Trailer
Plot summary
An American radar station in rural Winthrop, Manitoba, runs a small atomic reactor to power its long-range experiments. When residents of the farming village nearby die, autopsies find their brains and spinal cords gone and two small holes in each skull. The villagers blame fallout from the base's nuclear work, and local officials and the military argue over who may examine the dead. Major Jeff Cummings questions townsfolk for anything unusual, while the base denies that radiation is involved and reports no missing airmen. Professor R. E. Walgate, a retired British scientist, lives near the station and is writing a book about telekinesis and thought projection.
Cast
- James Dyrenforthas Mayor Hawkins
- Robert MacKenzieas Const. Howard Gibbons
- Gil Winfieldas Dr. Warren
- Launce Maraschalas Melville
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Fiend Without a Face (1958)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Screenwriter Herbert J. Leder was set to direct but, as an American, could not get a British work permit in time, so Arthur Crabtree replaced him. Crabtree left the set after a heated argument with the producers and stayed away for days, during which Marshall Thompson directed the film himself.
- For the film's July 1958 New York opening at the Rialto Theatre, the producers set out a "living and breathing Fiend" in a steel-barred glass case that moved its spinal cord tail and made menacing sounds. The crowds grew so large that New York police ordered the display removed as a public disturbance.
- Britain's Board of Film Censors demanded cuts before release and gave the film an X certificate, but critics were still aghast at its special effects. Questions were raised in Parliament about why the censors had allowed a film accused of "overdosing on blood and gore".
- The film's visible brain creatures were made with stop-motion animation, unusual for a low-budget science fiction thriller of the time. Florenz Von Nordoff directed the effects sequences, while the actual stop-motion was done in Munich by his partner, German effects artist K. L. Ruppel.
