The Eyes of Charles Sand

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."

I watched this when I was around 12 or 13 and it's the only horror movie that I've ever switched off because I was too afraid to watch it alone.

I want to watch it again; not because I'm particularly braver now, but I have a girlfriend who I can cuddle up to if I need to gibber and bite my fingers down to the knuckles.

Seriously, I'm not easily scared but this film nearly made me crap myself when I watched it. Maybe it'd be different now; I don't know. All I do know is that it's the most terrifying film that I've ever seen, even if that does come from the perspective of someone who only saw it as a kid.

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.)

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.