The Eyes of Charles Sand

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!!!

When Charles Sand opened the coffin, at the beginning, of the movie, a frightening sight was about to begin. His deceased uncle opened his eyes and there were no eye balls. Just the whites. Then he raised up and pointed his finger at Charles. This would give you the creeps. If this happened, in a funeral parlor, there would be an evacuation.

An ABC Tuesday night "Movie Of The Week", THE EYE OF CHARLES SAND is good little thriller. Upon his uncle's death, Charles Sand (PETER HASKELL) receives his inheritance. What has his uncle left him ? Aunt Alexandra (JOAN BENNETT) calls it "the sight". Charles thinks its more like a curse, but what it is is the ability to see the past, future, ghosts, and more. Sort of an ESP+. Even during his uncle's graveside service , Charles sees an apparition of a dead woman in front of the Parkhurst masoleum, and the very real Emily Parkhurst (SHARON FARRELL) running around the cemetery in a state of agitation. Charles finds a bracelet that Emily had left in the cemetery and goes to return it to her at her large family estate where she lives with older sister Katherine (BARBARA RUSH) and Katherine's husband Jeffrey Winslow (BRADFORD DILLMAN). Katherine thanks Charles for his kindness and also informs him that sister Emily " is not a well girl." Emily soon contacts Charles again and informs him that she sees her dead brother Raymond all over the place and that the apparition that Charles saw at the cemetery was of her dead ancestor Lottie. Emily has Lottie's diary and believes that she is reliving her doomed relative's tragic life. So now Charles Sand gets to solve this mystery and try to save FARRELL's sanity. There are a few spooky visions and some real scares in the climax, actually quite good for a made for tv movie. It's evident that this movie was left open ended in case ABC might decide to make this a weekly series along the lines of THE SIXTH SENSE which was on the air around that time with GARY COLLINS

I saw this originally in 1972 when it aired on TV, and I remember it scaring the living daylights out of me as a kid. Just recently purchasing it from the Warner Archive, I sat down to relive my teenage memories.

The film is about Charles Sand, a businessman who awakes from a vivid dream about his uncle, dead in his coffin, sitting up and pointing at him, with no pupils in the dead man's eyes. At the same time he is awakened by a phone call - his uncle has just died. His aunt Alexandra tells Charles that as the last living male member of the Sand family he has inherited "the sight" from his uncle. This "sight" will cause him to have visions from time to time in order to help people with some problem in their lives. It's not that Charles is a selfish or self-involved guy as much as this is not exactly a turn in his life that is welcomed. As he asks his aunt Alexandra - "Why me?".

Almost immediately he begins to have visions of a dead woman reaching out to him, of a dead man falling through a wall, and of a young woman with long red hair in a long fur coat.

It turns out that Emily Parkhurst (Sharon Farrell) of the wealthy prominent Parkhurst family is the red headed woman in trouble. She believes her brother is dead, and she says she continually sees visions of him, covered in blood. Now this is the part of the film that lost about one star from my rating. As Emily, Sharon Farrell is doing a most irritating Mod Squad version of Ophelia through about half of this movie. Nobody will take her seriously and from her behavior it is not hard to figure out why this is so. When Charles Sand gets involved, Emily's older sister tells Sand that the brother is in London and has written and called Emily several times since she claimed he was dead, but she just hangs on to her belief in his death beyond all reason. So now Sand is not only having to deal with doubts about his new gift, but doubts that the first person he has encountered since receiving this second sight is in trouble at all versus just being crazy.

The last ten minutes or so are very suspenseful and worth putting up with Ms. Farrell's over-the-top performance. I'd recommend it especially if you liked the old made for TV movies of the 70's.

Just one more thing. I really was scratching my head at first in response to the detached performance Joan Bennett gave as Charles' widowed aunt Alexandria when talking to Charles about his new found gift and the uncle's death. But then I realized it probably just fit in with what she already knew and what Charles' uncle wrote to him in the letter describing his new sixth sense "Neither man of God nor man of science can help you now. You are alone."

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.