Curse of the Faceless Man (1958)
* 1/2 (out of 4)
When the ruins of Pompeli are searched, a stone man is recovered. He's taken to a museum where he apparently attacks a woman, which puts her into a state of shock where it seems she has dreams to where she might have some connection to the man. According to the film, this stone man is caught somewhere between life and death and I'm sure the majority of the viewers are going to know that feeling because there's very little to enjoy here. I say there's very little to enjoy but thankfully the film is bad enough to where you can enjoy bits and pieces of it but this only applies to those who enjoy bad movies and can get some entertainment out of them. There are a lot of questionable things in this film but the biggest one to me is a scene early on where a doctor reads us something about the stone man while the image on screen is just the letter that is being read to us. This entire scene struck me as poorly made because if they're going to show us the letter the entire time then what's the point of having it read to us? Since it is being read to us then why not have the camera on one of the characters to try and get a reaction shot? The dialogue in this film is bad enough to turn anyone to stone as the majority of the running time it has either this doctor or that doctor explaining that everything they're saying is true yet the viewer will be wondering where the proof is. There's no question that this is made like a mummy film but the only exception is that instead of bandages our man is made out of stone. The ending, which I won't ruin, is the exact same as one of the Universal Mummy films from the 40s (I won't give the title just to avoid spoiling the ending). Another major problem is the performances, which range from poor to downright bad. The majority of the lines are bad enough and the poor delivery certainly doesn't help them any. At just 67-minutes the film isn't too long but one just wishes that there was more energy in it. The bad dialogue and bad acting adds a few laughs but there's still no doubt that this is a poorly made film that doesn't have enough life to keep it going.
