except for the iconic poster art, which is like a shadow of a woman’s head except for a big white blank spot where her face should be. And that’s where the title of the movie is written in. So it it does. It looks so sixties. The movie, however, is in black and white. The cinematography is very crisp, very stark, very film noir, actually, in many respects.   And if you put this in context, this came out about the same time as Psycho did in the United States and Peeping Todd, in the UK. So if you see Psycho, Peeping Tom, and France, releasing its Eyes Without A Face, this is sort of a worldwide trilogy of of shocking horror films for the 19 sixties, I suppose you could say. Mhmm. But it I think it came out actually in the 62 in the US. Yeah. Really interesting movie. Well, what did you think, Craig? Have you known did you know much about this movie going into it? 

Craig:  Nope. I didn’t know anything about it, and, you this was this week was kind of a last minute decision, and and you just kinda said, let’s do this because whatever. And, I I frankly, I wasn’t really looking forward to it. You know, as much as I can, I appreciate films like Psycho and and whatnot, and I do really like some of those movies? I’m not one to typically dip my toe into these much older films. It’s just not usually what I seek out, And so I wasn’t particularly looking forward to watching it, but I was really pleasantly surprised. And you already mentioned the cinematography. I was just super, super impressed with the cinematography in this movie. It looked like it could have been shot a lot of the time, not all of the time, but a lot of the time in the movie, it looked like it could have been shot today.   I mean, it was it was so clean and and crisp and and, and I, I don’t know how else to describe it. It is black and white, but it looks like something that almost could have been shot digitally. It doesn’t even almost look like film. It’s so clean. I was just impressed with that from the get go. Beyond that, I thought it was a a really interesting story. So, yeah, I I am gonna be praising this as we go along. 

Todd:  Yeah. I think this movie visually struck an interesting balance. At times, it almost didn’t make sense. It it was kind of surreal at moments. It reminded me a little bit actually of Crimson Peak just in some of the visuals. We’ll probably talk about as we go on, but they’re just some of a lot of the action focuses around a mansion or a house here. And at times, it looks modern, and at other times, it looks very gothic depending on what room you are in the house. It’s it’s it’s interesting.   And I think that that’s intentional. It’s to kinda throw you off balance, but it also seems to hearken back to a lot of the universal monster movies in a way. Now, I mean, this isn’t like a universal monster movie. It’s much more creepy and subtle than it is trying to be overtly scary. But the plot is is Sure. Is relatively simple. Well, it starts out with a woman speeding, headlong down the down the highway. And, she’s nervous.   It’s dark, and truck comes up behind her and passes her. She sees the headlights there. And then as she adjusts her rearview mirror and this is the first time we see a mirror in the movie, but it’s not gonna be the last because mirrors are kind of thematic visual element through this movie. She adjusts her mirror, rearview mirror, and you see in the back seat, there’s a what looks like maybe somebody’s sleeping. We later find out it’s a body. It’s a body that she pulls over and dumps in the river. And immediately, we get another scene of a professor who’s lecturing about hemo what was it called? Hemo tography? 

Craig:  Oh, gosh. No. Heterograft? Heterografts. Yes. 

Todd:  Which would be Yeah. Skin grafts, basically. 

Craig:  Well, yeah, live tissue transplants is what is what he says. 

Todd:  That’s right. That’s right. He’s lecturing in this very classic almost again, looks like looks like he’s lecturing in the in the Louvre or in a a castle or something for a very posh, pompous crowd. And, Right. And again, he’s talking about the breakthroughs that he’s had of this with animals and whatnot. And as he walks out, people are kind of looking on him with some pity. He he doesn’t actually seem like a very happy guy and he doesn’t throughout the whole movie he’s pretty stoic in fact it’s really hard to get a grip on what’s going on in his head throughout most of this movie, which is part of what makes it so interesting, I think. He will later find out that this guy is a bit of a mad scientist type character, but, again, he is not drawn like a crazy mad scientist, one dimensional kind of archetype.   He’s a doctor, And he’s clearly been doing this research, but then he’s also his research is a lot of it’s happening at his house, and it’s a little more sinister that we soon discover. 

Craig:  Right. 

Todd:  And as they as he walks out, these, ladies say, he’s he just hasn’t been the same since his daughter. 

Craig:  Disappeared, right. 

Todd:  So, that’s that’s how it kicks off. It actually really kicks off with a lot of mystery. It it reminded me a little bit of Hitchcock here at this way. 

Craig:  Yes. 

Todd:  This guy, his missing daughter, you’re starting to make some connections there, but you’re still not quite sure what it is. It really takes right off, I think, and grips you right from the beginning with the plot. 

