Could you start life over if you had a new face? Phyllis (Ella Raines) is a homely woman who wants to become a clothing designer. She's talented, but her unremarkable looks prevent her from moving up in the beauty-conscious fashion world, as well as permanently stall her love life with two-faced suitors like Allan (Roy Roberts). But when her face is destroyed in a car crash, plastic surgeons repair her better than she was before. Does Phyllis really mean it when she says "A pretty face isn't everything."? This unusual melodrama, with a plot reminiscent of both the John Frankenheimer/Rock Hudson cult movie Seconds (1966), as well as The Twilight Zone episode "The Eye Of The Beholder" ("No change! No change at all!") The Second Face is one of the last movies by underused actress Ella Raines, veteran of John Wayne westerns and noirs like The Strange Affair Of Uncle Harry (1945) and Phantom Lady (1944), in which she also undergoes a transformation from plain to va-va-voom. Also starring Bruce Bennett, familiar to viewers as Joan Crawford's shiftless first husband in Mildred Pierce (1945).

By Violet LeVoit