The Headless Eyes

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'.

Long ago(the mid eighties, before it became chic to diss bad movies and glorify their ineptitude), I caught this freaky flick the way nature intended, on a late-night horror show on an independent TV station. Even then, before the advent of our culture of irony, I knew I'd seen something so unrelentingly bad that it was remarkable. This movie concerns an artist who, while attempting to rob a sleeping woman to get rent money, has one eye put out by his victim. Driven insane, he goes about the unnamed city where he lives(New York), encountering various people, killing them, then attaching their eyeballs to mobiles and suspending them in blocks of acrylic. The victims include a boozy, bickering middle aged couple, a prostitute, and a middle-aged receptionist in an office building. The film has very little in the way of a narrative structure; our mad artist basically drifts around in a stupor, encountering people and killing them. This may be part of the director's masterplan; this mess apparently was some attempt to make a statement about the isolation of urban living. Viewers are treated to a bizarre dream sequence in which the artist staggers deliriously down canyon-like city streets barefoot and ragged, stopping to bang his fists against what appear to be the tall wooden doors of a church. Holy Fellini on Ripple! There's also a documentary-like sequence in which the landlady of one of the killer's victims is interviewed by a reporter and spouts bland, insincere compliments about a young woman she probably never spoke to("She was a nice girl, never any trouble," etc.)The entire film has a hollow, detached feel to it, something that can't entirely be blamed on the filmmakers' incompetence. Or maybe I'm just an optimist. Make no mistake, it is bad--crummy sound and cinematography, stilted dialogue(when available), superflous characters(the artist's wealthy former girlfriend, a young art student who wants to take lessons)who must have been inserted to give friends of the director parts, and artsy sequences that were intended to show the filmmaker's vision but only showcase his lack of ability. And this flick was on video at one point, but is undoubtably out of print now. If you have any independently owned video shops in your area and don't mind slumming(you know, the kind that have a back stock of wretchedly bad old videos), look for this one. Rent it, get some of your hipper-than-thou friends together, and inact your own episode of Mystery Science Theatre!

"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.

Call my crazy if you wish but I LOVE HEADLESS EYES!!! Sure it is poorly edited and not technically sound, but the film is pretty good. I love the sound track. I thought the killer was interesting and did a good job with the part he was playing. The movie has some very surrealistic moments and it is never boring. I liked the understated cheap-o ending as well. There is also a couple of decent gore sequences which become creepy thanks to the performance of Bo Brundin who is very convincing as a psychopath. I loved the way he talks to the eyes that he ripped out of his victim's head! Lighten up folks, this is a great little creepy horror movie from the early 70's. The director also happens to be one of the better known porno film makers in the industry.

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".