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Since I want to watch two specific things with kind of similar premises, I decided to first watch the most famous surgeon thriller I know of, “La piel que habito”, which led me to find out about and watch every kind of similar title as well, and since I’ve got some things to say about them, I’m here, starting with the one movie that’s assumed to have started it all.
In terms of production, I guess it’s pretty good for its time, at no point I felt like the production was cheap and low budget, and the backgrounds add a lot to the sort of gothic atmosphere it was going for, the special effects are quite good for its time as well, noticeable in the transformation scenes, the expressionless mask that the main girl uses it’s good, mysterious and a bit creepy as well. The downside come from the characters being very plain looking, and the motions being rather bad, noticeable during the climax of the movie.
The sound effects were good for its time I guess, and everyone performed their role just fine. The music on the other hand was a big issue, mostly absent, and whenever present, it was just… misused. It was also very simple, repetitive and unfitting for the type of story, coming off as immersion breaking.
If you watched at least one of all the later titles influenced by it you know by now what the plot is about, a mad scientist killing young girls to take off their faces and using their skin on the face of his disfigured daughter. The pacing is quite good, balancing in a rather short runtime the plot progression along with enough downtime focused on the drama and characterization. I mean no character has a very distinctive nor complicated personality, or much of a backdrop, but each one is given at least some focus at some point to show their mentality during the whole thing, especially for the girl, who feels remorse for all the deaths caused because of her and has been in pain for so long that just wants to die. Since she is the character with the most focus on the film, the…kind of epic resolution and her actions in specific felt very cathartic. It doesn’t sound like much, but only one of the many movies inspired by it really gave enough attention to its characters, while every other title stopped at being passable shlock.
Every other contemporary movie that tried to copy it tried to add its own spin to the premise and plot structure, but ended up failing in the long run. That’s what makes this film half worth watching, once, even if it’s nothing special. It’s definitely not the credibility of the plot, since what happens it’s not very believable. It may have been quite the title for its time but I still think its rating everywhere is a bit too high, partly because of some movies that came before it, and partly because so many titles followed the same formula afterwards, that now it doesn’t feel special at all.
I mean, among the most famous titles, it influenced some aspects of Halloween and Face/Off, as well as La piel que habito which I mentioned at the beginning of this review, so I guess it has some sort of historical value added to it to give it a try, but it definitely doesn’t hold much rewatch value because of its simplicity.
6/10
