In an effort to extend the Halloween season, I recently watched the 1960 French horror film Les Yeux Sans Visage (Eyes without a Face) directed by Georges Franju, and it got me thinking about scary faces. In the world of horror and suspense films, the human face is a common locus of fear and anxiety, but why faces? What’s so frightening about faces?

Eyes without a Face is about a surgeon whose daughter has been horribly disfigured in a car accident that he caused. In an ultimately failed Frankenstein-like quest, he and his assistant, who is also his lover, lure a succession of women to his clinic, chloroform them, and attempt to transplant their faces onto his daughter. Franju’s film, which includes a long—at least it seems long—documentary-style scene of the surgical removal of a woman’s face, was so upsetting to audiences at the time that seven people fainted during a 1959 screening at the Edinburg Film Festival (Lowenstein 1998).

Eyes without a Face evokes the Nazi atrocities of World War II, but it also has a dream-like quality influenced by the French surrealist films of the 1920s and 1930s (Lowenstein 1998). The film received mixed reviews on its initial release, but it has been rereleased several times and is now part of the Criterion Collection. Today, it is considered a classic of the horror genre, but as I watched it for the first time, I was struck by the film’s illustration of several ways that faces can be scary.

Billy Idol’s song by the same name was inspired by Franju’s Eyes without a Face. A YouTuber has paired the song with scenes from the movie.

WARNING: The video includes some of the more gruesome parts of the movie, so it is not recommended for the faint of heart. 

The Importance of Faces

Faces are a central feature of our highly social species. For many years, it was believed that from birth infants could imitate the facial expressions of adults—a remarkable finding if true because the babies were too young to have learned imitation from experience and obviously could not see their own faces (Meltzoff and Moore 1977). Theories of innate “imitation modules” in the brain were proposed, and pictures of infants pursing their lips and sticking out their tongues were printed in thousands of textbooks. Unfortunately, as is sometimes the case in science, these studies were eventually replicated, and the results disappeared (Oostenbroek et al. 2016). The reality of newborn imitation is now in considerable doubt (Davis et al. 2021).

But faces still are very important to infants and adults. The cognitive psychologist and design maven Donald Norman published a book with the title Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles (Norman 1993), but the opposite is also true. Even without opening our mouths to speak, our facial expressions communicate volumes about our emotions and our reactions to events around us. Eye-tracking studies show that an hour after birth, infants spend more time tracking face-like drawings than drawings containing scrambled versions of the same elements; however, like other infant reflexes, this preference goes away in subsequent weeks (Johnson et al. 1991).

In his pioneering work The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin (1899) suggested that several basic emotions are characterized by specific facial expressions and that even people who are born blind display them. Subsequent studies have confirmed this view and suggest that facial expressions for some basic emotions are universal across cultures (Eibl-Eibesfeldt 1975). Although the universality of recognizable expressions of emotion has also been challenged (e.g., Russell 1994), there is complete agreement that the face is a powerful indicator of our feelings.

 

 

An illustration of the expression of terror from Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1899), based on a photograph by Guillaume Duchenne. Note the similarity of this illustration to the woman in the banner illustration for this article.

 

 

Behind the Mask

Another important function of faces is to display our identities. Since the coronavirus became part of our lives, we’ve learned that merely obscuring half of a person’s face makes it quite difficult to recognize them on the street, and of course, full masks obscure faces fully. Often the only way to reliably identify a person is by seeing their face. As a result, people who don a mask often do things they wouldn’t otherwise do and escape responsibility for their actions. In addition, there is always some uncertainty about what exactly the mask hides. We know the identities of slasher villains Michael Myers of the Halloween series and Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th films, but their hockey masks turn them into expressionless killers and make the faces underneath mysterious.

When they obscure a disfigured face, masks create suspense, setting up the possibility that the face will be revealed at some point in the drama. In Eyes without a Face, the daughter, Christiane, is often seen wearing her mask, but at a crucial point in the action her zombie-like face is revealed to frightening effect.

As Benjamin Radford, author of Bad Clowns (2016), points out, clowns are often the villains of horror films (e.g., The Joker and Pennywise of the Stephen King It miniseries and films). There is much more than just their unusual faces that makes bad clowns scary. For example, there is something quite powerful about having a fun and familiar thing turn into a scary figure. In addition, these films build on a long history of evil clowns. But clown masks and faces obscured by makeup undoubtedly add to the terrifying mix.

