This is another collaboration between crazed German actor Klaus Kinski, hack Italian director Sergio Garrone, and beautiful Dutch actress Katia Christine, and it is a marginal improvement over their other collaboration "Amanti di Mostro". The story is superficially similar to the other film. Once again, Kinski is a mad scientist married to Katia Christine, and once again he is carrying on the work of his late father-in-law (named "Ivan Rassimov" in this movie, which is perhaps an inside joke since Ivan Rassimov was a familiar character actor in Italian exploitation films during this era). But instead of Kinski turning himself into Mr. Hyde and attacking all the half-naked,local women, this movie has an "Eyes without a Face"-type plot where Kinski uses his Igor-like assistant to kidnap all the half-naked, local women in order to transplant their flesh onto his disfigured wife.
Sergio Garrone (to borrow a line from "Shock Cinema's" Steve Puchalski) probably couldn't successfully direct his own bowel movement, so it's impressive here that the direction at times approaches borderline competence (or maybe that should be credited to his Turkish co-director?). Kinski generally gave two kinds of performances in movies like this--scenery-gnawing or totally phoned-in. He definitely gnawed some serious scenery in "Amanti di Mostro", but here is performance is pretty much phoned-in (he also may have stormed off the set at some point because they seem to use a double for some of his scenes). If you're a fan of Katia Christine's acting, you'll enjoy this more than "Amanti" because she has much more screen time and essentially plays two different roles, one of which is deliciously evil. If you're more a fan of Katia Christine's body, however, you might prefer the other movie because she generally keeps her Victorian garments on here. There is as much nudity and even more gore than in "Amanti", but it all comes toward the end of the movie, by which time you may have already slipped into a boredom-induced coma.
Although the best thing about this might be the literal translation of the Italian title, "The Hand that Feeds Death", this was recently released on Region 1 DVD under the ho-hum title "Evil Face". I wouldn't really recommend this, but god knows I'VE seen worse movies.
Sergio Garrone (to borrow a line from "Shock Cinema's" Steve Puchalski) probably couldn't successfully direct his own bowel movement, so it's impressive here that the direction at times approaches borderline competence (or maybe that should be credited to his Turkish co-director?). Kinski generally gave two kinds of performances in movies like this--scenery-gnawing or totally phoned-in. He definitely gnawed some serious scenery in "Amanti di Mostro", but here is performance is pretty much phoned-in (he also may have stormed off the set at some point because they seem to use a double for some of his scenes). If you're a fan of Katia Christine's acting, you'll enjoy this more than "Amanti" because she has much more screen time and essentially plays two different roles, one of which is deliciously evil. If you're more a fan of Katia Christine's body, however, you might prefer the other movie because she generally keeps her Victorian garments on here. There is as much nudity and even more gore than in "Amanti", but it all comes toward the end of the movie, by which time you may have already slipped into a boredom-induced coma.
Although the best thing about this might be the literal translation of the Italian title, "The Hand that Feeds Death", this was recently released on Region 1 DVD under the ho-hum title "Evil Face". I wouldn't really recommend this, but god knows I'VE seen worse movies.