They Have Changed Their Face (1971)

Unlike most of my posts, this review overview 
WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS!

This is a very interesting, statement of a film that I had to give a little love to. They Have Changed Their Face has some horror elements, but it's really a statement about advertising of all things. It's an odd one. Director Corrado (Baba Yaga) Farina and his writing partner on the film Giulio Berruti deliver up a very interesting fairytale about the vampiric advertising industry and the consumerism it tries to send into a frenzy.

We have an odd business scene opening things up here where Alberto Valle is told that the owner of the company - Giovanni Nosferatu...yes....Nosferatu - wants to see him in his mountain villa right away. As Valle travels into the mountains and fog, things start to get strange. The locals don't speak to him and the rustic buildings seem to be falling into a horrid state. He meets a woman named Laura and she joins him for part of the journey. When they arrive at the villa, she says she'll wait for him and makes one more attempt to get him to come away with her instead of dealing with this business situation. He declines and makes his way into the villa.

I'm trying not to go detail by detail here, but there are so many fun details! :)

We see that guards travel around in little, European cars and find out later that there are eight of these cars in total. Cars are used to cover the massive grounds. Odd, but...it kinda makes sense. Valle meets Corrina, Nosferatu's striking, willowy secretary who has a haunting appearance. Ghostly almost. She says that Nosferatu will meet him for dinner and that he never leave his office during the day. When he finally meets Nosferatu (played by the awesome Adolfo Celi of THUNDERBALL fame) he's a bit taken aback when Nosferatu tells him he wants Valle to be the new CEO of the company.

Now, this is where I was expecting a ham-fisted vampire story. But....NOPE! It's anything but standard. Here's where things get very spoiler. The film takes it on that the vampire has switched from stalking prey in the dark of night to seeking out more consumer prey in the light of day. They are entwined in everything. Politics so that they can change laws around the things they sell...like LSD. They have religious representation now. And, they run advertising and consumer products like a well oiled machine. Sucking the money from consumers...and blood from time to time. They also groom people from birth to be various positions within the company.  Valle even finds a photo of himself as a baby in a large tome and sees that he's been called out as future CEO since the beginning of his life. Very deep and trippy.

Valle is repulsed by Nosferatu and his mob and vows to take him down however he can. He shoots Nosferatu many times and escapes the vampire, his secretary, and his car guards.

That is until he finds Laura and sees that Nosferatu has gotten to her - sucking her blood and changing her from groovy, topless, hippy roamer to up and coming secretary with a desire to settle down and have a family.

At that, Valle gives in and let's Corrina escort him back to the villa...where he sees that Nosferatu is alive and well and ready to shake the hand of his new CEO.



The movie kinda hit me. It's a big, dreamy metaphor of course, but it's well done and highly entertaining. You also only really have a cast of four and the interplay is very engaging.

I love Adolfo Celi as Nosferatu. He's always a grand, mafia-like character that's fun to watch. He was great in EYE IN THE LABYRINTH as well. A great character actor.  Giuliano Esperati's Valle was pretty great as well. Really real and playing the "man in a strange land" role believably and realistically. Francesca Modigliani was riveting even though she wasn't around much in her Laura role. She had these fantastic, large eyes that were mesmerizing. Sadly, she's only done this and one other film - The Sin in 1972.



The most curious character here for me was Geraldine Hooper as Corinna. She's birdlike and ghostly with a skinny frame and strange, almost alien face. I was confused because she actually played a man in Dario Argento's DEEP RED. Though, now that I write that, I'm not 100% sure of anything anymore. hehehe . She's striking and unusual and fun to watch on the screen. She has a haunting nature and plays sweet as well as she plays sinister.




So...that was long winded, but only because I found the film to be so very interesting. It's really not "horror" honestly, but it has a undertone of the horrific and gothic that I loved. If you'd like to take a gothic journey into the 1970s world of "FIGHT THE MAN!" filmmaking, you'll want to check out THEY HAVE CHANGED THEIR FACE.

J&B SIGHITINGS:    1