The Eyes of Charles Sand

I was 10 years old in 1972, and absolutely fascinated by the occult/horror genre. As a faithful viewer of the TV series "Dark Shadows", "The Sixth Sense" and "Night Gallery", I was quite used to watching stories about ghosts, vampires, werewolves and the like. But nothing had prepared me for the night I accidentally tuned in to this Movie Of The Week. Those first couple of scenes featuring the dead guy with only the whites of his eyes scared me more than anything I'd ever seen. I honestly don't remember much else about this movie—I may not even have watched all of it. But still today, more than 30 years later, I get goosebumps just thinking about those scary white eyes!

This movie's greatest attributes are a few creepy moments, especially in the first part of the movie, and Bradford Dillman, who elevated everything he was in. It isn't as effective as other TV horror flicks from that era, such as The Night Stalker, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, The Horror at 30,000 Feet, The Norliss Tapes, and so on; but it's well worth a viewing or buying for 10 bucks on Amazon for fans of this particular subset of horror movies.

I too saw the very beginning of this movie and it scared the hell out of me. Something about him (Charles Sand) seeing that dead lady in the cemetery, I mean this lady really looked dead. I was just a kid at the time and I will never forget it. I'll never forget the white eyes of that dead old lady. God that was scary for a kid to see!!

There was a eerie musical score too. It sounded something like running your finger across a piano keyboard from high scale to low. I just typed "The eyes of charles sand" into Alta Vista and I was lead here. Thank gop for search engines. I want to find this movie and see it now so I can convince myself it's not all that scary as I remember it from the mind of a child. That's why I gave it a 9!!!

ESP-themed TV movie stars Peter Haskell as stockbroker Charles Sand, who learns upon his uncle's death that he has inherited "The Sight", a family gift/curse that enables him to have psychic visions that he must use to help those in need. No sooner is his uncle buried that a disturbed young woman(played by Sharon Farrell) needs his help to investigate whether her brother Raymond is alive or not, and what part her sister(played by Barbara Rush) and brother-in-law(played by Bradford Dillman) play in the mystery... Uneven thriller is both low-key and over-the-top, with decidedly mixed results. Some good visuals and jump-scares though. A proposed TV series pilot that never happened.

Another TV movie that was an intended pilot for a series. Falling short of the "keeper" mark in terms of what the networks craved at the time, "Charles" still contains a wonderfully restrained performance by the dependable Peter Haskell as the titular hero, an inheritor of powers of ESP and clairvoyance that runs in the family. Of course, on the other hand, you have Sharon Farrell as a young woman whose either going insane (something she excelled at playing) or who definitely needs Charles' supernatural help. Add Barbara Rush and Joan Bennett into the mix, and you either have a campy hoot-fest of OTT emoting, or something so irritating, you may turn away and actually watch that rerun of DUMB AND DUMBER for the twenty-sixth time.

What saves it ultimately is capable direction, a storyline that does keep things interesting, (not to mention pre-dating Stephen King's THE DEAD ZONE by over a decade, which contains some striking similarities), and some frighteningly taut setpieces that, though dated, still work to some extent if you watch it with the lights out.

Hard to find, but worth it when you do, if only for sentimental reasons, (like when they used to make REALLY good or at least entertaining 90-minute TV extravaganzas.)