Fiend Without a Face 1958

U. S. Air Force Interceptor Command Experimental Station No. 6 is a long-range radar installation tucked away in rural Winthrop, Manitoba. Unexplained deaths begin to haunt a nearby farming village, and postmortems reveal murder without motive: brains and spinal cords are missing from the victims, leaving only two puncture marks at the base of each skull. The locals grow convinced that radiation leaks from the radar installation’s nuclear-power experiments are to blame, casting a shadow over the quiet countryside.

Major Jeff Cummings, Marshall Thompson, opens a thorough inquiry, interviewing wary townsfolk and chasing anything unusual as the body count rises. His investigation steadily narrows the field of suspects, guiding him toward a brilliant, reclusive scientist who lives near the base.

Professor R. E. Walgate, Kynaston Reeves, is a retired British scientist who has become consumed with his work on telekinesis and thought projection. As Cummings digs deeper, it becomes clear that Walgate’s experiments have yielded more than a theoretical breakthrough: he has touched a living thought projection, a mind-born force that operates unseen. Unknown to him, the nearby nuclear radar program has amplified his abilities, and the projection begins to behave as a malevolent, invisible life form that preys on people to replicate itself.

The invisible threat finally reveals itself when power levels are pushed higher. The living projection—now visibly sustained by the base’s energy—turns out to be the missing brains with spinal cords, their cords extraordinarily flexible and sprouting tendrils. Each brain-spine creature moves quickly, leaps distances, and sports a pair of tiny eyes perched at the ends of extended eye stalks. They attack with terrifying precision, breaking into buildings and slipping through chimneys as others breach windows.

The assault centers on Walgate’s home, where a gathering of the film’s principal figures confronts the crisis. Some defenders fall to the slithering intruders, but disciplined gunfire with a .45 pistol proves effective at shortening the creatures’ lives, causing them to bleed out in gruesome fashion. In a final grim moment, Walgate steps outside as a diversion and is quickly slain by the very creation he unleashed.

Meanwhile, Major Cummings bolts to the airbase and takes decisive action to halt the crisis. He destroys the radar installation’s power machinery, cutting off the base’s nuclear energy supply. With their sustenance severed, the brain-spine invaders rapidly lose form and dissolve into puddles of goo, ending the immediate threat and restoring a fragile sense of normalcy to the surrounding countryside.

In the wake of the confrontation, the film lingers on questions about unchecked scientific ambition and the unpredictable consequences of tampering with powers that human hands were never meant to command, all told with a restrained, matter-of-fact tone that emphasizes suspense over sensationalism.