Eye of the Devil (J. Lee Thompson, UK, 1966)

I saw the trailer for "Eye of the Devil" on TMC many years ago and I was caught by how fetching Sharon Tate looked in it. Seeing that it also starred Donald Pleasance, I knew that I had to watched it. Many years passed and I watched "The Fearless Vampire Killers" way before I finally got around to watching "Eye of the Devil".

It's an interesting picture because it has that very moody, very clear-looking black-and-white 60s photography that really helps the film overall. It was directed by J. Lee Thompson, one of the more succesful, multi-genre British workman directors. He makes a lot of interesting choices editing-wise that signal that this is an artistic occult-thriller, not a run of the mill Sunday afternoon horror flick to scare the kiddies. For example, the beginning features a quick-fire montage of scenes from future scenes from the movie intersped with a character's journey in the subway. It's like the Mission Impossible movie credits sequences, picquing our interest in what's to come.

Alas, I found the movie to be very half-baked in its plotting, sequences and character development. David Niven and Deborah Kerr are the classy starring couple. He is the wealthy scion of a vineyard-owning family, she is his devoted wife. He is summoned back home by a sinister priest played by Pleasance and tells his wife that it is best if she remained home in Paris (all the characters are French, by the way) with their children. She doesn't listen, so she follows him to his vast, medieval estate, where she's eyed by suspicious peasants, treated with evasive aloofness by her husband's aunt and stalked by the DeCarayn siblings, Odile (Sharon Tate) and Christian (David Hemmings). She is a cool-as-ice witch all dressed in black, he is a super-gifted hunter with bow and arrow who wears a snazzy vest. If they hade me an Avengers movie in 1967, they both would've made awesome Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye versions.

David Niven is good, but his character is so reserved and haunted by an awful secret, so most of the time he actually looks really disinterested in what's going on. Kerr is great, but there's only so much that she can do with the two major emotions she displays: bewilderement and terror. Pleasance looks really creepy, but that's basically all he is given to do..."look" creepy and creepily look at people and things. The DeCaray siblings are the most interesting characters, especially Odile and her haunting, glacial looks and line readings (the camera loves Tate, and the close-up-shots of her face, sometimes zooming in or zooming back, are really bewitching...sorry). But like I said, nothing is really done effectively. Many characters appear and dissappear without much effect in what's going on. The mysterious secret harbored in the estate can be guessed by anyone who's seen a movie about pagan cults before.

From a genre and historical point of view, it's interesting to note that this movie was shot and shelved in 1966 and released in 67, six to five years before "The Wicker Man". This means "Eye of the Devil" was a pioneer in the "pagan cult" sub-genre that was part of the 70's wave of horror films. However, being the first sometimes does mean best, and this is a fine case of that. There's only so much that arthouse editing can do with such a barebones story with little to say about anything. I did enjoy parts of it, and recommend it to fans of any of the cast, which acquit themselves with what they have.