The Headless Eyes (1971) User Reviews

Scuzzy exploitation grind-house effort

[Red-Barracuda · 5/10 · 17 October 2012]

A thieving artist has his eye gouged out by a spoon when trying to rob a woman's apartment. This nutter then goes round New York killing women whose eyeballs he removes, which he uses to create a new bit of artwork back in his studio.

The Headless Eyes is pretty much an example of grind-house exploitation fodder. It's a very rough and ready flick with minimal production values. But then I guess you would expect that for a grade Z movie. However, it does at least make some attempt at being dare I say it, artistic. There are occasional interesting shots, while the music fits with the feel quite well. It has a pretty scuzzy atmosphere overall and is another that utilises the very mean streets of 70's New York to decent effect. It's a clear precursor to Abel Ferrara's very similar movie The Driller Killer which came out a few years later. Unlike that one, The Headless Eyes never did make the video nasty list, which in some ways is surprising seeing as it was available in a striking video cover on home video in early 80's Britain and it also has considerably more mean spirited violence than many films that made up that list. That said it's not exactly impressive. Quite a lot of the time it's pretty terrible in fact, especially that opening looped use of the line 'My eye! My eye!' But the griminess and rough approach do sort of work in its favour some of the time, giving it a sleazy feel that's in keeping with its overall concept.

Feels incomplete, but has some of the raw material for a good film

[InjunNose · 4/10 · 29 September 2020]

In "The Headless Eyes," Bo Brundin plays a starving artist who turns to burglary to pay the rent. On one particularly bad night, a woman wakes up just as Brundin enters her bedroom; he begs her not to scream, but she panics and gouges out his left eye with a spoon. (He leaves by the fire escape, shrieking as a ridiculous prosthetic eyeball dangles precariously on his cheek.) Two years later, Brundin--now wearing an eyepatch--evidently has found some way to make ends meet, but he's a homicidal maniac who uses the eyes of his mostly female victims in odd little sculptures that he's planning to exhibit publicly for the first time.

And that's about it, really. It's never made clear why Brundin has become a dangerous psychotic; the viewer only knows that there wouldn't be a movie *without* a dangerous psychotic, so there he is. Brundin's a pretty fair actor, dutifully snarling his way through the performance ("I-am-TWISTED!"), but it just doesn't make much sense. All emotionally fragile males have a murderous hatred of women: that's the cinematic stereotype, and this film is content to live up to it.

But there are elements of "The Headless Eyes" that work. The bleak, gritty atmosphere of early '70s New York is absolutely genuine, and serves as the film's strongest selling point; no one's going to mistake this for a movie set in NYC but actually filmed on a Hollywood backlot. And there's an eerily convincing scene in which a TV news reporter stands outside a ramshackle apartment building, interviewing neighborhood people in the wake of one of the murders. Had it appeared in a major film (like "Taxi Driver," for instance), this scene would have been praised for its realism. By the way, if you have the sneaking suspicion that many of the smaller roles are being played by folks who also starred in New York porn films, you're right. Back then, porn attracted lots of decent actors and actresses who had trouble finding mainstream work, and there existed an uneasy but fascinating web of connections between porn, low-budget horror flicks and daytime soaps (with the same performers using different names in each).

Perfunctory, but with a little more time and money, director Kent Bateman might have been able to hang some real meat on the bare bones of this film. Even in its rough state, "The Headless Eyes" has a few points of interest for the discerning horror movie fan.

So many eyeballs, so little time...

[Hey_Sweden · 5/10 · 30 January 2018]

"The Headless Eyes" is one of those ridiculous, micro-budget, nutty obscurities that will appeal to B horror enthusiasts who love unearthing little known curios. Swedish actor Bo Brundin ("Raise the Titanic") plays Arthur Malcolm, a starving artist who resorts to thievery. Discovered in the act by a victim, he struggles with her, and she manages to gouge out his left eyeball with a spoon. Now utterly insane, he stalks the streets of NYC, stopping long enough to kill unfortunate citizens and remove their orbs. These he turns into dubious objets d'art.

This film is, overall, too slowly paced, and it doesn't have enough of the laugh out loud moments that would make for a very enjoyable bad movie experience. However, this flaky exercise in horror / exploitation / surrealism / art by writer & director Kent Bateman isn't totally without its amusements. Imagine the gore from a Herschell Gordon Lewis flick, except even MORE tacky. The acting is extremely amateurish from just about everybody involved, although it must be said that Brundin gives an appropriately certifiable performance. At one point, it looks as if he might have a stable influence in his life, a female art student who actually likes his work and wants him to mentor her. But soon, he's going right back to doing what he did before. The decision to stage a later stalking scene in a slaughterhouse is an admittedly novel idea.

This is the kind of thing you watch if you're a completist and want to be able to say that you've seen it. It's not exactly a good film at all, but it has a certain gritty quality going for it.