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. And that opening scene that you were talking about with the woman driving down the street was really super reminiscent of one of the opening scenes of Psycho where Marion Crane is driving down the street and because she’s just stolen all this money and she’s paranoid and, and it, it seems, you know, very similar to that.   And so   I was thinking this was gonna be really Hitchcock ian, and and in a lot of ways, I would say that it is. You know, it doesn’t have exactly his style. Hitchcock had a really, specific style, and and this doesn’t necessarily match up with that exactly, but there are definitely similarities. And and yeah. You know, I had read I I read a lot about this movie before I actually watched it, so I knew what was going on. But if you hadn’t read what was going on, you would probably, you know, it’s it’s mysterious. From that lecture, he gets called to the morgue. Before he gets there, we get these investigators talking about they found this Todd, they think that it’s probably this doctor’s daughter because this woman that they found doesn’t have a face.   You know, we just get little details thrown in here and there, but it appears that the doctor’s daughter was in some sort of car accident, and her face was burned. And, these these detectives say all of that, the car wreck plus the fire plus the fact now that the body has been immersed in water for a long time and rats have gotten at it and stuff, it’s hard to identify. But they they believe that it’s probably this girl because they know that this girl, they say her face was an open wound. And so they think that it’s her, so that’s why they call him. But they also think that it might be this other missing girl because she kind of matches this other missing girl description. But the doctor gets there first and says, Oh, yeah. You know, that’s that’s her. That’s my daughter.   And he even meets the father of the other missing girl outside and and they have, kind of a discussion. And the other guy, of course, is grieving, but the doctor says, Well, at least you still have hope. I don’t still have any hope. But then he goes home, to his villa.   It’s this   huge, it’s this huge, gorgeous, gorgeous mansion, and he goes upstairs and we see that he converses with his daughter who is not dead, but he has taken the opportunity to identify this other girl, as his dead daughter so that people will stop questioning, you know, where is this missing daughter or whatever. And as it turns out, what’s going on is he and his assistant Louise, his nurse or secretary or whatever she is, they have been well, the girl that was found in the river, they had taken and tried to perform a face transplant for his daughter, but it had been unsuccessful. And and that’s really kind of the premise of the movie, that, you know, that’s that’s what’s going on. This this doctor wants desperately to give his disfigured daughter, a new face, but he has been unsuccessful, but they are continuing to try. In order to do that, they have to have donors. And Louise really is kind of the hunter or scout, for these donors, and that’s that’s what kinda goes on for the rest of the movie. 

Todd:  Yeah. And she must have had an accident or something of her own because it turns out that she is the first and only successful transplant that he’s done. And so her you know, she’s kind of his sidekick in this way. She’s the Igor to this doctor Frankenstein or whatever you wanna say. Right. Because she’s grateful to him for having successfully performed this. I wonder if maybe she’s also his lover. It’s hard to say because apparently his wife has also had also died.   So it’s really just Yes. 

Craig:  Right. 

Todd:  Doctor and Louise and this daughter. And when we go upstairs and we meet the daughter, she’s, you know, face down in the bed. And this is another thing I think the movie does really well is you just wanna see what this girl looks like. 

Craig:  Right. Right. 

Todd:  And and the camera keeps changing angles on you so that you can’t. And, you know, when Louise comes in and chats with her, she brings in this mask, and she puts this mask on the girl. And for most of the movie, what you see is this girl with this mask on her face. And the way the mask is, it it fits very well. In fact, I bet I bet if you were to go through and and actually see how it was done, I’m sure that they just caked a bunch of latex on top of this woman’s actual face, until it all hardened and then just said, you know, don’t move your mouth. Because it’s like if the phantom of the opera had a whole mask instead of a half mask. Right. It it you know, it’s it’s this pure white, very, I would say, attractive in its own right, but extremely creepy because it’s it’s so pure, and it’s so white, and it’s so form fitting, and that it really emphasizes her eyes, that there’s something underneath because her eyes are big and open peeking out of that mask. 

Craig:  It’s terrific. It’s fantastic. It’s a great mask and it’s actually really convincing. Like, you know, if, if they weren’t on this mission to do an actual face transplant, like if this woman was really disfigured, she could potentially wear this mask and be pretty passable, in public. If you actually got face to face with her and were talking to her, you would clearly be able to see that it’s a mask because the lips don’t move very much, when when she talks. But if she just had to casually, you know, go through public, she, she, she might go largely unnoticed. I mean, it’s, it’s a really good mask. It’s reminiscent of Michael Myers’ mask from Halloween because, John Carpenter has said on record that he was inspired, by this mask for the Halloween mask.   He for for Michael Myers’ mask, he wanted it to just be kinda stark white, and, and you definitely can see, the connection there. But I was just so impressed. I was like, I don’t know who the special effects people were. I don’t know who the makeup people were, but it looked great and it’s haunting. It’s really spooky. And you’re right, it totally emphasizes her eyes. And this actress, I didn’t write her name down because all of these actors and actresses are French people who I’ve never heard of before, and I know nothing else about them. But this actress has these great big eyes, and the mask really emphasizes that.   And it looks great. It’s it’s not it’s really not scary at all. I mean, there’s actually kind of something beautiful about it. Like you said, when we first see her, she’s Todd down in the bed and you just wanna see and you just wanna see. And she doesn’t have the mask on at that point, but the dad says to her, You really need to get in the habit of wearing your mask all the time. And when Louise comes in, she puts the mask on her. And that’s the first time you see her. And despite the fact that you know that underneath she’s disfigured, there’s still, you know, beauty, to to her appearance.   And that I think was really the first moment in the movie where I was really intrigued and thought, wow, you know, this is this is something interesting. 

