Eyes of Fire

This unjustly overlooked movie, the first directed by Avery Crounse, ranks along with Pumpkinhead as one of the best examples of dark fantasy rooted in pure Americana. A period piece, it's set in the mid-18th century in the American colonies, before there was a United States, and is the tale of settlers encountering the supernatural in the form of a previously unexplored forest's resident evil spirit.

Narrated by one of the two young survivors of the weird encounter, it starts with the two being interrogated by the equivalent of district militia regarding the disappearance of their fellow settlers. The story begins with adultery committed by a minister, somewhat hammily played by Dennis Lipscomb, and a settler's wife, resulting in the cuckolded husband taking his children off into the forest where they meet up with a strange girl who shows them much they never knew before about the ways of the land.

Crounse gets his setting just right and also does a great job fusing the real with the fantastic--not always an easy thing to do. One of the absolutely critical ingredients in any fantasy film--whether high fantasy, sword and sorcery, dark fantasy or horror--is atmosphere, and in that this movie excels. The brooding forest scenes are superb, making the viewer feel that at any moment the trees could come alive and snatch you up right from where you're standing.

Aside from Lipscomb, the other actors are excellent. The momentum of the story is escape from a known evil to an unknown evil and that drives the movie to its strong finish.

Highly recommended.

This motion picture is perhaps the most bizarre film I have ever seen for such a low budget. The film itself brings out more horror than what you would think. The film is about a group of western pioneers set in the early American Frontier around 1750, who travel into an uncharted land and forest and are haunted by evil spirits living in the trees. Director Avery Crounse and his team of special effects rely on old fashion suspense, which is way better than some of the films we have today. Composer Brad Fiedel (who also created the score for James Cameron's The Terminator) conducts a fascinating Irish musical score. The all star cast including Dennis Lipscomb (WarGames), Guy Boyd (Jagged Edge), Will Hare (Back to the Future), Fran Ryan (The Sure Thing) and Emmy award winning actress Karlene Crockett all do a wonderful job at acting. It's a shame that this film isn't around anymore, it should be released to DVD and it's obvioius that films like The Blair Witch Project and Ravenous ripped off this film. Eyes of Fire is highly recommended for fans of early ghost stories.

To anyone interested in this movie, I say you have to see it. If you find it at your local video store and are the type to be intrigued by the title and video box, you will enjoy it.

The poor lighting and practically non-existent special effects actually make the mood more effective, although it may be slow going for some horror movie fans.

Some movies in a similar vein are The Company of Wolves, el Topo- if you can find it, and Ravenous (1999)

Some movies haunt me for long after I see them. In the case of Eyes of Fire, this isn't because the movie is all that hot, but because I haven't been able to get the darn thing out of my brain since I saw it.

Plot: It's been a while, but right off the top of my head, Eyes of Fire is set during days of early American life. A "wicked" polygamist dude is kicked out of his village for his ways, so he packs up his stuff, and leaves town, taking his flock of naive followers with him.

He promises to find them a new place to live where they can all start a new society of sorts where they can live their lives the way they want to. But he ignores his Native American tourguide, and chooses to set up shop in a spooky, foreboding area of the woods which is supposedly cursed by evil spirits.

After that, I can't really remember too much about the plot, other than that it dissolves into nothingness, and in its place we get quite a bit nightmarish images of ghosts, slime, and spectral zap rays, all backed with a lot of screaming.

I tend to remain fascinated with movies that seem to exist in their own world of reality, where our rules of logic don't always apply. If the world of movies were a giant city, these films would be brief snapshots of dangerous streets you don't want to drive down. These don't always have to be horror movies; Over the years I can think of several examples of these kind of films; Gummo, Elephant, The Toolbox Murders (the 70's one), and Impulse (the meg tilly one) all come to mind off hand. These movies all have a worldview that depressed me enough that I just cant shake the characters and their environment afterwards.

Eyes of Fire is like that, really. I don't recall one character, actor, or line of dialog. Nor am I really sure I've got the story down right. But the memory of being totally freaked out by it has stuck with me ever since.

"Eyes of Fire" has a pretty impressive script to start out with. It lets the surreal events unfold in the most offbeat, unpredictable way, that you can easily view it several times and still discover things. The forest with its many "trees" is so vividly filmed; I never realized simple things like trees, bushes, and pure earth could be made so threatening!

The film is just drenched in atmosphere: The haunting sounds of the woods; the often off-kilter camera angles; and the excellent narration by a young lady with an accent so thick you could cut it with a knife! I loved listening to her.

The film has a logic and a language all its own. You have to pay attention to the film to appreciate all the developments of the highly "elemental" plot. This isn't a "brain candy" horror flick; you'll have to make an effort to understand certain things, but it's highly worth it.

My favorite performance in the film is Karlene Crockett as the fairy Leah. Many of the most beautiful moments in the film involve her, like where Leah crawls into a barrel with the children to keep out of the rain, and a rainbow appears beside it; and Leah playing joyfully in the field of feathers.

Then, of course, there's the dark scenes, like the ones where the grotesque figure in black roams the forest, sinking in and out of the ground; and Leah's numerous encounters with the elusive ghosts. I've heard people rag on the special effects, which are a mixed bag; but it's important to remember that this was 1983, and the filmmakers didn't have the budget of E.T. -- or anywhere near it. The effects serve their purpose, and are often quite creepy. They compliment the film, rather than overrun it like many films today.

This is a really great film to watch late at night; it has the atmosphere of one of those low-budget chillers network stations would show in the early morning hours before the age of the infomercial, only with more originality. I would rush out and buy this if it were released on DVD; for now I'll just have to settle for my Vestron Video copy. I think this little gem is a masterpiece in its own right; definitely thought-provoking horror, a genre that is too rarely explored.

My rating: 8.5/10