The Uncanny Valley

The phrase “eyes without a face” is a good description of a mask. Indeed, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas’s 2019 book Masks in Horror Cinema is subtitled “Eyes without Faces.” Christiane, the surgeon’s daughter in Eyes without a Face is played by the French actress Edith Scob (1937–2019) in her most memorable role. There is an ethereal quality to Scob’s portrayal of Christiane. For much of the film she wears a long satin housecoat, and rather than walking on the floor, she appears to float above it as she slowly glides through her father’s house. In describing Scob, director George Franju said, “She is a magic person. She gives the unreal reality” (Hudson 2019). He went on to cast her in several other films.

 

 

For most of the time Scob is on screen as Christiane, she wears a mask that is sculpted very close to her face and would be quite beautiful if it weren’t entirely frozen and lifeless. The creepiness of the mask is heightened by its placement within the uncanny valley (Seyama and Nagayam 2007; Wegner and Gray 2016). The uncanny valley is an effect that occurs when a robot, doll, or mask looks close to human but is still distinguishable from an actual healthy person (See Figure 1). In 2004, the uncanny valley caused a problem with the Christmas film The Polar Express, when several reviewers found the animated characters strangely unsettling (e.g. Clinton 2004).

A screenshot from the trailer of the 2004 film The Polar Express. Some reviewers found the film’s animation creepy because the figures were very close to human but not quite human. This is an example of the phenomenon known as the uncanny valley (YouTube).

In the case of Eyes without a Face, for a brief segment of the movie we see Scob’s normal face after what appears to be a successful face transplant, but for most of her time on screen she is wearing a mask. The side-by-side comparison of Scob masked and unmasked below illustrates the creepiness of the mask, which to my eye falls firmly within the uncanny valley. At one point in the film the disfigured Christiane, says, “My face frightens me. My mask frightens me more.”

The 2014 science fiction film Ex Machina provides an interesting contrast. Here a young programmer, Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), is brought to a remote location to conduct a kind of Turing test to determine whether the very sophisticated robot Ava (Alicia Vikander) is capable of thought and consciousness. In a reversal of the formula in Eyes without a Face, Ava’s body is quite obviously mechanical but her face is perfect. Although Ava is clearly a robot, she does not provoke the creepiness of The Polar Express or the masked Christiane of Eyes without a Face. Far from being repulsed by Ava, Caleb falls in love with her. The use of a real face rather than a mechanical one makes it much more plausible that Caleb would fall under her spell—as he does, with disastrous results.

Bloody Faces

Finally, one of the staples of the horror genre is body horror or biological horror, which involves damaging or altering the human body to produce grotesque images. Zombie movies employ this technique, and when body mutilation is applied to the face, it can be particularly effective.

In Eyes without a Face, Christiane briefly exposes her injured face to one of the women captured by her father. Our glimpse of the zombie-like image is quite brief, but the horror is reflected in the captive woman’s reaction shown in the banner photo of this article. Franju uses a number of body horror techniques in the film. A transplant that was initially thought to be successful is soon revealed to have failed, and the audience is subjected to a series of clinical photos of the progressive tissue rejection and rotting of Christiane’s face. Of course, the surgical face removal scene represents Franju’s most dramatic use of body horror, and its effectiveness was demonstrated by the outbreak of fainting among audience members.

Although several directors have used body horror methods, Canadian director David Cronenberg is particularly well known for gross and bloody body mutations (Cruz 2012). In his 1986 film The Fly, Jeff Goldblum plays the eccentric scientist Seth Brundle who is building a teleportation device. When he uses the teleporter on himself, his body is fused with a fly that had wandered into the device undetected. Initially all appears normal, but gradually Brundle acquires the characteristics of a fly. The final effect, shown in the image below, is quite frightening.

 

 

A Final Word

Faces are very important. They reveal our emotions and our identities, and perhaps more than any other area of the body, they are the focus of judgments about our attractiveness or unattractiveness. As evidence of the attention paid to faces, Fortune Business Insights (2021) estimated that the cosmetics industry in 2021 was worth $288 billion worldwide. By comparison, Business Wire (2021) estimated that the 2020 global film and video market was worth only $235 billion.