Todd:  Yeah. And it’s a it’s a beauty kind of like a porcelain doll. She’s very doll like when she goes about. Yes. Because as soon as the mask goes on her and we see her, then she starts what I would term creeping around the house. 

Craig:  Yeah. She does a lot she does   a lot of haunting around the house. And and you said doll like, and I thought the same thing. Throughout the whole movie, she’s dressed in these, you know, if you’re into fashion and clothes, these gorgeous, gorgeous, costumes that really look like they were made for dolls. And and she looks like a doll. And I guess these were made by some fancy designer and and it kinda looks like that, but it really does emphasize the doll like nature of of this this girl. 

Todd:  One of the things that she remarks to her secretary is that, you know, he’s taken all of mirrors out of the house yet and on everything that can can give any kind of reflection so that I can’t see myself. But I can see myself occasionally when I’m looking out the window. I can catch glimpses of of my reflection, and I’m not abs absolutely certain what she was talking about there. Was she talking about the the panes of the window itself? She was 

Craig:  just talking about anything reflective, like they’ve they’ve tried to protect her from her own reflection, but she can still see it. And she says, you know, she can’t bear to look at her face be because she’s it horrifies her, but the mask horrifies her even more. Yeah. Which is interesting, you know, eventually, for just a brief moment and really only in semi focus, we do see her face and and she is, you know, it’s devastating the damage that’s been done to her face. I mean, she’s completely burned. I mean, the title of the movie is Eyes Without A Face and that’s what it looks like. And we never see it in clear focus and we only see it very briefly, but it is pretty repulsive. But it’s interesting that she says, I hate seeing my own face.   It it it horrifies me, but the mask horrifies me even more. And I think that that’s really the trajectory of her character. I mean, she she just can’t stand to be what they are trying to make her be, and and that comes into play later on. 

Todd:  Yet she’s oddly complicit in the whole thing, and that’s another really intriguing part of this. You know? Like Yes. And and and and the mask doesn’t help either. Like, the mask, it just looks again, it’s it has a beauty to it, but it also has this sort of detached, cold, unfeeling look to it. And in a in a way Yes. That’s the sense that you get about her character as she’s walking along. She she’s either in a stupor or she just doesn’t barely reacts to anything that that’s happening around. There there’s like a I don’t know.   And I think it’s just something you paint onto that mask, but like like more of a curiosity than anything else as she just wanders around this house that she presumably has known since birth, like touching the furniture, walking from room to room, almost like she’s seeing it all for again for the first time. And she explores this house, and she goes down into the depths of it. And, again, it’s Mhmm. This is this is a mansion. It’s big. It’s it’s beautiful. You don’t really get a sense of the whole thing, but there are some pretty iconic aspects to it that that we pick up in, for example, when the doctor first comes in. Another thing that adds to some intrigue and some mystery is, he pulls into his car into the garage, And as he opens the doors to the garage, you hear these these dogs barking.   It’s like a whole bunch of dogs barking. He pulls the car in and then closes the garage door. And as he’s walking through the walking out the garage door, it it really takes its time, this movie, with this guy walking around and this woman walking around. It really lingers in these places for a long time. You know, a lot of movies, they cut out the scenes of people walking from place to place. It’s just like, oh, if you’re if you’re downtown and then you need to be uptown, the guy walks out the door, and the next shot is the guy walking in the door uptown, you know. It doesn’t show the person getting into the car, driving down the road, pulling out in front of the shop, getting out of the car, walking to the shop, then finally walking through the door, But this movie does that. It does that a lot, but it always does it in a way that makes you feel like there’s maybe something significant here.   Either it’s communicating something about the character or about the setting or adding a little bit more mystery. And in this case, this whole trip that this doctor takes, coming home, parking his car in the garage, finally walking up to see this daughter you’re just going, what is going on here? Because you hear the dog’s barking. And as he walks through, you you think maybe the dog’s barking is gonna get louder. Like, maybe he’s getting closer and closer to it, but as he shuts the door behind him, the sound gets more and more faint. So you’re like, wow. There must be more to this house that I don’t even know that I’m going to discover later. And so, again, just within the first 10, 15 minutes of this movie, it just seems like this is a world full of mystery, I think. 

Craig:  Dr. Yeah. Yeah. And you oh, I do Todd. And and the house, you know, like I said before, we get exterior shots of the house and it’s this huge, gorgeous, gorgeous estate. But you’re right, like the the geography of it, I think is significant because the daughter’s name is Christiane and, to get to her, they have to go up multiple flights of stairs. It’s kind of like she’s the princess in the tower. Yeah.   And then and and then the horrors of the movie take place in the depths of the house. Like they have to go down into the basement, into the cellar, into these likes, he’s got a secret operating room down in the cellar. And so I feel like, you know, that that geography really works. It makes it feel almost like a fairy tale where you’ve got the princess in the tower and then you’ve got the dungeon where all the scary things happen. And it’s it’s really effective, I think. 

Todd:  Yeah. And and and so her walking around the house is really just exploring this this whole this whole area, and she does. Like you said, she goes into, a room, and there’s a mirror painted black. She goes a little bit further down. You start to hear the dogs barking faintly again. There’s another thing happening, in parallel with this. The the secretary, I think her name was Louise. Right? 