Other than this flick, Batemans' big claim to fame is having sired acting offspring: Jason ('Arrested Development') and Justine ('Family Ties') Bateman.

Five out of 10.

My Eyes, My eyes, my eyes!!!!!

[MADMANMARZ · 3 June 2000]

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.

eye yi yi... bottom of the barrel; avert your eyes, please

[FieCrier · 1/10 · 26 January 2005]

I'm afraid this was a very, very bad movie. It reminded me a lot of another very bad movie, The Driller Killer (1979). Both are pretty low-budget, shabby-looking films featuring a mentally ill artist wandering streets finding people to kill in a gruesome manner to incorporate into their art. Best to approach with a "so-bad-it's-good" attitude, though personally I couldn't enjoy it on that level.

The Headless Eyes at times seems to be trying to be arty. Sounds sometimes repeat themselves in loops. There's some voice-over that seems to be trying to be poetic or profound. There was a trippy freak-out sequence early in it involving a close-up of an eye with blood dripping down it and various non-sequitur shots that seemed to promise something odd. However, most of the movie is made up of really time-consuming unedited shots of nothing. People waiting for an elevator. The lights indicating the floor the elevator is on. Walking. A cab following (not chasing) a car. I'm surprised there weren't shots of the actor sleeping. Maybe there were; my eyes glazed over watching this. The forward scan button will be your friend.

The lead actor really mumbles, and he has an accent, and together with the age of the videotape I watched the movie on, he could be very hard to understand at times. If there's ever a DVD, it would benefit from closed captions for the hearing impaired and/or English subtitles. The soundtrack wasn't too bad, but not much music was composed, and so it repeats itself frequently, to the point you just have to laugh.

There are relatively few scenes with gore, and they do not last long, and it wasn't done particularly well. I did sort of like the eye art, though, like the eye mobile, and the eyes encased in clear solid plastic cubes.

I'm astonished that the director went on to direct episodes of Family Ties and Valerie! Granted, his children (Justine and Jason, respectively) appeared on those shows, but they were wholesome family entertainment, and Headless Eyes is not that... I wonder if the producers had seen it?

A much better eye-obsessed offbeat horror movie is Angustia (1987) AKA Anguish. Check that one out; skip this one!

Very, very poor.

[poolandrews · 2/10 · 4 March 2005]

A fat, ugly, bearded down on his luck & unsuccessful (for good reason) artist named Malcolm (Bo Brundin) finds paying the rent where he lives in New York City a little tough. So during the pre-credit sequence Malcolm breaks into a woman's apartment in the middle of the night and tries to steal her money and jewellery. Unfortunately for Malcolm she wakes up and in the ensuing struggle between the two she gouges his left eyeball out with a spoon. Malcolm screams "my eye!" in pain as he escapes, his eyeball hanging from it's socket. An unknown amount of time has passed and Malcolm now wears an eye-patch and he has nightmares/hallucinations about eyes. Malcolm owns a shop in New York City in which he sells art, including what looks like novelty clear square paper weights with eyes in the center. Two party goers stare at Malcolm through the window, late one night, and make fun of him. Malcolm takes offence and follows them both back to their apartment, kills them and gouges out their eyes, with a special spoon Malcolm carries around with him for just such an occasion! On his way back home the next morning a prostitute asks him if he is OK because he has blood on his hand which she thinks is his own and might be bleeding. She takes Malcolm back to her apartment and he kills her too, gouging her eyes out as well. And so the film continues in exactly the same vein for pretty much the rest of it's duration. Written and directed by the seemingly very untalented Kent Bateman this is one extremely poor horror film. The script is a mess, most of the characters in the Headless Eyes are introduced to the viewer and then two minutes later killed by Malcolm. No one is given any meaningful lines or character development apart from Brundin. There are two other characters that the script tries to flesh out a little, Malcolms ex-wife Anna who is in it for one short sequence and then never seen again and a New York art school student who likes Malcolms work and tries to befriend him but again she is in the film for a very short amount of time in a very tight fifteen minute period and then disappears never to be seen again as quickly as she appeared in the first place. So, with basically no one but Brundin to carry the film we have a big problem already as he is absolutely terrible. He spouts inane dialogue that doesn't mean a thing, pulls some funny faces every so often, is generally awful to watch and is overweight & very unattractive too. And why have the police not caught Malcolm? By the time the film ends he has killed over fifteen people in broad daylight, sometimes without gloves and in the victims own home as well possibly around their friends/family. The photography is some of the worst I've seen, it was obviously filmed on 16mm film using a hand-held camera, that's the only explanation I can think of for the constant jerkiness. It often looks as if Bateman just pointed his camera in the general direction and hoped for the best. The whole production is poor throughout. Editing, music, direction and production values are rock bottom. New York City is a cool location and I liked the last ten or so minutes in the grimy slaughterhouse when Malcolm was stalking a woman through large animal carcasses and among dangerous looking meat hooks, this was easily the films best sequence overall but it in no way makes up for the previous 70 odd minutes of total amateurishness and tedium. The special effects are poor & the gore is generally quite tame with nothing more than a bit of fake blood running down peoples faces and a few scooped out eyes, nothing to shout about. I really can't think of a single thing with which to recommend the Headless Eyes as entertainment, steer well clear of this incredibly bad film as there are so many better horror films out there much more worthy of your time.

