White of the Eye
In a wealthy and isolated desert community, a sound expert is targeted as the prime suspect of a series of brutal murders of local suburban housewives who were attacked and mutilated in their homes. As he desperately tries to prove his innocence, his wife starts to uncover startling truths...
-
- Cast:
- David Keith , Cathy Moriarty , Alan Rosenberg , Art Evans , Michael Greene , Alberta Watson , William G. Schilling
Similar titles
Reviews
Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.
This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.
While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
Donald Cammell was a rare talent but perhaps like another talented Brit, Ken Russell, could become obsessed and then unrestrained, go just that little bit too far. Here is a near perfect film of excess, a fearful portrait of a serial killer we do not know (for certain) and through whom we see most of the action. The killings have been described as 'giallo' like and I get the comparison with the glorious Italian exploitation movies. Like in gialli, this is wonderfully shot with glorious interiors, all the better to be splattered with blood. Horrible deaths, macabre body disposal and a narrative constantly moving at a very fast pace. The performances are great, the film always looks tremendous and we are kept wondering almost till the end. And it is the end I take issue with - we really didn't need a car chase and an explosion. The tale had been well told and we had had a hard enough ride. The excess at the end may have seemed like a good idea but someone should have seen it really wasn't necessary, that it was overkill. Great film though, nevertheless.
I took a chance on this as it was (a) billed as an 80s slasher, and (b) in a shop display with other Arrow blu-ray releases such as Argento's brutal classic TENEBRAE, and the awesomely inept bucket of winning failure that is CONTAMINATION.White Of The Eye is a completely different sort of 80s slasher though - in fact not really a slasher at all, more like a very laid back, slow paced drama. The acting's good, the direction is solid, the script is fine - but so what. The atmosphere of vaguely quirky characters in small-town Americana almost made it feel like a Coen Bros film, but with zero laughs. It was too low-key, slow paced and talky to actually maintain my interest, and I gave up after about an hour. Not a 'bad' film, just not my particular cup of cinema...
Only his third film in 17 years, Scottish director Donald Cammell followed his mind and identity-bending psychedelic masterpiece Performance (1968) and the studio-butchered Demon Seed (1977) with another oddity, the strange and confusing, yet nonetheless effortlessly intriguing White of the Eye. Cammell killed himself shortly after seeing his final film, Wild Side (1995), heavily censored by an appalled producer, at the end of what seemed like a frustrating career. It's a shame he wasn't allowed more opportunities to direct features, as although White of the Eye sometimes steers into TV-movie aesthetic and features an unnecessarily overblown climax, it is something to be savoured and thought about a long time after the credits roll.After a series of brutal murders of upper-class women, tire tracks left by the killer leads Detective Charlie Mendoza (Art Evans) to sound expert Paul White (Keith David). We learn through flashbacks the meeting of Paul and his now-wife Joan (Cathy Moriarty), and how he stole her away from her boyfriend Mike Desantos (Alan Rosenberg). There's something not quite right about Paul - he has the strange ability to omit a sound that echoes through his head, allowing him to hear at what point in a room that the sound from speakers should come from. Mike knows something too, and when Joan discovers Paul's secret affair, she slowly uncovers who her husband really is.There's not really much point trying to unravel the mysteries in the movie, as it will leave you with a headache. Below the surface of giallo-esque murders and the sleazy Lynchian atmosphere, there seems to be a mythology happening somewhere. At one point, Paul whispers "I am the One,". Is this really a deeper story than it lets on, or is Paul just simply a narcissistic loon? Whatever it is, the film works better if you just let it play out, as the film has a lot to offer in terms of style. The soundtrack, by Rick Fenn and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, is a powerful presence, and drums up a dusty, apocalyptic feel reminiscent of Richard Stanley's Dust Devil, which came out 5 years later.David's performance is also impressive, especially in the latter stages when he is let off the leash. But it's about the only good thing about the climax, which tries too hard to be a number of different things and fails in just about every one of them. It becomes almost generic, with car chases and a stalk-and-slash set-piece, completely betraying the slow-build that came before. Whether Cammell was simply trying to appease his producers or indulging in mainstream aspirations, I don't know. Still, this is a bizarre little treat; uncomfortable and distinctive, cementing it's status as a must-see for fans of cult oddities. www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com
Right near the opening, there's a very brutal and stylized murder of a woman (and her goldfish). The police identify an Indian-style compass made out of objects on a counter. This type of compass of colored objects, and an actual compass recur several times throughout the movie, but to what purpose, I don't know.A man who makes custom sound systems for people lives with his wife and daughter. She had been traveling from New York City to Los Angeles with her boyfriend, but they stopped in Arizona to repair his stereo after she ruined it in a fit of anger. That's when she met the sound guy, and she left her boyfriend for him.The sound guy's van's treads match those of the killer, though there's at least forty others with the same kind.The movie is pretty well-made, and well-acted until towards then end when it gets pretty outrageous after the killer is identified. In a real groaner of a scene, someone comes out of nowhere to try to save the day. And then what happens to the killer is downright ridiculous.I saw this on a pan & scan videotape. Given the director's artistic bent and the Arizona setting, widescreen would definitely be an improvement. Evidently about ten minutes were cut from the film to get an R rating (the MPAA is criminally insane), so perhaps an uncut version would be an improvement. Interesting film, disappointing final reel. Critic Steven Jay Schneider has a long article about the movie and director (see external reviews) that is worth reading.