Craig:  Louise. 

Todd:  She’s off, finding another woman, another young girl. Right. And you can see that they’re targeting girls with blue eyes. So that that’s Well, 

Craig:  you can’t see it because it’s black. Yeah. Exactly. You can’t see you can’t see it because it’s black and white,   but they make sure to, inform us at some point that they’re that they are looking for a particular type of girl. 

Todd:  Yeah. 

Craig:  And it’s it’s a girl who shares the same kind of beauty as Christiane. You know, they want somebody who, is is similar to her. But yeah, Louise and and this woman, I have no idea. The history with the doctor and Louise is mysterious. She keeps saying things like, I always will remember that I owe you because you gave me my face. We don’t know what happened, and and we have, you know, he keeps saying that like he he wants desperately to succeed at this face transplant, but he he doesn’t know if he can. So I didn’t get the sense that necessarily he had given Louise a face transplant, but somehow he had given her some sort of reconstruction surgery and she feels obligated to him. But she, surgery and she feels obligated to him.   But she she’s an older woman. And when I say older, I don’t know. She’s probably in her forties, but she’s gorgeous too. But, but she’s going around hunting, is what I kept putting in my notes, you know, like she’s, she’s stalking these girls, you know, she stalks this girl Edna for a while and, you know, she kind of finds out that Edna’s new in Paris and and she needs a room and eventually she connives and and tricks Edna into kind of a friendship, and then she eventually gets her back to the house. And I loved that scene. It was really suspenseful. Like, obviously this girl Edna has kind of come to trust this older woman who has befriended her, But eventually Louise says, oh, I found you a room. Edna doesn’t have a place to stay.   So she said, oh, I found you a room. I’ll take you there. And she drives her to this estate. And I love that scene because, Edna is clearly discomforted. You know, Like, she she’s nervous. You know? It’s Yeah. Like, why are you driving me out into the country? Like, this is totally weird.   Yeah.   And I thought that that was played really, really well, and it was good suspense. 

Todd:  You know, again, there are these flashes of these other horror movies kind of going through my head as we’re watching this, and this this was almost like a hostile type situation in a way. This girl 

Craig:  Right. Right. 

Todd:  Country is is pulled in by this woman, and she’s driving around. As you said, even when she’s driving down the road, this girl does not look comfortable even though she’s not saying anything. And she’s like, yeah, we’re we’re really far out here, aren’t we? This is is a little farther from the city, and the woman says, oh, well, I’m taking you the long way. And then, as they pull up to a, you know, a train station and wait for the train to go by, she says, see, here’s the Craig. It’s gonna take you into Paris. It’s only 20 minutes. Isn’t that great? She takes her further in there, and it’s just these it’s just it’s just one thing after another that, she she takes her out of the car, and this woman sees this this mansion. Again, she seems kinda confused, but, she walks in up to it, and it’s completely dark until she steps onto the porch.   And suddenly, all the lights come on, and the girl kinda comes back. And when the door opens, it opens, and the doctor is just standing there, just standing there 

Craig:  in the hallway. Framed in the doorway. 

Todd:  Like, he’s waiting for it. She walks in, and then she closes the door, and the woman’s asking questions. And as they’re talking, like, Louise is closing the curtains behind her. It’s just it the doctor’s offering her a drink, and she’s saying, no. I don’t want a drink, and she sits down, and he does pour her a drink, and then with the other hand, just slaps a ragged chloroform over her face. But it’s so suspenseful. Like, you just well, you know this girl is doomed. I mean, there’s there’s not that much suspense there, but it is it is so, well executed the way that this this scene plays out.   I just loved it. But, again, it was it was scary. And so when he when he does chloroform her and drag her off, they drag her into his his dungeon area, into his operating room, which we don’t see that. We haven’t seen the operating room yet, but we will in a minute because Christiane comes walking down after they’ve kind of, I don’t know, gone to sleep or gone out or something like that, and she starts probing through the house. 

Craig:  No. Hold on. Hold on. This is the I I sorry. I I just wanted to interrupt you at this point because I thought that this part, if there was any flaw in this movie that I would identify, it would be at this point because Christiane follows the doctor and Louise down into the basement and they take Edna in and deposit her and then they come immediately back out. And then Christy Anne goes into the lab or whatever, and Edna is entirely prepped for surgery. 

Todd:  Yeah. That’s 

Craig:  true. Like, in the in the 15 seconds that they were in there, they had stripped her naked, strapped her to bed, thrown a sheet over her. She, like, she was totally ready to go. 

Todd:  Oh, that’s right. And And the and the doctor came out and said, I think I’m gonna have some dinner first, and then we’ll go in and take into the surgery. Right? 

Craig:  Well yeah. And and he also says, which I found really spooky, he says, This time I’m gonna have to take off a bigger piece and I’m gonna have to do it all in one piece, not in sections. Just those words, are creepy. But you had mentioned earlier that, Christiane is oddly complicit in this and I thought that was weird Todd. Like when she followed them down there and she sees this girl, I mean she sees them carrying Edna into the operating room and then she goes in when they’re not there and she sees Edna in there, and I initially thought, Oh, she’s going to secretly try to help Edna escape. But no, she doesn’t at all. She is complicit in Todd. And I think that that makes her character intriguing and strange.   You know, I don’t know how to feel about this girl. I wanna like this girl, but at the same time, she’s selfish. 

