AKA: Les Yeux Sans Visage; The Horror Chamber of Dr Faustus
DVD review (region 2)
Directed by Georges Franju
Starring Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac, Jean Redon
Release date 12 May 2008

To try and fix his daughter’s horribly disfigured face, Dr Genessier kidnaps beautiful women and carries out skin grafts…

The late 1950s and early 1960s was a good time for horror movies. In the US Psycho subverted all accepted rules of the genre; in the UK Hammer Horror was at the height of its success while Peeping Tom pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable (even if it destroyed Michael Powell’s career in the process); and in France Georges Franju’s masterful Les Yeux Sans Visage would go on to influence subsequent generations of horror filmmakers.

Like Peeping Tom, the critical appreciation of Les Yeux Sans Visage didn’t come until many years later. It’s not difficult to see why the movie provoked such controversy. With its dark themes, fairly graphic scenes of skin slicing and general air of nastiness, this was strong stuff at the time – and it remains uneasy viewing today.

The jaunty but jarring fairground music of the movie’s opening sequence has a playfulness that almost suggests we’re in for a particularly black comedy. However, it develops into something much more lyrical, Franju creepily juxtaposing the fantastical with a matter-of-fact realism.

Dr Genessier’s employment of kidnap and murder (which seems to be more about scientific gains rather than any affection for his daughter) is all the more disturbing for his calm, emotionless demeanour. At first it’s difficult to find any real hero or heroine to latch on to – the character you suspect will save the day winds up plunging to her doom, while a couple of well-meaning coppers ultimately prove rather useless. In fact it’s Christiane, the doctor’s daughter, who emerges as the sympathetic, tragic figure of the movie. “Let me die,” she pleads desperately to Genessier's assistant Louise, and the character spends most of the movie ambling sadly around the house in an expressionless mask and uncomfortably accepting her father’s experiments. Eventually she breaks free in an unforgettable, and strangely beautiful, fairytale ending.

The sole DVD extra here is an interesting 10-minute feature, filmed shortly before Franju’s death in 1987, in which the director guides viewers through a couple of the movie’s scenes in an editing room. Matt McAllister

VERDICT: 9/10
A dark and disturbing classic of the genre.