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Juan Carlos (Arturo de Córdova) has been a most successful homicide
investigator in his yet young life, but with the killing spree of the
"Mutilator", an extremely ruthless serialkiller killing first
and foremost prostitutes, he seems to hit wall after wall after wall, to
an extent that his boss thinks about replacing him - but the police
psychiatrist Dr Britel (Miguel Ángel Ferriz) persuades the chief to let
him help Juan Carlos, a close friend of his. But when they go on an
undercover investigation together, the most peculiar thing happens: Juan
Carlos completely blows his top just because he witnesses a woman kissing
a man on the dancefloor. Dr Britel decides to put Juan Carlos on his couch
for some psychotherapy, and he learns about his strange dreams about a
Faceless man who he believes to be the killer ... and also, there's some
weird stuff regarding Juan Carlos' mother (Matilde Palou). Upon
investigating the mother-aspect of things further, Dr Britel learns that
Juan Carlos had a very domineering, very possessive mother who even broke
up Juan Carlos' engagement with the girl he loved, Ana Maria (Carmen
Molina), of all people his adopted sister. Mum has died two years ago
though, and now Juan Carlos moves back in with Ana Maria in mum's house
... but starts behaving more and more erratic, especially when he fires
maid Rosa (Queta Lavat) after he has caught her kissing her fiancé. Later
that night, Rosa is murdered, most probably by the Mutilator ... Dr
Britel arrives at Juan Carlos' house, and he finds more and more evidence
that Juan Carlos might actually be the Mutilator - to the point where Juan
Carlos throws him out of the house ... to later call him back to keep him
from going completely bonkers. By now, Dr Britel has almost enough
evidence to arrest Juan Carlos, but only almost, and Juan Carlos is his
friend, so he tranquilizes him to ponder upon what to do ... but Juan
Carlos comes to sooner than the doc might expect and now tries to kill Ana
Maria, upon which Dr Britel has to shoot him dead in order to save her -
but that weighs so heavily on Britel that he contemplates suicide ... In
many a way this is a rather ahead-of-its-time little psychological
thriller, as it uses Freudian methods to track down its killer, including
his theories about interpretation of dreams (which leads to quite a few
wonderfully surreal scenes) and is full of sexual allusions rather ahead
of its time (at least in genre movies). Now add to this a few good
suspense scenes and atmospheric camerawork and you come up with ... well,
a pretty good genre movie most certainly under-appreciated by researchers
of the genre for contemplating motives Psycho
is these days praised for introducing to the big screen a decade later,
but not a classic - it's a bit too simplistic in narrative to be that and
most of the acting is rather wooden. Still, definitely worth a watch for
the genre fan!
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find The Faceless Man at adultvideouniverse.com
