How Face of Fire Brought Social Horror to the 1950s
Face Of Fire was one of the earliest films of the horror genre to introduce themes related to prejudice and social commentary.
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1959’s little-seen Face of Fire was an early attempt to inject social commentary and themes of prejudice into the horror genre. It was a genuine rarity at a time when the overwhelming majority of horror films were considered second rate B-movie fare at best, and the big studios were more concerned at the market threats coming from the television sets that were appearing in living rooms across the nation.
The civil rights movement was major news in 1959. Brown v. Board of education had desegregated American schools in 1954. The Montgomery bus boycotts had happened barely three years earlier, and nonviolent sit-ins were taking place across the south. Confronting prejudice was the predominant American theme of the era, but most wouldn’t know by taking a look at the movies of the late 1950s. The major studios were waging a war for their very survival, attempting to counter the audiences being lost to television with slates of star-studded widescreen historical epics and musicals. Themes of prejudice and social justice, if on the radar of movie studios at all, were few and far between and were almost entirely relegated to smaller releases from predominantly independent studios.
Always the stuff of lower budgets and cheap production values, horror was no different. The small studios that specialized in horror films were getting plenty of mileage out of monster pictures with Cold War themes, though there were occasional films such as Invasion Of The Body Snatchers that took said themes a step or two further. Even the quality films of the genre were regarded as B-movies at best. George Romero’s breakthrough Night of the Living Dead, featuring a black leading man and a shockingly controversial ending, was still nearly a decade away. In 1959, to court social commentary was to court controversy, and to court controversy was decidedly not something studios were interested in.
Face Of Fire Brought Social Horror To The 1950s
Though marketed and presented as such, Face of Fire only nominally a horror film. Directed by Albert Band for Allied Artists Pictures, Face of Fire stars James Whitemore (Brooks Hatlen in The Shawshank Redemption) as handyman Monk Johnson, who is horribly disfigured and inflicted with brain damage whilst saving the young son of a doctor from a raging laboratory fire. Previously popular and well-liked in his small, turn-of-the century rural town, Monk is viewed as a terrifying monster after the accident, and is reviled as a freak by everyone except the doctor whose son he saved. Even Monk’s fiancee screams in terror at the sight of him.
Though it took several more years for mainstream Hollywood to earnestly explore social themes, the studios’ then-nemesis television proved to be less hesitant to explore the themes of prejudice and discrimination. Barely three months after Face of Fire’s August 1959 release, The Twilight Zone premiered on CBS. The legendary Rod Serling series remains highly popular and influential to this day, and is especially remembered for its exploration of social themes.
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