Eyes Without a Face / Blood of the BeastsGeorges Franju's beautifully grotesque film Eyes Without a Face has inspired many an imitator, most notably Jess Franco, with his films The Awful Doctor Orloff and Faceless. Dr. Génessier is a well-recognized doctor in the field of tissue transplant (he practices a lot at home on his dogs) so, when his daughter’s face is mutilated in a car crash due to his erratic driving, he feels a little guilty and he enlists his assistant Louise to go out and start kidnapping blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauties so he can slice their faces off and graft them onto his daughter. Although, so far it hasn't been going too well. Each transplant has been a failure and he (along with his daughter) is starting to loose hope. One day Louise brings home yet another young woman, ol' Doc drugs her up, breaks out the scalpel and gets to work - finally, success! the skin-graft holds and Christiane is no longer faceless. But after a few days her new face slowly begins to decay and by the end of twelve days her face is pretty much a decomposing mess. So the good Doctor procures yet another young lovely and prepares to begin the transplant process afresh. But this time his daughter has had enough of his disregard for human life and she sets the girl free, stabs Louise in the neck then releases the dogs on her father, whose face they promptly disfigure (karma's a bitch, huh?) Although a little slow in the beginning, the film definitely has its moments - from the ethereal figure of a surreally-masked Christiane gliding around the house to the films carnival-like theme song, to the good doctor peeling back girls faces - this flick is sure to leave you with some mind-boggling imagery. Sadly we never actually get to see what Christiane's face looks like under the mask… well, there is one shot but it's deliberately out of focus so the viewer imagines the worst I suppose. Overall a decent film for its time with some visually appealing imagery, but… call me a brainless "gorehound'' or whatever I still far prefer the tasteless sleaze 'n' gore of Franco's tribute, Faceless. Blood of the Beasts (1949) Included on this disc as an extra is Georges Franju's second film, Le Sang des Bêtes, a grotesque 20 minute documentary detailing a normal day in a Parisian slaughterhouse. This has seriously got to be some of the most repulsive imagery I've EVER seen captured on film - horses, sheep and cows all casually (and in extreme graphic detail) eviscerated, disembowelled and literally turned inside-out by jolly, whistling butchers. First off we see a gorgeous white stallion brought in and swiftly dispatched via a bolt-pistol to the forehead, then a peg-legged butcher cuts its throat and steaming blood gushes out in waves. As its hooves are being hacked off a narrator nonchalantly explains how they'll probably be used for "women's toiletries". Next up are the cows - no bolt-pistol for them, they just get immediately decapitated then have their limbs sawn off. Even then, the cow's torso still violently convulses. We then see a matronly woman slice open the torso's belly and manually empty its overflowing bowels into the concrete guttering that surrounds the work floor. Inter-cut with the slaughterhouse scenes is footage of the surrounding areas - seemingly the slums of Paris - which is narrated by a woman. About mid-way through a suitable quote from the poet Charles Baudelaire appears onscreen: ''I shall strike you without anger and without hate, like a butcher'' The final slaughterhouse segment focuses on sheep, this section has some of the most surreal visuals - namely a long line of limbless / headless sheep all convulsing at once, like some kind of spastic chorus line. Wow, this is unforgettable - yet undeniably repellent - cinema indeed!
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