Here is a cult film that attains what I imagine to be universal likableness. If someone described this movie to me, I probably would dismiss it: "A mad scientist kills young girls in an effort to remove their faces and transplant them onto his daughter's accident-scarred face. In the end he is killed by a number of dogs he keeps for no apparent reason.
Like nearly all cult films, which in recollection seem brief, memorable and action-packed, the film is (in the watching) unbearably talky. End of point.
As Mr. Strick pointed out at the screening, the film is very Cocteau-influenced. To this I would add, Hitchcock's family dynamics, something of the Gothic, and a score that prefigures Danny Elfman's work for Tim Burton. This all overstates the film's style a bit, since the sets are cheap and a great deal of the scenes unremarkable, but when these elements come to the front, one immediately starts to attention.
Neither a great movie nor essential viewing, I can't help but feel that I will watch this movie again in my life and enjoy it again, as well. It has a weird, squirmy uniqueness that is all the more enjoyable as it lapses in and out of self-awareness about its B-quality, its camp, and its artistic pretensions. Most art-films are secretly B-movies (see: Godard), but this B-horror flick is nearly unique in quietly being something of an art-film.
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