The Headless Eyes

"The Headless Eyes" follows a struggling New York artist who loses his eye in a botched robbery attempt; consequently, he develops a bizarre obsession with eyeballs, and goes on a brutal murder spree, killing women and tearing out their eyes with spoons.

Written and directed Kent Bateman, "The Headless Eyes" is a gritty and gruesome exploitation flick that was an ostensible inspiration on later New York-based films like "The Driller Killer" and "Maniac"; it's two parts grindhouse filth and one part art-house horror. The film features an over-the-top performance by Swedish actor Bo Brundin, who leads a very small cast through a scuzzy New York City just after the dawn of the 1970s. It's an interesting film merely as a time capsule, and also functions as a dark meditation on poverty and hopelessness.

The film boasts a handful of surprisingly savage murder scenes and expected eye gougings; in spite of some hammy special effects, the scenes retain a disturbing grit to them that is unexpectedly palpable and disturbing. The narrative is relatively aimless and frenetic; there is little in the way of plot, and the film does feel something like a stitched-together patchwork of gore and half-baked ideas; that said, the messiness gives the film a somewhat disconcerting, schizophrenic energy, and the relative lack of dialogue is another unusual feature. The ending is abrupt and uneven, but it's difficult to expect anything else.

Overall, "The Headless Eyes" is a fairly gruesome but aimless exploitation effort. The skeletal plot and hammy performances don't necessarily work in its favor, but it does retain a bizarre and disturbed energy that makes it worth a watch for die-hard grindhouse horror fans. It's certainly not a good film, but it is tonally scuzzy and forbidding. It's the kind of film that triggers the urge to take a hot bath after viewing, which, depending on your proclivities, will either elicit interest or turn you away. 6/10.

There's a lot to be said about this grisly extreme low budget thing, much of it not too good so far, however it is a precursor to the Henenlotter style, not a copy of such, as was implied by another commenter. It's not hard to imagine that Henenlotter, Abel Ferrara and maybe even Scorcese caught this at a midnight screening or something when they were younger. If viewed being mindful of its year of production (released 1973 but production started around 1970-71), it comes on the heels of the angst-ridden French New Wave and borrows much from that style. Every independent film "artist" was familiar with the French New Wave, especially New Yorked based ones

There are actually moments that are quite unnerving watching this eye-stealing serial killer move in and out of a psychosis and stalk his prey. Not as nicely done as Michael Lerner's eye-obsessed maniac in ANGUISH, but still effective. It's hinted that he may have two personalities, but it really seems more like schizophrenia. (No, they are not the same thing!) The gore effects are poor to adequate for the time and budget, they would be considered lame by modern standards. As typical for horror films of this period, it's reflective of the bloodshed and violence of Vietnam that was consistently broadcast over television, and of the dread regarding the effects of the war on returning veterans. This is a common theme, that has become more visible as time passes, in horror and other films of violence of the time

While the main character, the killer, has nothing to do with the war, the mental anguish and violence are sure themes of this period. You won't like this much if you must have super-realistic gore effects and hyper-intense action with cardboard characters, but for those horror fans who lived through this period and those who are interested in studying the horror films of the time, this one is worth the few dollars you can buy it for on VHS on Amazon, less than what it costs on ebay, where it's available on bootleg DVDs. With a wonderfully eerie soundtrack as well and a nicely done understated ending. Nice to view on a double-feature with THE SEVERED ARM.

My review was written in March 1983 after a Greenwich Village screening.

"The Headless Eyes" is a 1971 gore thriller so obscure that no credits or details about it are listed in comprehensive horror encyclopedias. It is reviewed here, finally, for the record.

Set in New York, picture opens with lead Bo Brundin robbing a woman in her apartment to raise his rent money (he's a struggling artist). Defending herself with a teaspoon, the victim pokes his eye out, setting of Brundin's grisly mania of killing women and gouging out their eyes with a spoon of his own.

