Blu-ray Release: Eyes Without a Face

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Oct. 15, 2013
Price: Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion


Eyes Without a Face movie scene

The eyes have it: Edith Scob stars in Eyes Without a Face.

The 1960 horror film Eyes Without a Face was directed by the highly regarded French filmmaker Georges Franju (Judex).

The movie tells the story of a brilliant, obsessive doctor (Pierre Brasseur, Children of Paradise), who, at his secluded chateau in the French countryside, attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore the beauty of his daughter’s (Edith Scob, Summer Hours) disfigured face. The horrifying price of his mission comes in the form of the faces of other young women, whom he kidnaps so he can use their own features to replace those of his daughter’s.

Eyes Without a Face is rare in horror cinema for its odd mixture of the ghastly and the lyrical, and it has been a major influence on the genre in the decades since its release. Generally regarded as one of the most evocative horror entries of its days, the film is filled with images — of terror, gore, and inexplicable beauty — that once seen are never forgotten.

Presented in French with English subtitles, Criterion’s Blu-ray edition of Eyes Without a Face includes many of the features that appeared on the label’s previously released DVD edition, which is still available.

Here’s a complete list of the features:

• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• New high-definition digital restoration of Blood of the Beasts, Georges Franju’s 1949 documentary about the slaughterhouses of Paris
• Archival interviews with Franju on horror, cinema, and the making of Blood of the Beasts
• New interview with actor Edith Scob
• Excerpts from Les grand-pères du crime, a 1985 documentary about Eyes Without a Face writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac
• Trailers
• A booklet featuring essays by novelist Patrick McGrath and film historian David Kalat

 

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.