Pyro...The Thing Without a Face - 1964

I got some internet back, but only on my laptop, so I headed to Tubi to see what nonsense I could dig up. And here it is!

Vance is in Spain working on a reservoir. He's obsessed with Ferris wheels and uses them in his work somehow. I never really saw anything but his model. While house hunting, he comes across a woman, Laura, working on burning her own home for the insurance money. He convinces her to sell him the house, and they start having an affair.

Eventually, Vance starts to feel bad since he has a wife and kid at home. His wife knows, and Vance decides to cut off Laura. She isn't happy about it, but she does get Vance to admit that he'd marry her if his wife and daughter weren't in the way. Her solution: kill them in a fire! Her plans go awry when Vance decides he didn't like that he argued with his wife before he left and comes home to the house ablaze. He runs in and burns himself to a crisp. According to the doctor, parts of his body have carbonized due to the fourth-degree burns, and something happened to his brain. He's solved the very hard mystery of who started the fire. I don't know much about arson, but I think with the amount of crap Laura did to that house, it would be obvious it wasn't a gas tank explosion. Vance the great detective is now bent on revenge.

I went into this with absolutely no idea what it was about. I just saw the title and was on board. I didn't realize that almost the first half hour would feel like an episode of House Hunters. Vance was really focused on finding the right house.

The end is also ruined because they show what happened in the beginning. Also, I'm wondering how/when Vance had the resources to make his super accurate face mask thing. When he took it off, the effects were pretty good, so props to them for that. All those good feelings leave when you hear the music. It doesn't match 90% of the time.

Overall, they shouldn't have ruined the ending. This movie was okay to pass the time after the first half hour. It was hard to feel any sympathy for the man who was cheating and then got upset with his wife because she was upset, and this was the one time he was telling the truth. I'll stay on the fence with this one. It wasn't quite good enough to push it over the edge into a good review, but it wasn't terrible.