Todd:  It’s what it comes down She’s selfish. At the very least, you wanna feel sorry for her. Right? 

Craig:  Yeah. Right. 

Todd:  Yeah. And and and it is almost like the she doesn’t not only not help this woman, but well, she goes in and she sees the woman on the table, and then she wanders a little further and we see the dogs barking. 

Craig:  Yeah. Because the dog kennel is connected. 

Todd:  Yeah. Yeah. 

Craig:  I love that. The dog can   the dog kennel is directly adjacent to this the operating room. 

Todd:  Right. 

Craig:  And it’s this huge dog kennel. 

Todd:  But it’s so it’s such a weird dog kennel. I mean, it’s got these odd cages in there. It looks like some would have a medieval torture chamber, you know? 

Craig:  Right. Right. Well, and of course, you know, here I’m a huge dog lover, and and Christianne was in there. She goes in there and I didn’t know what to expect, but she she loves on all the dogs. It’s actually really cute, you know, it’s these huge, huge dogs that are obviously guard dogs or whatever, but Christian clearly, you know, has a friendly relationship with them and and they, you know, she pets them and they love on her and stuff. All the while, although, and that’s nice and I feel like that says something about her character, but as a dog lover, dogs don’t like masks. Like masks freak dogs out, so these must have been really well trained dogs, or they must have spent time acclimating them to this girl in a mask, because dogs do not like that. You know, they they like to see people and see expression and and masks and stuff usually freak them out.   But it’s actually, it’s kind of a sweet scene and it does endear you, the viewer Todd her. I, I feel like they’re trying to show that she’s a gentle person, 

Todd:  moment she until the the moment she’s done with the dog, she goes back in the room and starts staring at this woman, and she takes off her fit her mask and stands over the woman until she wakes up so that she can look at her face and scream. So Yeah. In the one one the one respect, you’re like, oh, this must be a gentle person. But then you’re wondering if she’s gonna set this woman free, and instead, she kind of terrorizes her a little bit, you know? 

Craig:  I didn’t get that that was intentional. I I don’t know. May maybe it was, I but I didn’t think she was trying to scare the girl. I’m not sure why she took her mask off, but I didn’t get that it was, oh, I’m gonna scare this, this poor girl. I thought that, you know, she was just kind of looking over her and the girl happened to wake up and she was horrified, But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she did wanna show the girl what she really looked like and and I don’t know. 

Todd:  Yeah. I don’t know either. It’s it’s really hard to say because, like you said, we we only get little glimpses into her personality, and it there’s a lot unknown of unknown right there. But then the next bit we get is, something that was a little more gruesome than I think either of us were expecting in a movie of this age. 

Craig:  Yes. 

Todd:  And that was we pretty much get to see the entire facial operation on this girl. Yeah. From the drawing, the pencil around the face Todd marking the spots to cutting with the scalpel and it’s bleeding as he’s cutting all the way around Todd the laborious, like, lifting the skin up all around and they’re clamping it. He He even gets interrupted, I think, by a phone call and has to run run out for a minute and come back in where they just leave the clamps hanging. You get to see the whole thing happen, and then finally they lift the face off of this, off of this woman, and you get to see the blood stuff underneath her for a split second before they cut away. That was, again, just this movie really, really draws out these scenes way more than you would expect. 

Craig:  Yes. Oh my gosh. That scene went that scene went on for much longer than I expected it to and it was gruesome and it was really, really well done. Like when the doctor was cutting into this woman’s flesh, it looked pretty real for the most part.   Yeah.   Now when he actually when he started Todd to actually peel it off, you could tell that it was some sort of prosthetic, but it looked really good. Like 

Todd:  It did. 

Craig:  I I I mean, if if you weren’t looking at it with the critical eye, I mean, if you were willing to suspend your disbelief, it looked really, really, really good and it was gross and it went on for a long time. And I guess, you know, when this movie came out, it passed the censorship boards or I don’t know, whatever it is, the rating system, in France. But it also got a lot of criticism specifically because of this scene because it was so gruesome. And when it was originally released in the United States they cut it all up, they gave it a different title, they called it, the horror chamber of doctor Faustus. Mhmm. And and they greatly reduced that scene and they took out a bunch of other stuff. They took out any scenes that made the doctor seem at all, sympathetic. Again, if we’re talking about the the quality, of this film, you know, I think this scene, you know, deserves applause.   I mean, good gracious, you know? Like, just just the the the length of it and and and just it felt very uncomfortable because it went on for so long and it and it wasn’t you know it’s not like it was cutting to close shots and then long shots you know it was just we were in frame watching this guy cut this girl’s face off, and it was it was really unsettling. I I was impressed. Yeah. Especially for 1960. For 

Todd:  sure. Right? Very clinical too. Again, everything’s so clean in this movie. Even when you’re seeing blood, it’s it’s happening here in this really clean sequence, j just as clean as the mask that the other woman wears. It’s all very creepy, and they do he does the transplant. It supposedly, you know, at least it takes, and the woman, it ends up in bandages, so you can only see her eyes. And Right. Edna comes in, I’m sorry, the nurse, slash secretary, whatever, comes in and, brings her some Todd, and Edna’s ready because she is pretending to be asleep, but she ends up knocking her over the head with a bottle and runs out.   And, of course, I’m thinking, yeah. Of course, she goes up the stairs and not 

Craig:  out the door. Right. She tried to go out the front, but she couldn’t. 