But after coming this far in an article about scary faces in film, perhaps it should be acknowledged that there are many people in the real world whose bodies are less than perfect. They were born with features that don’t fit the standard design, or they have been scarred by disease or injury. Often there is no way to hide these imperfections, and yet these people are entitled to lives as fulfilling as any other.

I have enjoyed horror films since I was a child, and after many decades of movie-going, that is unlikely to change. But our typical reactions to body horror in film pose a dilemma. The expression of revulsion in response to grotesque images in a Cronenberg film is appropriate and expected, but a similar reaction upon encountering someone at the grocery store could be very hurtful. Context matters. Horror films are suspenseful and are accompanied by music that heightens our emotions. In contrast, the people we see outside our houses are nonfictional characters playing out the more mundane stories of their real lives.

It is unclear to me what effect a history of watching horror films has on one’s reactions to people encountered on the street. I am unaware of any research on this topic. But I hope I can keep the two worlds separate and treat everyone I meet with the same level of warmth and friendliness I would want to receive myself.

References

Business Wire. 2021. Global Film and Video Services Market Report 2021—Opportunities and Strategies to 2030 (September 10). Available online at https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210910005333/en/Global-Film-and-Video-Services-Market-Report-2021—Opportunities-and-Strategies-to-2030—ResearchAndMarkets.com.

Clinton, Paul. 2004. Review: ‘Polar Express’ a creepy ride. CNN (November 10). Available online at http://edition.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movies/11/10/review.polar.express/index.html.

Cruz, Ronald Allan Lopez. 2012. Mutations and metamorphoses: Body horror is biological horror. Journal of Popular Film and Television 40(4): 160–68.

Darwin, Charles. 1899. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. New York, NY: D. Appleton and Company.

Davis, Jacqueline, Jonathan Redshaw, Thomas Suddendorf, et al. 2021. Does neonatal imitation exist? Insights from a meta-analysis of 336 effect sizes. Perspectives on Psychological Science 16(6): 1373–1397.

Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. 1975. Ethology: The Biology of Behavior, 2nd ed. New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.

Fortune Business Insights. 2021. Cosmetics Market Size to Hit USD 415.29 Billion by [2021–2028]; Rising Awareness Regarding Health, Hygiene, and Grooming to Augment Industry Growth, Says Fortune Business Insights. GlobeNewswire News Room (September 15). Available online at https://www.globenewswire.com/en/news-release/2021/09/15/2297232/0/en/Cosmetics-Market-Size-to-Hit-USD-415-29-Billion-by-2021-2028-Rising-Awareness-Regarding-Health-Hygiene-and-Grooming-to-Augment-Industry-Growth-Says-Fortune-Business-Insights.html.

Heller-Nicholas, Alexandra. 2019. Masks in Horror Cinema: Eyes without Faces. Cardiff, Wales: University of Wales Press.

Hudson, David. 2019. Edith Scob gave “the unreal reality.” The Criterion Collection (June 26). Available online at https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6470-edith-scob-gave-the-unreal-reality.

Johnson, Mark H., Suzanne Dziurawiec, Hadyn Ellis, et al. 1991. Newborns’ preferential tracking of face-like stimuli and its subsequent decline. Cognition 40(1–2): 1–19.

Lowenstein, Adam. 1998. Films without a face: Shock horror in the cinema of Georges Franju. Cinema Journal 37(4): 37.

Meltzoff, A.N., and M.K. Moore. 1977. Imitation of facial and manual gestures by human neonates. Science 198: 75–78.

Norman, Donald A. 1993. Turn Signals Are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Oostenbroek, Janine, Thomas Suddendorf, Mark Nielsen, et al. 2016. Comprehensive longitudinal study challenges the existence of neonatal imitation in humans. Current Biology 26(10): 1334–38.

Radford, Benjamin. 2016. Bad Clowns. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.

Russell, James A. 1994. Is there universal recognition of emotion from facial expression? Review of the cross-cultural studies. Psychological Bulletin 115(1): 102–41.

Seyama, Jun’ichiro, and Ruth S. Nagayama. 2007. The uncanny valley: Effect of realism on the impression of artificial human faces. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 16(4): 337–51.

Wegner, Daniel M., and Kurt Gray. 2016. The Mind Club: Who Thinks, What Feels, and Why It Matters. New York, NY: Viking.