31 Days of Horror Movies: Eyes Without a Face

Week two of our foray into horror-dom finds us venturing into France, for a truly classic film that, while light on blood and gore, certainly qualifies as horrific. Let's take a look at...

Eyes Without a Face

The story is a sad one: A young woman named Christiane Genessier has her face terribly disfigured by an accident, and now lives in a remote, secluded house with her father, Dr. Genessier, and his assistant Louise (played by the shamefully forgotten Alida Valli). Poor Christiane wears a mask over her face to cover the scars, only her eyes peeking-out from behind the lacuna shield.

Our sympathy somewhat evaporates when it becomes evident that Dr. Genessier and Louise are kidnapping young women, bringing them to his lab at the country house, and conducting experiments upon them. He is, of course, attempting to graft their faces onto that of his daughter's, mostly to no avail.

Eventually, time begins to run out for the desperate Genessier family and, well, I won't say anymore in case you want to see it. Just know that Eyes Without a Face is rather unsettling, and reinforces that notion that you don't need a lot of blood & guts in order to have horror.

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Yesterday's Restaurants

The local newspaper has a feature from one of Champaign-Urbana's most legendary restaurateur's, John Katsinas, on what his favorite area restaurants were that have now since closed (or will soon be closing). It's a nice little read, and has made me stop and think about the restaurants that have come and gone that have left an indelible (and edible) impression on me throughout the years. Here we go....

To the beat of his own Drum

Tonight I learned that Kevin Drum has died. He passed away on Friday, March 7th, from Multiple Myeloma (the same illness that took my uncle Paul several years ago). Drum's diagnosis came in 2014, and he talked about it openly on his blog , up to and including just a few days before his death. I knew of Kevin Drum through his blogging. During the early aughts, when I started to become more politically aware and involved, I began reading certain online musings by folks -- Andrew Sullivan and, on a local level, IlliniPundit, to name a couple. Drum's blog at that time was Calpundit . Eventually, he began blogging at Mother Jones . When they parted ways, he started what would be his final online venture. So, yeah, I've been reading Kevin's musings for over twenty years.

Watching The Hours

A Twitter friend named Paula has asked for folks to submit ideas for a blog-a-thon about what we think will be the classic films of the future. In other words, what relatively recent movies (namely, from the 21st century), do we think will be considered classics in the decades to come, possibly airing on such venerable stations as Turner Classic Movies ? While a number of films come to mind for such a category, one in particular stood out from the rest, and thus is my entry for Paula's blog-a-thon.

Left to my own devices

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