20 Most Highly Rated Horror Movies On Rotten Tomatoes

Rating: 98%

It’s fairly tame by today’s standards and though Eyes Without a Face doesn’t have the scare or gore levels of what horror fans are used to nowadays – bar, perhaps, one particularly squeamish face transplant scene – it managed to cause quite a stir after its release back in 1960.

Adapted from a novel about a mad scientist who abducts young women with the intention of grafting their faces on to that of his disfigured daughter all the while experimenting with vivisection, director Georges Franju was told to tone down the blood to keep French censors happy, not show animal violence so as not to offend us Brits and omit the mad scientist to keep the Germans sweet.

Not an easy task when that’s basically the plot. And though some aspects were toned down for the big screen, Eyes Without a Face still managed to rile the more sensitive film critics of yesteryear who by and large weren’t too taken with the film.

After it was re-released in 1986 it was a hit with more modern critics who hailed it a masterpiece and have since noted its influence in everything from John Carpenter’s Halloween to John Woo’s Face/Off.