“Fiend Without A Face” is the kind-of horror film they only made in the 1950s as it’s all about atomic radiation creating killer creatures. Even when 1950s sci-fi films aren’t very good, there is still a charm to them. “Fiend Without A Face” is neither as good as “The Day The Earth Stood Still” nor is it as bad as “Attack of the Giant Crab Monsters”.

In “Fiend Without A Face”, some strange invisible creatures are going around killing people by removing their brains and spinal cords so of course they get referred to as ‘mental vampires’. It turns out that the creatures were made by the combination of atomic radiation and a scientist meddling into the sort-of thing that should be reserved for a deity and it’s up to a small group of soldiers and civilians to fight the invading creatures.

The characters in “Fiend Without A Face” speak without emotion pretty much all the time. Marshall Thompson (“It! The Terror from Beyond Space”) is the star and is pretty much interchangeable with the leads in any other film of the genre and era. The creatures are invisible at first and I suspect that was for budget reasons but when they’re finally revealed they look great but they’re not quite as laughably genius as the creatures in “Robot Monster” or “The Giant Claw”.

“Fiend Without A Face” is fairly slow in a lot of parts but the final act is fairly impressive with the strange creatures flying all over the place. The film isn’t quite as funny as the hilariously bad but somehow brilliant “Plan 9 from Outer Space” and it isn’t as thrilling as “Forbidden Planet” so it sits at the same level as something such as “Earth vs. The Flying Saucers”. If you want to see an old sci-fi with some creative monsters then “Fiend Without A Face” isn’t bad, it just isn’t particularly good either.