This is a actually a mystery/thriller, not a horror movie per se... but since it appeared in the FearNet section of Comcast's OnDemand service (and since I am trying to recover from a dearth of posts) I'm reviewing the damn thing. It starred Faye Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones, Raul Julia, and Brad Dourif who were all directed by Irvin Kershner (Empire Strikes Back ring a bell?) So that's how I was suckered in, anyhow.
In hindsight, I probably should have re-watched The Virgin Witch.
John Carpenter has yet to make me his fan, and this story didn't help. To the Eyes of Jeff Horror, this seemed like a lame Hitchcock attempt... minus the clever Hitchcock ending. That being said, there is a truly creepy performance by one of the actors in the end (I'm avoiding serious spoilers.) I dug the music by Artie Kane who also scored Devil Dog, Hound of Hell (a film released on television in the same year.)
On the musically negative side we find the featured song, "Prisoner", by Barbara Streisand. It was a perfect choice of song topic for the film's audience (I wanted to be freed) but I truly can't stand that bitch. One of the producers was dating Streisand at the time and bought this script for her to star in, but she declined. Thank George for that. I could stomach Tommy Lee Jones getting busy with Faye Dunaway... but Streisand? Ugh.
The titular character, a career photographer, is cursed with seeing through the eyes of a serial killer in her nightmares. She turns a negative to a positive by using these images in her work which becomes both sensational and extremely lucrative, two adjectives that I doubt applied to the box office release of this movie. (Ok, so the film made money- but it was no Star Wars.) Her photographs are much in the same vein of those by Helmut Newton, which makes sense because many of the photos used in the movie were taken by Helmut Newton.
I slagged though this film curious to see a young Brad Dourif in his usual role as creepmeister and curious to see if the nude photographer plot device would pay off with some high grade nudity that the Eyes of a Dude could take in. (High quality, indeed, but too brief. You're much better off with Hostel.)
Brad being hot.
I had to keep my sights on the puerile aspects of the film because it wasn't doing too much to engage me as a thriller through its plot. A lot more tension could have been built by having the protagonist see herself though the eyes of the killer during a few scenes. It would have been more affecting- at least to this viewer- than multiple murder scenes composed similarly from a shot of an icepick approaching the victim's eye cut to a close-up of the eye surround by a few dabs of theatrical blood. Meh.
Two Georges for moderate levels of creep, decent production value, and a smattering of fashionista flick-tips on screen. Negative points awarded for inflicting Barbara Streisand during the credit sequences.
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2 comments:
Huh - I read a book with almost exactly the same plot- except the Psychic who was seeing things through the eyes of a serial killer, used it to her advantage and killed her ex-boyfriends new girlfriend.
Sounds like that would have made a better movie (not to mention no Streisand)
I recall when this movie came out, I saw a ton of TV ads and heard a bunch of ads on the radio. I managed to avoid it, partially cuz of BAB's singing and partially because it seemed like a not so hot movie.
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