Generically related to the familiar mad sculptor/wax museum films, story has Brundin creating plastic artwork incorporating the eyes. Plentiful blood and adequately simulated gore account for the picture's X rating, awarded by the MPA A in 1973.

Technical quality is extremely poor, with a grainy blowup from 16mm lensing.

Director Kent Bateman did an about-face by helming the G-rated "Land of No Return" starring Mel Torme. "Eyes" is interesting for the earnest overacting of Brundin, who later moved up to a leading role opposite Robert Redford in "The Great Waldo Pepper".

My eyes! AAOOOAAAUUUGGHH! My eyes! That's what I screamed myself after watching this atrocity of a film. No gore, no effects, no acting, no sense. The movie opens with a guy robbing a woman's apartment while she sleeps, and when she wakes up and screams, he tries to silence her by getting on top of her and smothering her mouth and nose. Fortunately she grabs a nearby spoon on the nightstand and slides it along the intruder's temple – no wait, she actually penetrates his eye socket with it!?! With his eye popped out and dangling by its nerve, the man stumbles out of the apartment, out the hall, down the fire escape and crawls to a stop in the alley. The entire time howling the ever-looped line "My EYE! My eyyyyyye!" In case you miss him hearing it during this opening credit sequence, don't worry. It's played and replayed every 7 minutes for the rest of the film. During which time we see the main character (who happens to be a failed artist of some sort) finally get his comeuppance by cutting out the eyes of women and "freezing" them in blocks of ice (?) as art.

The highlight scene has to be the news report in front of the apartment of one of the killer's first victims. First of all (as someone else has pointed out), nobody shows the first hint of suspicion about the creepy-looking guy with the eyepatch being at the crime scene where the victim had her eyes cut out. Secondly, since when are funeral services held at a person's apartment building, complete with coffin being carried down the steps into the street? And lastly, you gotta love the reporter's interview of the folks. He asks one woman what she knew about the murdered, and her answer is pricelessly generic. Perplexed at the woman's response, the reporter realizes he has lost track of who the actor with the scripted line is amongst the crowd and openly calls out the improvised line, "I understand one of you knew the victim quite well" to find the proper response. Obviously, whoever it was that had the all-important line for the scene was stuck in traffic when it was filmed, because we don't get any good answer for the poor reporter.

Oh, and about the guy who plays the "eyeball killer". He's a lot of fun to watch. I always wondered what it would be like if a burned-out community theatre director played a C-horror serial killer. Now I know. With hilarious monologues and delicious overacting, he hams up everything beautifully in what can best be described as Shakespeare's "Othello" meets Lustig's "Maniac". From victim to victim to potential admirer to the incredibly lame finale, we know this guy's insane because he keeps rambling to himself that he's "got to finish" something or other. My guess is there's only about 15 copies of this movie left in existence. It needs to get snatched up quick and given the DVD treatment, so that low-budget horror fans everywhere can take it home and give it the MST treatment. It is indeed that bad.

Basement grindhouse fare, not as gory as it's reputed featuring an unhinged performance by Bo Brundin as the tortured artist who loses an eye, but discovers a new art form.

Frustrated artists always seem to be fodder for film psychopathy, and 'The Headless Eyes' continues that trend in earnest, assisted by a compelling title no doubt responsible for much of its appeal (that and as other reviewers have remarked, the graphic VHS cover art).

Gritty-looking guerilla-style location photography and some almost avant garde touches in Kent Bateman's directorial debut shows potential, but the novel plot device disappointingly never evolves into more than a just a few random stalk & slash encounters. I'd hoped the art student sub-plot late in the picture might resurrect things, but it looks like the $$$ may have evaporated and instead the film ends quite abruptly.

The incessant shrieking of 'my eye!' will live-on in your consciousness well beyond the meagre 70 mins runtime, an enduring accomplishment few films achieve, but unless you're a devotee of no-budget 70's slashers, I think you could feel underwhelmed by 'The Headless Eyes'.