Todd:  Yeah. Anyway, she runs upstairs, and they chase after her, but they hear a scream. And by the time they get up to the top, she has jumped out of the window and committed suicide. And I guess that was suicide unless she tried to climb out, but I got the impression was that she couldn’t bear to live with herself anymore and and through I no. Who knows? It’s really up to interpretation, I suppose. 

Craig:  Right. See and I kind of interpreted it different. I I thought that it was an escape attempt, but she had just died from the fall. But this is this is where things for me and I understand that they somehow had to wrap this up, but this where for me things kinda started to feel a little bit convoluted. Uh-huh. Because we we see Edna’s friend, reports, her disappearance to the police and apparently Edna had told her that she had befriended this older woman and and, Edna’s friend says, oh, and she said that this woman always wore this pearl choker. And of course Louise does always wear this pearl choker because it’s what covers the scar from her surgery. It’s it’s it’s almost disappeared, but it’s still there.   And then it becomes, as does Psycho, to be fair, it becomes kind of a dete- it becomes kind of a detective drama. And, we we failed to mention before that Christiane had a fiance who, she from time to time calls, but she doesn’t say anything. And I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself because it appears that the face transplant has worked, And we see this dinner scene where we see Christiane with a very beautiful porcelain flawless face, and her dad, the doctor says to her, you know, you can have a whole new life. You can have a new name and a new identity. And he says, won’t that be fun? I just thought that was so funny.   That’s right.   You’ve been through all this horrible stuff and but I’ve given you a new face, and now you can have a new identity. Won’t that be fun? 

Todd:  She’s like, well, what about Jacques? You know, what about Jacques, my fiance? And he’s like, yeah. That will be a bit of an issue. 

Craig:  But I 

Todd:  guess we’ll find a way to tell him or something like that. I don’t know. He he was just willing to kinda let that one go, but she’s not. Like you said, she keeps calling him and hanging up, and, that’s a little bit mysterious because at first, we’re not we don’t know who she’s calling. Again, another layer of intrigue in the movie. You’re right. It it at this point, it does get a little a little convoluted because the boyfriend, slash fiancee, Jacques, happens to be in the police state no. Was he in the police station before, or did he happen to be there and overhear the pearl necklace thing? 

Craig:  Well, what okay. Before we get to that, there’s this dinner where it appears that her face is okay, but at the end of the dinner, the doctor gets up and kisses her on the forehead and then looks at her, and you can tell that he’s concerned. 

Todd:  That’s right. 

Craig:  And he goes outside and the secretary is like, Why are you worried? And he’s like, I’m not. And she’s like, I’ve known you a long time. I can tell in your face that something’s wrong. And, he says, I’ve failed. And then what again is another one of my favorite sequences of the movie, we just get these, photographs, a series of photographs of her face deteriorating, of her face rejecting the transplant, and and it’s gradual and we only see like 4 or 5 photographs, but, it’s pretty gruesome. We see that, her body has rejected, the transplant. But once her body has rejected the transplant, she calls Jock again. And this time, instead of not saying anything, she says his name.   And again, this seems kind of convoluted to me, but that’s enough for him to go to the police. Yeah. Just to say, I know it was her. I recognize her voice. And of course, the detectives are like, okay, whatever, she’s dead. So it was probably just a prank call. But then that kind of meanwhile, in the detective agency, the other detective is interrogating this other girl and after Jacques leaves, the other detective comes over and says, oh, I heard you talking about beautiful blue eyed girls. What should I do with this one? She’s a shoplifter and the main detective, detective Perot, which I thought was hilarious because that’s kind of a Poe reference, but anyway, he’s like, well, just let her go.   I knew something was gonna go on. Eventually, they bring and it’s so like these cops are just imbeciles. Like, they’re just so stupid. They bring her back in to kind of be a patsy in this big setup. They they come to suspect the doctor because somehow one of the detectives mentions that Edna’s friend had said the pearl necklace. And so the Jacques is like, oh, that makes me that reminds me of someone. And so they’re suspicious of the doctor and Louise and so they use this other girl, Paulette, the shoplifter, kind of as bait and kind of as a patsy in in this whole big setup scheme. Yeah.   But it’s so it’s so flawed and stupid and like I just felt for Paulette. I’m like, here, like, they’re they’re, like, they’re throwing her into this situation and they just don’t give a shit about her at all. 

Todd:  They don’t they don’t observe her. They don’t keep track of her or anything because as soon as she gets let out of the hospital, she calls her mom and says, okay, mom. I’m going home. And, the nurse says, alright. The bus station’s down the street. She walks out, and who pulls up but in this car is, Louise Louise. To pick her up like she’s picked up all the other girls, and she takes off with her. Right.   Well, that’s the end of her. And and sure enough Well, 

Craig:  right. And then it cuts right to the doctor drawing the pencil marks on Paulette’s face. What the detectives had done is that they had dyed her hair and sent her in there as a patient. I don’t even know what their Why did they put her in there? 

