The movie itself isn't very good, but fans of the genre (this writer included) will want to see it. Curse is a blatant reworking of The Mummy (1932) with sci-fi trappings borrowed from The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), at one point even copying that film's famous 3-D shot, even though Curse was filmed flat, in two dimensions. Still, it has an interesting monster designed by Filipino-American makeup artist Charles Gemora, screendom's greatest "gorilla man" (he built ape suits and usually portrayed, extremely well, the primates he designed) and designer of the Martian briefly seen in The War of the Worlds (1953). As low-budget monsters go, this film's immortal Etruscan gladiator is memorable even when the movie isn't.

In the scene clearly stolen from Black Lagoon, a workman in Pompeii accidentally discovers the buried remains of a lava-encrusted (?) body, a victim of the famous Mount Vesuvius eruption of 79 A.D., his apparently dead hand protruding toward the camera from the muck a la Creature. The worker also finds a jewel box containing a few precious stones and a mysteriously anachronistic bronze medallion.

The mummified (?) body and the jewel box are shipped to the Museum of Pompeii in nearby Naples, exteriors of the museum played by Griffith Park Observatory, the popular attraction a short distance from the Hollywood Sign. En route, however, the creature comes to life, strangles the truck driver, and causes a fiery crash, though the creature is undamaged.

Head curator Dr. Carlo Fiorella (Luis Van Rooten), his scientist daughter, Maria (Adele Mara), and Dr. Paul Mallon (Richard Anderson), formerly Maria's boyfriend, investigate. Another scholar, Dr. Emmanuel (Felix Locher), soon joins them with news that he's translated the bronze medallion, which identifies the creature, finally delivered. He's Etruscan gladiator Quintillus Barelius (Bob Bryant) who, like the Mummy of Universal's ‘30s and ‘40s films, pines away for a lost love, who coincidentally bears an uncanny resemblance to Mallon's current girlfriend, painter Tina Enright (Elaine Edwards). Blurring the lines between science fiction (radiation figures into the monster's immortality) and fantasy, she has a psychic connection to Quintillus, haunted by dreams and driven to paint his image.

Curse of the Faceless Man plods along its well-trodden path pretty unimaginatively, but this is compensated slightly by the faceless creature itself, patterned after plaster castings of the original negative molds of Vesuvian victims burned alive by volcanic ash. Like the Creature from the Black Lagoon but virtually no other classic movie monsters, the Quintillus costume is form fitting, so that when the monster moves about and bends his joints the illusion of an encrusted Etruscan maintains a modest suspension of disbelief. Admirably, too, even on this high-def Blu-ray version, I couldn't spot any zippers or seams. And the monster is indeed faceless, an eerie concept that director Edward L. Cahn strangely never capitalizes upon. Very slight variations of this creature later turned up on several Irwin Allen-produced shows, including Lost in Space. Curse of the Faceless Man's other saving grace is Gerald Fried's musical score, moody and rather unusually orchestrated for a ‘50s sci-fi film.

Written to order by science-fiction scribe Jerome Bixby (whose screenplay to Faceless's co-feature, It! The Terror from Beyond Space, is much better), the movie marks time, goes through the motions and otherwise is generally unmemorable. Its strange fusing of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy film elements may partly have been the result of simultaneous fading interesting in ‘50s-era sci-fi conventions and renewed interest in Gothic horror, precipitated by first-time television airings of Universal's classic monster movies of the ‘30s and ‘40s, and Britain's Hammer and their highly successful remakes. Indeed, Hammer's excellent remake of The Mummy premiered the following year.

Video & Audio

As noted above, an earlier DVD-R of Curse of the Faceless Man was full-frame and looked quite bad; this new Blu-ray correctly reframes the picture to its original 1.85:1 widescreen. That may not make it a better movie, but at least now it resembles one. Opticals, i.e., the opening titles and process shots like dissolves and fades, are notably grainy, and straight cuts aren't that much better, but it still looks reasonably good overall. The audio, mono English only with no subtitle options, is also greatly improved. The disc itself is region A encoded.

Extra Features

MGM apparently has no extant trailer for Curse, a shame, but Kino engaged former Fangoria magazine editor Chris Alexander for a commentary. It's not bad, but he's needlessly condescending and almost apologetic. Better commentators such as Tom Weaver - the Rolls Royce of such specialized work - find humor in these pictures (his book Poverty Row Horrors is both exhaustively research yet also both fair and, at times, extremely witty) but recognize that even a picture the likes of Curse of the Faceless Man deserves no less effort and industry as, say, Citizen Kane.

Final Thoughts

One of the very lesser ‘50s sci-fi films but still enjoyably goofy, Curse of the Faceless Man is Recommended.

Stuart Galbraith IV is the Kyoto-based film historian and publisher-editor of World Cinema Paradise. His new documentary and latest audio commentary, for the British Film Institute's Blu-ray of Rashomon, is now available.