The Devil With 7 Faces

The Devil With 7 Faces (or “...Has 7 Faces” depending on which version you see) is a travesty of a movie. Name something that could be wrong and it probably is. For starters, as is common with these old imported flicks, the title has nothing to do with the movie. The acting sucks, the action stinks, the story is convoluted, and the scenes are choppy. I suppose the surprise ending is OK, but it’s not hard to see coming and is convenient in a lot of ways.

The movie revolves around Julie. She’s attacked by thugs who mistake her for her twin sister who they believe has cheated them out of a million dollar diamond. Julie turns to a lawyer for help who immediately jumps to the conclusion that she has been misidentified (riiiight, it was soooo obvious after that one home invasion, I guess he read the script beforehand). It’s a struggle between innocent bystanders just wanting to survive and vicious criminals.

The story has more holes than my old socks, though some things I thought were holes when they happened turned out to be logical (more or less) in light of the full story. I won’t go into details so as to avoid spoilers, but I will say that when it does all come together it feels forced rather than clever. It will leave you asking, “but what about <insert plot point>?”

I guess this would be best described as a suspense drama even if it’s neither suspenseful nor particularly dramatic. It comes across as amateurish from its jittery steadycam shots to its abrupt editing. Rather than flowing from scene to scene I felt like I was having to guess and catch up one scene to the next. It’s done this way mostly so they can hide their surprises until the end, but it’s no use trying to surprise an audience that has fallen asleep.

This is an Italian movie overdubbed in English so the voices are off from the mouth movements. It can be a little disconcerting since sometimes the audio and video almost sync while other times it’s not even close.

The acting ranges from fair to fairly awful. The poor dialogue doesn't help the matter. The end results is impressively unimpressive.

MORALITY:

For the longest time I thought this was going to be a PG movie (it’s actually unrated). The first portion contains virtually nothing questionable aside from the obvious implications that the guys want desperately to get into the girls’ pants. As it wears on the girls turn out to be easy to bed resulting in a little bit of nudity (including close-ups of a partially-nude breast) and some sexuality. There's also some molestation. One guy wants his thug buddy to rip a girl’s clothes off so they can “have a look at her.”

Numerous people get shot, and while it’s not at all realistic it’s still a high body count and somewhat bloody. One guy gets run over which could have been gruesome, but we don’t see enough to be bothersome unless just knowing it is happening gets to you.

There only a little strong language.

SPIRITUALITY:

Evil deeds lead to dark consequences.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

There is absolutely nothing here worth seeing unless you specifically like older Italian crime thrillers. I can't say that I do.

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