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Dis­cov­er the gris­ly dra­ma of this surgery-based South­ern gothic

19 Feb 2018

Words by Anton Bitel

Two individuals, one wearing a mask, embracing in a garden.
Two individuals, one wearing a mask, embracing in a garden.
John Grissmer’s Scalpel, about a psy­cho­path­ic plas­tic sur­geon, has been res­cued from VHS obscurity.

I do the devil’s work, I change the faces that God intend­ed, I cater to man’s van­i­ty and to his lust,” plas­tic sur­geon Dr Phillip Reynolds (a sub­lime Robert Lans­ing) says dri­ly in John Grissmer’s Scalpel, explain­ing why he was left out of the will of his late, super­rich father-in-law. I mean it, he thought I was some kind of Franken­stein mak­ing mon­sters, only at the coun­ty hos­pi­tal. And when poor Jen­nifer drowned, I think he blamed me for that too.”

Per­haps, though, the deceased was not such a poor judge of char­ac­ter after all: for Phillip, a smooth, arro­gant sociopath, had indeed (as a flash­back reveals) let his wife Jen­nifer drown, and had mur­dered in cold blood the boyfriend of his own daugh­ter Heather (Judith Chap­man) after see­ing the young cou­ple hav­ing sex. Heather, who wit­nessed her father’s mis­deed, dis­ap­peared short­ly after – which is a prob­lem, as she is the one who has inher­it­ed her grandfather’s $5 million.

Nev­er one to give up eas­i­ly, Phillip recruits a young Jane Doe whom he found in an alley­way with her face hor­rif­i­cal­ly pulped, and sets about sur­gi­cal­ly recon­struct­ing her to resem­ble his daugh­ter, promis­ing to split with her the inher­i­tance that she will claim as Heather. Only Phillip’s inter­ests in Heather were not alto­geth­er father­ly, and now this Jane Doe (also played by Chap­man) is a per­fect sur­ro­gate not just for his lega­cy-hunt­ing schemes, but also for his taboo fantasies.

Iden­ti­fy!” Phillip keeps bark­ing at Jane, insist­ing that she learn to recog­nise the faces of all her’ rel­a­tives. Scalpel belongs to a strain of films that explore the con­nec­tions between plas­tic surgery, per­son­al iden­ti­ty and myth­ic trans­for­ma­tion. The grandad­dy of these is Georges Franju’s jaun­ti­ly dark mod­ern fairy tale Eyes With­out a Face, fol­lowed close­ly by Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Anoth­er, Scott McGe­hee and David Siegel’s Suture, Kim Ki-duk’s Time and Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In. One might even include less cere­bral offer­ings like Jesús Franco’s Fran­ju remake Face­less and John Woo’s Face/​Off.

In dif­fer­ent ways, all of these show the mal­leabil­i­ty of the human face before the surgeon’s knife, and the pro­found effect that such changes can make to the patient’s place in the world and in soci­ety. In Jane’s case, she can go from being a beat-up strip­per to a priv­i­leged heiress, and also find unex­pect­ed love with dad­dy’ – but her dou­ble is cir­cling like a ghost, and returns to con­front once more this man (for whom there’s nev­er enough”) with a shift­ing sense of what he wants.

You can pick the colour, but I’m awful­ly fond of yel­low,” says Jane when the execu­tor of the will (Tad Cur­rie) asks in what kind of suit­case she would like her mil­lions. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Edward Lach­man (The Vir­gin Sui­cides, Car­ol) is sim­i­lar­ly fond of yel­low, tinging every­thing in its sick­ly hue. Both set and shot around Atlanta, Geor­gia, Scalpel is a South­ern goth­ic melo­dra­ma whose bizarre love tri­an­gle drips with psy­cho­sex­u­al sub­texts and mad­ness. Phillip is a mon­ster, but a strange­ly wit­ty and per­son­able one, with an infec­tious line in unre­strained laughter.

Mean­while, as Jane and Heather start play­ing a very adult ver­sion of The Par­ent Trap, Griss­mer gen­er­ates great ten­sion from our uncer­tain­ty as to whether Phillip will elim­i­nate one of them, which one it will be, and even if he (and we) will be able to tell the dif­fer­ence between them. After all, iden­ti­ty here is up for grabs. Griss­mer would go on a decade lat­er to make Blood Rage – a slash­er which also piv­ot­ed around twins and doubles.

Scalpel is released by Arrow Video on Blu-ray, in a brand new 2K restora­tion from orig­i­nal film ele­ments, on 19 February.

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