FACELESS (1988)

Directed by Jesus Franco

Starring Brigitte Lahaie and Caroline Munro

Franco was a master back in the 1960s, directing the Orloff films ("The Awful Dr. Orloff," "Dr. Orloff's Monster," etc.) but I'm not a huge fan of his '70s and '80s stuff, most of which appeals to the S&M crowd in my book. Franco had a real taste for S&M obviously -- it even shows in some of his late '60s material, like the German version of "The Bloody Judge."

Anyway, this is much more of a late 1980s slasher/gorefest, with frequent Jean Rollin starlet Lahaie playing a baddie who serves an evil plastic surgeon (Helmut Berger) who uses organs and blood stolen from young women as part of his therapy. After his wife is horribly scarred by an angry patient, he is forced to search high and low for the appropriate victims to serve as unwilling donors."

When this evil French duo kidnap an American supermodel (Munro), her father (aging Telly Savalas) hires a private eye to investigate. The rest is basically a slow-moving crime drama with a very high body count and plenty of really impressive gore effects, including a "needle in the eye" scene that still has me wondering how they pulled it off. Quite an illusion.

Howard Vernon even makes a cameo as a "Dr. Orloff" in a pointless scene. Former porn actress Lahaie somehow manages to keep her clothes on throughout the proceedings, as does Munro, who spends most of her time writhing in a padded cell. Hammer veteran Anton Diffring ("The Man Who Could Cheat Death" and "Circus of Horrors") is also here in a small role as a master mad surgeon.

The big problem with "Faceless" is that, despite all the gore and the presence of horror veterans Vernon, Savalas, Diffring and Lahaie, the film just isn't a horror movie. The makeup effects, however, are amazing. And the film is helped by a very strange ending.