Showing posts with label Headless Eyes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Headless Eyes. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Eyes Without a Face: Countdown to Halloween: (Day 31)

CLICK…WHIR!



BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS
AKA
THE HEADLESS EYES

For fans who howled at THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE and DAWN OF THE DEAD, more gruesome gore is in store when blood fills the screen for HEADLESS EYES. An artist turned housebreaker is discovered by his victim. In their struggle she gouges out his eye with a spoon! With the eye hanging down his cheek by a nerve and driven insane by pain and horror, the artist seeks vengeance on the world-and the sex-that maimed him. He stalks beautiful women through the streets of New York, leaving a gory trail of hideously mutilated bodies that makes headlines and baffles police!

He’s out there…
out of sight, and out of his mind!

Too Gory for the Silver Screen!


It’s VHS movie time on this final night of our Halloween Countdown and we’ve saved the most… American of our WIZARD VIDEO tapes for last.  It’s actually a film made in the good ol’ U.S. of A. and it’s made by a man who made some rather fine Americans too… Kent Bateman, father of film and television stars Justine and Jason Bateman.  Producers released it with a self-imposed “X” rating—the MPAA never rated it.

Shot on a bare-bones budget and with the simple idea that this struggling artist becomes a twisted psychopath who kills and steals eyeballs using a spoon and uses them in his art after he looses an eye while trying to rob a lady so that he can afford his rent.  It’s a strange kind of character study of the killer played by Bo Brundin.


Sounds like it’s potentially interesting, right?  Well it’s interesting in a way because it’s quirkier than expected and strange in that the main character is hard to pin down.  He doesn’t really struggle with his psychosis, he simply goes from scene to scene simply because that’s how life unfolds.  Short periods of calm followed by ranting insanity and murder.


A psycho killer doing his thing in the very early 1970s New York City.  It’s simple, it’s to the point, but the ending does leave a lot to be desired.

My Grade:
“C+”

May this videotape sit on your shelf collecting dust for a decade until you rediscover it, toss it out for a DVD version that you find for a buck-fifty at a discount store that you leave in the wrapper until you stumble across it on Netflix streaming and check it out that way and realize that you’ll never watch it again, so you sell the DVD for fifty cents on a yard sale.


Enjoy this taste of ham!





Some of the more insightfully entertaining reviews of HEADLESS EYES can be found here:





Sunday, October 2, 2016

Video Vamp: The Countdown to Halloween (Day 2)

Since I had no solid plans for my Halloween blog this year, I figured I would wing it.  I’ve done it before, but not up to my own expectations.  I always have a few ideas come the lonesome October, but sometimes an overarching theme avoids reach.  So I figured that this year would probably be much the same…



And then I looked to my movie shelves… I’ve got a lot of them.
And then I remembered all the VHS tapes of old taped shows I’ve yet to transfer to DVD.  And then I saw a handful of oversized VHS boxes that I’d been meaning to view for about a year.  They are pretty neat.

Last year, while doing my usual orders for the comic book store where I work, I came across a listing in the Diamond Comic Distributers monthly Previews catalog for about three dozen VHS tapes being offered by Full Moon Features…




“Lost in a warehouse for 33 years! The amazing big box Wizard Video Collection! An early pioneer in the home video business, Charles Band started both MEDA HOME ENTERTAINMENT in the late 70's and WIZARD VIDEO in 1980.

After releasing features like THE GROOVE TUBE, FLESH GORDON and TUNNELVISION in the standard VHS box format, WIZARD VIDEO introduced the oversized "big VHS box" which featured lurid titles such as ZOMBIE, I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, DEMONIAC & BREEDERS! After a few short years of these big VHS box releases WIZARD VIDEO returned to the standard size VHS box as retailers were quickly running out of shelf space. A fond memory for people who grew up in the video store era of the early 80's - the big VHS box has become a rare collectable due to its scarcity and (usually poor) condition. 

And now a treasure trove of original big VHS boxes was found late last year in one of Charles Band's and Full Moon's many overcrowded warehouses! 36 features are represented in this discovery with quantities ranging from 180 boxes to 420 boxes. The 30+ year old big VHS boxes are in mint condition as they have never been out of their original shipping boxes!

This unique sale!

Beginning February 12th and for every month thereafter four of these 36 Wizard Video big box VHS cassettes will go on sale. They will contain the original program newly duplicated on VHS in a black clam shell which will be in the original box.

This is truly a rare discovery and little part of the early days of the home video explosion!”


And so, even with the quantities as limited as they were, I ordered a handful of these big box VHS videocassettes.  I have yet to view them, partly because I was unsure if I had a working VCR.  I was pretty sure the last working one I had had eaten the last tape I tried to play in it.  But we’re in the proper season for both cheesy B-Grade horror and Mad Doctor antics and, so, I’m willing to take the risk!  More than crazy enough to sacrifice VHS tape to the Great Pumpkin if there’s a chance for real, unwholesome, schlocky goodness!




Each week I will attempt to watch and review one of the following five features for The Goods:


A Virgin Among The Living Dead
Click to Enlarge for a better look at the art stolen from Marvel Comics' Marvel Zombie, by Pablo Marcos, methinks!



Headless Eyes



The Screaming Dead



The Possessor





Fraulein Devil


More on each of these titles as they arrive on the blog individually!

As for the rest of the days...
we'll figure it out.

We've got, what, twenty-nine more of these to go?