Todd:  I don’t I didn’t get that part either. Like, it was it was all about blue eyes, wasn’t it? 

Craig:  Yes. And all of the other girls were brunettes. So I don’t know what the problem was, but they sent her in like as bait. But then she gets released and, like you said, Luis picks her up and Doctor. 

Todd:  The 2 detectives pay him a visit while he’s penciling in Luis’ face. 

Craig:  Well, yeah. But even before that even before that, I feel like Jacques calls them or somebody calls them and says nothing happened. They released her. And the detectives are like, oh, okay. Well, we’ll check on her tomorrow morning to make sure she got home safe. Right. Seriously? 

Todd:  Like Why weren’t you guys out there waiting for her to leave the place? At least watching her, something like this. Like, were you hoping 

Craig:  check on her tomorrow. She’ll be fine. 

Todd:  Maybe they were maybe they weren’t gonna be convinced, until the doctor had actually created a dead Todd, and then they could they could prosecute. You know? Maybe they didn’t actually wanna help her out. 

Craig:  I guess. I just I just felt like the the cops were so incompetent. And then like like you said, you know, the doctor is penciling her face for the surgery, and Louise comes in and is like, There’s 2 guys waiting, asking about you at the clinic. And, he’s like, I can’t be bothered. And she’s like, No, it’s serious. So he walks over there. So apparently, the clinic is on his property. Yeah.   That was 

Todd:  a surprise. 

Craig:  And   they’re like, Oh, we’re looking for this girl. She’s helping us on a case or something. And he’s like, No, she’s been released. And they’re like, Okay, bye.   And they   go outside and Jacques’ like, Sorry, I led you on this wild goose chase. And they’re like, Oh, well, at least now we know it’s not anything. Like, they didn’t do any of the they were completely worthless. Just a second. Worthless. 

Todd:  This girl is missing. She never came home. Isn’t that the whole point of your of your setting her up as bait was for somebody to take her? And now they’re just willing to walk away from it all. It was it didn’t make any sense. 

Craig:  Yeah. Oh,   well. But that’s what leads up to the climax, and it and it’s it’s a good climax, I thought. The, Paulette wakes up on the operating table, and the only one who was there is Christiane. Of course, Paulette is screaming and crying and freaking out, and Christianne walks over to her and she picks up the scalpel, which of course scares Paulette, but she starts to cut away Paulette’s restraints. And then Louise walks in and, Christiane walks over to her and she’s holding the scalpel and Louise says, Put it down. And, instead, Christiane stabs her in the neck presumably about the same place where her scar would have been, And Louise says, of course, why? But, you know, as melodramatic as that is, the acting was actually pretty good. Like Yeah. I felt like Louise felt like she had been trying to help this girl, almost like she was like a mother figure to this girl.   All she had been doing was trying to help despite the fact that what they were doing was terrible. But you feel a little bit of sympathy, or I did felt a little bit of sympathy for Louise in that moment. And then Christiane releases Paulette and Paulette goes off running off and we never see her again. Christiane goes into the adjacent dog kennel and releases all the dogs and the dogs all go out and sadly, kind of unconvincingly maul and kill the doctor. I understand that it was 1960 and I understand that there’s only so much you can do with animals, you know, you don’t actually want animals really mauling people to death, but like whoever they whoever whatever stunt man they had playing the doctor, like he was clearly padded like crazy. Yeah. So much padding. And these dogs were clearly not 

Todd:  They were playing. 

Craig:  They’re running up to him. They’re yeah. They’re wagging their tails. But we’re led to believe that they maul and kill the doctor. And then, Christiane releases all these white doves that we’ve never seen before, from the kennel. And I feel like that’s supposed to be symbolic. And then she walks out holding one of the white doves in her hands with her mask on and this beautiful, some sort of white gown, and she walks past her mauled father, through the woods, holding this white dove, and then on the screen we get Feen, you know, the end. And, you know, I liked the ending, I saw it coming a mile away once she released the doves.   I’m like, oh, she’s free. But yeah. It was one I I think one of the things that I was most excited to talk to and not even talk to you about, but just point out is when she first emerges holding the one white dove, did you notice that there was bird shit all over her arm? Oh, I thought that was so funny. 

Todd:  Oh, dude. That’s hilarious. Honestly, I was I was paying attention to the dove because, you know, what’s going through my mind in this scene is as as a, as a guy who’s done magic and has done stage shows, I’ve worked with doves before, and so I know how you’re supposed to handle them. And the whole time I’m watching her release these doves and and everything, I’m thinking, oh my god. That’s not what you’re supposed to do. She’s as she was walking out with that one dove on her hand, she was clearly clipping its its toes between her fingers to keep it from from flying off, and you totally do not do that with with doves or pigeons or anything because they will try to fly off, and they can leave their toes or their, you know, behind. That’s how fragile the bones are in their in their toes. So I was paying I was watching that the whole time, to be honest.   I was like, she’s a terrible dove handler. I guess it was a a bit of a John Woo moment there. And you know what? We did see doves earlier, actually. There was, it’s a blink if you miss it bit. But when they’re showing the portraits in the castle or I’m sorry, the house. Might as well be a castle. When they’re showing the portraits on the wall, there’s a portrait of her, and she is holding a dove in that portrait. 

