Rent Stolen Face (1952)

Plastic Surgery, Proto-Hitchcock and a Cockney Accent Nobody Ordered - Stolen Face review by griggs

Stolen Face opens with a doctor arguing that plastic surgery for people with facial disfigurements would significantly reduce crime. If that sentence made you do a double-take, the film has approximately ninety more minutes of that energy waiting for you.

What follows is a proto-Vertigo — obsession, a remade woman, a man who cannot let go — filtered through the mad scientist B-movies of the previous decade and shot with the conviction of someone who has absolutely no idea how unhinged it all is. Lizabeth Scott commits fully to a dual role that would test a far better script; Paul Henreid, asked to play both charming romantic lead and creeping obsessive, manages neither with any great distinction.

Genuinely terrible, genuinely gripping — the two are not mutually exclusive.