Year released: 1971
THE CHARGE: Identity theft, because seven faces is at least a couple too many.
THE EVIDENCE: Ah, the early 70s. A politically incorrect time when men were openly lecherous, secretaries wore miniskirts, and sideburns weren't ironic. A time when every home, office and daycare center had a wet bar. A time when the Surgeon General said "Smoke 'em if you got 'em." A time when a movie as utterly crazy as The Devil with Seven Faces could pass itself off as a serious crime caper.
As the film opens, Julie Harrison (played by Carroll Baker) leaves a party and is stalked by someone who takes a picture of her. Julie faints. This is never mentioned again in the movie. Ever.
We then cut to Julie at her office, where she gets a phone call from her twin sister, Mary. Mary's in some kind of trouble so Julie gives Mary her home phone number so they can talk in more detail later. But as Julie leaves the office, she's attacked by two men who try to force her into their car. Luckily for her, a lawyer working in the same office building and his race-car driving friend see it and help her out. That is, they both get punched in the gut but make the hoodlums nervous enough to drive away.
Julie, lawyer guy and race car guy all go to her place where Julie explains her plight while everyone smokes like chimneys. There is a LOT of smoking in this movie, leading me to suspect that it may have originally been intended as a 90-minute commercial for cigarettes. The men suggest that Julie find another place to stay in case the bad guys track her down, but she insists on staying home to wait for her sister's call. Bad call, Julie.
The bad guys show up and threaten to kill her unless she tells them where to find the thing that they know she's hidden. Julie acts like she doesn't know what they're talking about. I don't have to act because we're 30 minutes into the movie and I still have no idea why anything in this movie is happening. But Julie does manage to get away with the help of race car guy and they find her a new place to stay for a while.
I wonder why Cookie Monster cosplay never really caught on.
Some exposition later, it turns out Mary may have stolen a diamond and the bad guys think Julie is really her sister. We're clued into this in between scenes of Julie wearing all sorts of wigs while getting frisky with race car guy, and lawyer guy hitting on anything in a skirt. Good thing he isn't in Scotland.
And because things are starting to make sense, the movie throws in a second set of bad guys who want the diamond as well. It all culminates in an unintentionally madcap carousel where good guys fight bad guys, bad guys fight bad guys, good guys become bad guys, bad guys rise from the dead and get run over by tractors, and an ending that may well have influenced the intentionally madcap crime caper A Fish Called Wanda.
Mary always kept a blowtorch handy for killing spiders.
On top of everything I've just described, I think the cameramen may have engaged in a bit of drinking throughout the shooting of the film. The camera constantly struggles to keep actors within the frame of a shot. Even in a basic scene of someone walking down a street, the camera manages to stay two paces ahead of the actor. Hell, there are completely static shots where the camera doesn't move at all and STILL manages to barely catch the side of someone's head while they deliver their lines.
So the movie sucks. It's awful. Absolutely terrible. But it's terrible in the best way possible. Yes, it's one of those rare films worthy of bearing the "so bad it's good" moniker. It provides moment after moment of utterly random madness, from paparazzi stalkers to disappearing bodies to blue wigs to Benny Hill style car chases. Even the title is glorious nonsense, as there's no devil and never any reference to seven of anything at all.
It's the kind of amusingly bad movie that the writers for Mystery Science Theater 3000 would have a field day with. And most importantly, it kept me engaged throughout, wondering what level of insanity I'd be privileged to witness next.
THE VERDICT: The Devil with Seven Faces is NOT GUILTY by virtue of its unintentionally hilarious "everything but the kitchen sink" twists on what could have been a snoozer of a routine crime story.
