Faceless is a 1988 French slasher film directed by Jess Franco.
A model named Barbara Hallen (Caroline Munro) has disappeared and her father gets private detective Sam Morgan (Chris Mitchum) to go to Paris to find his daughter. Barbara's trail leads Morgan to a plastic surgery clinic owned by Dr. Flamand (Helmut Berger). Morgan's investigation reveals the horrifying secret behind the Doctor's miracle cures which is blood and organs taken from kidnapped young women. As Morgan's investigation closes in, witnesses are eliminated one by one; each in a more horrible way.
Tropes:
- Ambiguous Ending: The film ends with Morgan and Barbara bricked up alive inside a cell in the clinic, and the villains celebrating Ingrid's successful face transplant and seemingly escaping scot-free. However, the final scene has Terry receiving Morgan's answering message that tells him where Barbara is and exactly what is going on. He immediately books a flight to Paris. What is not known is if he will be in time to save Barbara and Morgan.
- And Show It to You: Dr. Moser not only cuts the face off Florence Guerin, but he then holds it up in front of her flensed face, with her eyes moving to follow it, as he tells her how pretty it will make Ingrid once he transplants it on to her.
- As Herself: Florence Guérin plays an actress named Florence Guérin.
- The Bad Guys Win: One interpretation of the Ambiguous Ending is that, having succeeded with Ingrid's face transplant, the villains will continue on with their illegal activities, and Morgan and Barbara will die of thirst and starvation after being bricked up alive in Barbara's cell.
- Bilingual Bonus: On the American version, the last line of the film spoken by Terry Hallen is in the French language. What the line actually translates to is "Mrs. Ginny, get me out on the first flight to Paris".
- Blackmail Backfire: Mrs. Sherman works out that something illegal is going on at the clinic, and attempts to blackmail Dr. Flamand over it. Flamand does his best to persuade her that her suspicions are groundless, but when she persists, he sends Nathalie to kill her.
- Brother–Sister Incest: Dr. Flamand had a least one threesome with his sister Ingrid and his lover Nathalie.
- Danger Takes a Backseat: Barbara is kidnapped when she is lured into Nathalie's car for cocaine. Dr. Flamand is hiding in the backseat and grabs and immobilizes her while Nathalie injects her with a sedative.
- Depraved Bisexual: Nathalie is Dr. Flamand's lover and willing participant in his illegal operations. She willingly seduces both men and women to secure subjects for his experiments.
- Disposable Sex Worker: After Barbara's skin is damaged—rendering her unsuitable for the face transplant—Dr. Flamand and Nathalie abduct a prostitute named Melissa as a substitute. She dies on the operating table.
- Eye Scream: Nathalie kills Mrs. Sherman by driving a hypodermic syringe through her eye.
- Facial Horror: Ingrid's face is hideously disfigured when one of her brother's former patients throws acid in it. Her brother then surgically mutilates several over beautiful women in an attempt to find a cure for her.
- Girl on Girl Is Hot: Dr. Flamand and Nathalie bring Disposable Sex Worker Melissa back to the clinic. Flamand excuses himself and then watches Nathalie and Melissa have sex over video before Nathalie sedates her to become an unwilling donor for a face transplant.
- Hand Gagging: When Dr. Flamand grabs Barbara from the backseat of Nathalie's car, he clamps his hand over her mouth to prevent her from screaming.
- Herr Doktor: Dr. Moser is a Nazi surgeon who worked at Auschwitz and Dachau and who has been in hiding since the war. Flamand brings him to operate on Ingrid as he is the only person to have ever performed a successful face transplant.
- Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday: Takes place in the run-up to Christmas and ends on New Year's Day, or just after.
- Human Resources: The secret behind Doctor Flamand's miracle cures is blood and organs taken from kidnapped young women.
- I Love the Dead: Gordon, Dr. Flamand's creepy orderly, is dissecting Mélissa's corpse for disposal. After cutting off her disfigured head with a chainsaw, he lifts it up and kisses it.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Morgan kills Gordon by shoving back into a spiked tool rack where he impales the back of his skull.
- Interrogation by Vandalism: While interrogating the effeminate fashion photographer Maxence, Morgan gets answers out of him by ripping his designer shirt.
- One-Word Title
- Orderlies are Creeps: Gordon, the orderly who assists Dr. Flamand in his illegal operations, is a near-mute who rapes Barbara while she is shackled to her bed. And from Nathalie's reaction, this is not the first time this has happened. He is also a necrophiliac.
- Peek-a-Boo Corpse: After the nurse discovers Barbara locked up in the hidden cell, she attempts to flee but then stumbles across Melissa's decaying and maggot-infested head inside the cupboard in Gordon's workroom.
- Priceless Ming Vase: During the fight between Morgan and Doudou, Maxence keeps shrieking because he is terrified that his Ming vase is going to get smashed. Although several other pieces of pottery get smashed, the Ming survives. At the end of the fight, Doudou is unconscious and Morgan is holding the vase. He tosses it to Maxence, who nervously catches it and tells Morgan what he wants to know to get rid of him. After Morgan leaves, Maxence gives the vase to Doudou to put back on the dresser. The still groggy Doudou immediately drops it and it shatters.
- Private Detective: Sam Morgan is a private investigator hired by Barbara's father to go to Paris and find her after she disappears.
- Robbing the Dead: After murdering Mrs. Sherman by driving a hypodermic syringe through her eye, Nathalie casually helps herself to a gold necklace on the dresser.
- Sarcastic Confession: When one of his patients asks him what the secret of his rejuvenation treatment is, Dr. Flamand tells her that involves the injection of blood and bone marrow from young women. He then embellishes the story with fictitious details about it having to be harvested from virgins on the night of the full moon to make it sound like an elaborate joke.
- Shear Menace: Nathalie murders the gigolo she hired for Ingrid by driving a pair of scissors through his throat.
- The Speechless: Gordon, the creepy orderly who acts as The Igor to Dr. Flamand, is a near-mute whose vocalizations are limited to unintelligible grunts.
- Spiteful Spit: After escaping Gordon and locking him in her padded cell, Barbara spits contemptuously in his face (although the spittle is stopped by the glass in the cell door).
- Tear Your Face Off: Beautiful women are abducted by Dr. Flamand's female assistant and kept hostage. The doctor uses the skin of the women to perform plastic surgery on his disfigured sister, but the experiments leave the victims mutilated and dead.
- This Is a Drill: Gordon murders the nurse he locks in the cupboard in the storeroom by using a power drill to drill through the cupboard door and her skull.
- Wardrobe Wound: Conducting Interrogation by Vandalism on the effeminate fashion photographer Maxence, Morgan gets answers out of him by ripping his designer shirt, which reduces Maxence to tears.
