January 16, 2016

I'm so glad I found this one on Youtube. I ranked it at #57 on my list of top horror films of all time. French director Georges Franju created one of the all time creepy films that doesn't scare you with cheap tricks, but with astonishing visuals that fill your soul with dread.

Kenneth Turan for the LA Times wrote:

Once seen, never forgotten, "Eyes Without a Face" is a film to haunt your dreams. Disturbing, disorienting, quietly terrifying, it's one of the least known of the world's great horror movies and, in its own dark way, a startlingly beautiful and artful piece of cinema as well.

Directed by Georges Franju, "Les Yeux Sans Visage," to give it its original French title, was first released in 1959, when its pulp subject matter and disturbing imagery led many European critics to cavalierly dismiss it.

In the United States, its fate was even worse: It was dubbed and released under the improbable title of "The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus."

"Eyes Without a Face" was only Franju's second feature, made when he was 47, and, he explained to an interviewer, it was filmed under a series of restrictions. "I was told, 'No sacrilege because of the Spanish market, no nudes because of the Italian market, no blood because of the French market and no martyrized animals because of the English market.' And I was supposed to be making a horror film!"

Enjoy!

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