Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Daffy Duck Looney Tunes cartoon, the 1942 The Daffy Duckaroo , directed by Norman McCabe.
This was the first black-and-white Looney Tunes short to open with the "bulls-eye" titles similar to the ones in Merrie Melodies but (usually) with thicker rings. This would continue for the rest of the black-and-white Looney Tunes shorts up to Puss n' Booty.
Before the start of our feature presentation, ACME would like you to join us in watching a bunch of actors cracking themselves up when things go wrong -
It's great to know that Carol Burnett is still with us
We've picked another entry from the excellent reference book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Schneider. Today's film is the 1960 horror classic Eyes Without a Face (Les Yeus Sans Visage) directed by Georges Franju and starring Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, and Édith Scob. (Unfortunately, I could not find the film posted with subtitles but please stick with it. You'll get the gist of it and the visuals are stunning, but not too gory.) Although the film passed through the European censors, the film's release in Europe was controversial nevertheless. . The initial release of the film was met with negative reactions from film critics. An English film critic for The Spectator was nearly fired for writing it a positive review, while the general critical reaction had been poor. One French critic stated the film was "in a minor genre and quite unworthy of his [director Georges Franju] abilities." Franju responded by saying that the film was his attempt to get the minor genre to be taken seriously. The film was initially released in the US in an edited version titled The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus - an odd title considering there's no one named Dr. Faustus in the film. The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour would like you to join us in watching this classic drama, Eyes Without A Face. So push away from the table, get comfortable and enjoy the film.
The Jean Redon novel that served as the basis for Eyes Without a Face was even more unsettling than the movie. Franju and his producer, Jules Borkon, knew that they were facing potential censorship problems with this picture, so they recruited the prestigious screenwriting team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac to give the story a much-needed sense of humanity. Boileau and Narcejac, who had already written screenplays for Henri-Georges Clouzot's Diabolique and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, transformed a tawdry pulp fiction into a cautionary tale about a scientist trying to play God as well as a psychological melodrama propelled by a father's all-consuming guilt over his daughter's condition.
In 1984 Billy Idol released the single Eyes Without a Face from the album Rebel Yell. The song features background vocals by Idol's then-girlfriend Perri Lister who sings in the chorus the phrase "les yeux sans visage" which is the French translation for "eyes without a face" and the original French title of this film.
Demand Euphoria!
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