The first posh Hammer 4K release on UHD and Blu-ray for 2026 is Terence Fisher's STOLEN FACE, a film that will be fondly remembered by those who caught it on ITV afternoon screenings in the 1980s, or who bought the first UK Blu-ray release of Hammer's THE MUMMY and found it as a nice extra.
Philip Ritter (Paul Henreid) is a brilliant plastic surgeon who 'gives back' to society by correcting the scarred faces of prison inmates in the hope that good looks will prevent them offending again. It's an idea that was a bit daft in Universal's THE RAVEN nearly 30 years previously but the film treats it with an admirable straight face (sorry).
Ritter decides to take a short holiday and at a pub meets concert pianist Alice (Lizbeth Scott). The two fall in love. However Alice is due to be married to David (Andre Morell, always worth watching, even in a thankless role like this) and so she and the doctor cannot be. What's a plastic surgeon with the ability to change faces to do? Well if this was a Jess Franco film he'd find a willing victim and surgically alter their face to resemble the woman he can't have to satisfy his own perverse and vaguely mad desire. It isn't but that's what the film does anyway. Then Alice decides she can't marry David and returns to find Ritter married to her lookalike, who is already beginning to misbehave. Trouble ensues.
As is noted in one of the extras on here, STOLEN FACE pre-dates Hitchcock's VERTIGO and the Boileau & Narcejac novel the film was based on by several years. The angle it takes is an interesting one, playing up the romance and lost love angles and being sympathetic to a man whose modus operandi would become the stuff of so many horror films of the next few decades. As a period piece it's well made and never less than interesting, with cast members including BBC comedy regulars Arnold 'Godfrey' Ridley and Richard Wattis, but modern audiences may find themselves baffled by the film's attitude to class and criminal behaviour.
As is frequently becoming the case with these releases, the real value for money here is in the extras. You get two versions of the film - the UK print with commentary from academics Cathy Lomax and Lucy Bolton, and the US print with commentary from former Hammer podcasters Lizbeth Myles and Paul Cornell. Both versions are actually more or less the same length (the US is slightly shorter by a matter of seconds) and the commentaries are aimed at listeners who haven't spent their lives studying every issue of Little Shoppe of Horrors.
Talking of that splendid publication, its esteemed editor Richard Klemenson pops up to introduce an extremely valuable 39 minute audio interview he conducted with Hammer makeup artist Phil Leakey back in the day. Chris Alexander gives us 31 minutes on the life and career of Lisabeth Scott, and Thomas Doherty provides 37 minutes on the actions of the Un-American Activities Committee and how it affected UK cinema of the period. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas presents a visual essay on the film and its influences, all the way from Ovid through to film noir, and Liz Tregenza gives us 18 minutes on the history of costume designer Edith Head.
The set comes with a book featuring new writing about the making of the film, Lizbeth Scott, composer Malcolm Arnold, plastic surgery as related to the film, and a lot more.
Terence Fisher's STOLEN FACE is out in 4K from Hammer in a limited edition two disc UHD and Blu-ray set on Monday 16th February 2026
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