Craig:  That’s right. I forgot that. Yeah. Now that you say that, I totally remember. 

Todd:  But it’s just a real surreal kind of concerned about what happens to her or that it makes sense or anything. It’s just more interested in the general feel that it’s getting across, which is honestly very typical of French films. You know, and I say this a lot too about Asian films Todd. Like, they’re not always concerned about making sense, as far as a plot goes. They’re way more concerned about just getting a a look and a feel to it. Well, like the Italian cellos, you know, of the seventies sixties as well, kind of did that. I felt like this movie was was definitely had a plot to it, but the ending is not anything anyone’s gonna say is is wonderful, except for the fact that it does sort of it has its its its own kind of closure, in a an emotional sense, I suppose. 

Craig:  Yeah. I I know what you mean, and I am not versed in foreign films like you are. So I I don’t know how it compares to other French films, but I actually kind of liked it because the whole movie is it’s not nonsensical, like it’s not completely out of the realm of reality. It’s like surreal. It’s surreal, and it feels kinda like a fairy tale. And the ending, you know, the and then the princess went free. Like, that that’s fine. You know? Like, I was okay with it.   And it was it it was really aside from the bird shit, you know, kind of a a beautiful kind of a beautiful image of her just, you know, walking into the forest, like, and she had said several times before this, like she had begged Louise to kill her. She just wanted to die. She didn’t wanna go through this anymore. She was done. And so just kind of her walking into the woods, I don’t know, you know, who knows in the realm of reality what happened to her, but I don’t care. It’s it’s kind of like she’s just escaped this nightmare. Yeah. And and I I was satisfied.   I thought it was a satisfying ending. 

Todd:  It’s like in trying to help her. Her father was really holding her captive. Right? 

Craig:  Absolutely. Yeah. 

Todd:  It’s pretty classic. I know what’s best for you, my daughter, and this is how I’m going to be. And, she’s finally comes out her on her own against it. You know, it’s also interesting that she wasn’t rescued by anybody, You know, she just basically does all this on her own. So it’s it’s also very empowering. 

Craig:  Oh, man. I don’t know about that. But, what what in in reading about this, in watching it, it reminded me of several things and, I think really as it turned out, the things that it reminded me of, really drew inspiration from this. I I I think that this inspired a lot of filmmakers. There have been, multiple films with very similar plots, that I I think some of the filmmakers have even specifically said they were inspired by it. You know, even, you know, as directly as a father trying to give the daughter, you know, youth and rejuvenation or or even specifically a new face. I mean, there have been other movies that have been, made. The one that it kept reminding me of was a movie that I haven’t even seen but I remember seeing, the previews for it, 2,000 eleven’s The Skin I Live In with Antonio Banderas.   Amado. And and and looking and yeah. Yeah. And then looking, you know, at I don’t even know, the interwebs, you know, just reading stuff. That was one of the ones that was mentioned as one that was inspired by this movie. You know, like I said earlier, I think when it was first released in the United States, it was released under a different title. It was dubbed, so I imagine that the dialogue was largely changed, and they cut out tons and tons. I know that in 2003, it was released theatrically again in the United States uncut and uncensored.   And initially when it came out in France, it got really, really mixed reviews, mostly negative reviews. In fact, there was one female critic who praised it and she almost lost her job for praising it because it had been so panned by all the other critics. But now people, like you said at the very beginning, people are saying that this is like a horror classic. You know, it shows up on movies like, you know, the top 100 movies you need to see before you die or whatever. And I don’t know. I don’t know if it deserves that kind of acclaim, but, it’s a good movie. I was really pleasantly surprised when when you sent me the title. The the very first thing that I thought of was Billy Idol’s song, Eyes Without A Face.   And apparently he was inspired, by this movie to to write that song. He kind of took the narrative and changed it around so it was more about a couple of lovers instead of a father and daughter. These older films are really not what I am drawn Todd. It’s not what I watch in my leisure time for fun, but I I found myself being appreciative to you because I would have never picked it and, I was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. 

Todd:  Yeah. I I agree. I was also pleasantly surprised, and I was really glad to force you to watch it because, 

Craig:  I know I know 

Todd:  you’re not drawn to these things. And, I I am kinda drawn to these things, and so I’m I’m glad we got the chance to watch it. But more than anything, I’m glad that you’re not mad at me for making you watch it. Oh, good. Craig likes it. We can go on another week. 

Craig:  Yeah. I I do, folks, often get mad at Todd for his selections. But this week, I text but   this week I texted him after I’d   watched it and said, dude, I didn’t wanna watch this at all. But, it was it was Todd, and I look forward to talking about it. 

Todd:  Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. You can find us on Itunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. You can also find us on Facebook where you can, like our page, pass it along to a friend, converse about this movie or any other movie you’d like us to do in the future. Until that future time, I’m Todd and 

Craig:  I’m Craig 

Todd:  with 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.