B Movie Nation

Foundational Cinema

B Movie News

Curse of the Faceless Man (1958)

Found in the ruins of ancient Pompeii is this mummified man with a box of jewelry buried next to him. It’s soon discovered by the eminent historian Dr. Emenuel,Felix Locher, of ancient Roman Greek and Egyptian times that the body is that of a Roman slave and gladiator named Quintillus Aurellus, Bob Bryant. Aurellus was killed, along with thousands of fellow Romans, when Mt. Vesuvious blew its top in 79 AD and destroyed the city of Pompeii!

After spending some 2,000 years in limbo the ancient Roman slave/warrior Aurellus came to life, with the help of a modern x-ray machine, looking for his long lost love a daughter of a Roman aristocrat Lucila Lucia. As we’ll later find out Lucila has been reincarnated and is now American artist Tina Enright, Elaine Edwards, who’s fiancĂ©e Dr. Paul Mellon, Richard Anderson, is involved in the archaeological expedition that dug up the long dead and buried Quintillus Aurellus!

The faceless man, Quintillus Aurellus, suddenly comes to life and cause havoc all over the Italian city of Naples, the sister city to ancient Pompeii, in looking for his lost love the now pretty American artist Tina Enright. Tina does have an inkling to just who this stone man, or mummy, is in a number of dreams she has of him. This causes her to paint a portrait of the stone man without actually knowing who he is and what she has to do with him!

The stone, or faceless, man himself is so slow and uncoordinated that it’s miracle that he could catch up with, as well as kill, anyone in the movie. Yet he’s responsible for at least a dozen attacks that results in some two, a truck driver and museum security guard, deaths!

Finally getting what he wanted, his his long love Tina/Lucla, the stone man ends going up the river, or Mediterranean Sea. This has to do with the stone man miscalculating the time that he’s living in: 1958 AD not 79 AD. That cause him to self -destruct by not realizing that his escape plan, with Tina, was the wrong path for him to take! Since the long inactive Mt. Vesuvious is no longer a danger to him and the woman, together with the population of Naples, he’s so insanely in love with!

Nothing that out of the ordinary for a 1950’s horror movie if that’s what “The Curse of the Faceless Man” is supposed to be. What’s really good about the movie “the Curse of the Faceless Man” is its opening and closing soundtrack together with the stock footage of exploding volcanoes that are supposed to show Mt. Vesuvious’ 79 AD eruption! There’s also actor Filex Locher as ancient historian Dr. Emenuel who that same year-1958-will achieve motion picture immortality in him staring as the daffy and overzealous Dr. Carter Morton in that all time bad movie classic “Frankenstein’s Daughter”.