EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1959)

It's October, my horror/fantasy month, and I'll start out with this French classic which may be the first art house horror film--heck, one of the only art house horror films (CARNIVAL OF SOULS, PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK, Herzog's NOSFERATU, and maybe THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT are the only other ones I could come up). It's actually more like a fairy tale than a horror story in its atmosphere, but truly horrific things do happen (as in some fairy tales, I guess). Pierre Brasseur is a doctor who lives with overwhelming guilt over having been the cause of a car accident which caused the disfigurement of his lovely daughter (Edith Scob). He reported her as dead, and a funeral has even been held, but actually she is being held a more or less voluntary prisoner in his mansion, wearing an expressionless white mask and living in limbo until her father can provide her with a new face. His method is to kidnap young lovely girls and literally peel off their faces in order to graft them onto his daughter. (The body that is buried in place of his daughter is that of one of the unlucky young women who died after having her face removed.) Unfortunately, the grafts don't take--we witness one attempt that seems to work, but soon the skin is rejected and begins disintegrating. Also in the house are a bunch of penned-up dogs who are apparently being experimented upon, and Brasseur's lover, Alida Valli, who helps him in his experiements. The police eventually suspect something nasty is afoot, and they bait the doctor with a young woman, but the plan goes awry, Still, events lead to the doctor's downfall and an ambiguous fate for his daughter. The sight of Scob practically gliding through the house in her mask and robes is eerily beautiful, as is the last shot of the movie as Scob glides outdoors with the snarling dogs that she has let loose on her father, with a single white dove flying along with her. There isn't much here for an audience expecting lots of gore, though there is a famous, very brief scene of the doctor lifting a woman's face off of her head that apparently disturbed viewers back in the day. There are many murky and chopped-up public domain tapes of this, but try to see the beautifully restored Criterion disc. Original French title: Les Yeux Sans Visage; alternate American release title: Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus [DVD]