Curse of the Faceless Man

This Edward L. Cahn film from 1958 is basically a mummy flick, but with a historical twist. Instead of a bandage-encased, slow-moving guy from Egypt, this is a stone-encased, slow-moving guy from Pompeii.

The story begins with a workman excavating the Pompeii site (for those who don't know, Pompeii was destroyed by Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79, and was discovered centuries later almost intact, as everything was sort of frozen in place by ash and stone). He finds a box of jewels, and then an entire corpse, covered in stone. Things start to get funky when a truck carrying him to the museum crashes, and the blood of the driver is found on stone-guys hands.

A medical doctor (Richard Anderson, best known to TV viewers as Oscar Goldman from The Six-Million Dollar Man) is called in to analyze the body. His girlfriend (Elaine Edwards), is having strange dreams about the faceless man. Over the course of the film we will find out that the man was an Etruscan slave and gladiator, who cursed his enslavers. He was in love with the noblewoman who owned him, who bears a striking resemblance to Edwards.

This is in many ways a typical mummy movie. The monster moves about as fast as molasses, is super strong and impervious to bullets but, like the Wicked Witch of the West, doesn't fare well with water. The suspense is not high, nor are the thrills plentiful. Those with an interest in Ancient Rome will recognize that the writer, Jerome Bixby, at least got his facts right.