Terrible, but great!

[FrancisLavoie · 4/10 · 8 March 2014]

This is the perfect example of "So bad its good". The Headless Eyes is a strange movie that at times feels like an art film mixed with Hershell Gordon Lewis. The movie is about an artist who tries to steal money from a random woman, she wakes up and stabs him in the eye with a spoon, after that the thief becomes a psycho who has a strange fixation with eyes, he starts killing women and gauging their eyes out, he then proceeds to make art with them. Truly one of the most bizarre film I have ever seen. The character is sexually excited by eyes and that makes for some of the funniest scenes ever.

If you want a bad movie to watch with your friends drunk, this is perfect.

Egad! Where the Heck Did This Come From?? :=8/

[MooCowMo · 1/10 · 8 August 2000]

Dreadful, awful, terrible, and horrible - one simply runs out of adjectives when describing this cheap, excretable, incredibly bad 70's horror flick. Shot in the Frank Henenlotter("Basket Case")school of nasty, sleazy, ugly horror-wanna-be flicks, believe the MooCow when he says yer gonna need at least 37 showers after viewing this one - "The Headless Eyes" doesn't just stink, it REEKS! Yep, you can really smell the back-ally urine stains coming off this one. It opens like some kind of pathetic snuff film, where this moron starving artist(Bo Brundin)steals a couple of coins from the empty purse of some ditz. She screams, they struggle, and she puts his eye out with a spoon - or so they would us believe. A Laughably cheap and pathetic plastic eye is glued to his closed eyelid, in the dimmest possible hope of suggesting gore and violence. Mooore fake blood and plastic eyes are to follow, as the film(and that's being charitable, folks...)descends quickly into a weary, dreary catalogue of incredibly stupid victims getting "murdered", while Brundin cackles hopelessly & fondles moore plastic eyes in red paint. You think Shatner over-acts?? You ain't seen nuthin' yet, friends! Brundin is so incredibly over-the-top and stupid that his performance goes beyond comprehension. So, what did "Director" Kent Bateman tell him, "go out there and act like the stupidest possible moron you can"??? Mission accomplished!! And let's face it, this film had no director, or editor, or crew. I think random bits of mouldering film stock were left in a closet, like some old, slimey, bacterial cheese spread, and then mootated into this laughable disaster. By the way, Kent Bateman is the father of Justine Bateman, prooving once and for all that the "no possible talent whatsoever" gene can be passed from generation to generation. One of this film's producers(yeah, right...) is Henri Pachard(here as Ronald Sullivan), known moore for his sweet, sentimental porno flicks(like "Jane Bond Meets Thunderthighs", and "Obey Me B**ch, I-IV"). Yes, folks, this is "Manos" for the 70's, they don't come mooch worse than this(except "Guru The Mad Monk"!!). The MooCow says if you reaaalllly wanna erase someone's brain beyond the hope of any cure, this is the flick to do it. Good luck! :=8/

Headless Eyes

[BandSAboutMovies · 5/10 · 29 April 2024]

Arthur Malcolm (Bo Brundin, who was in Meteor, The Day the Clown Cried and Raise the Titanic) can't pay the rent - he's a starving artist, you know? - so he tries to sneak into a woman's bedroom and steals money off her nightstand. He thinks that she's sleeping, she thinks he's a rapist and this comical misunderstanding ends with her popping out his eye with a spoon and knocking him out a window.

Arthur pulls himself back up and decides that he's going to keep being an artist but to do so, he's going to kill people and use their eyeballs in his art.

It was produced by porn luminary Henri Pachard and distributed by J. E. R. Pictures as a double feature with The Ghastly Ones. The director and writer? Kent Bateman, who was the father of Jason and Justine, and would one day produce Teen Wolf Too.

Back to that porn connection, it has adult actors Larry Hunter (who was also in The Amazing Transplant with another actress from this movie, Mary Lamay) and Linda Southern. Another actress, Ann Wells, was also in Anything Once, Career Bed and The Detention Girls, was married to Bateman but is not the mother of his famous children.

Don't be confused by the poster. This is not a movie about eyeballs moving on their own. No, it's a movie about a man with an eyepatch saying "My eye!" and "I'm twisted!" while plucking other eyeballs out of their sockets. Over and over. Sometimes even in focus. Also: set to music stole from the Cecil Leuter and Georges Teperino albums TV Music 101 and TV Music 102.

This is the kind of movie that as soon as it starts, you're either going to love or despise it.

I loved every minute.

Mis-crediting

[[e-mail] · 6/10 · 29 March 2007]

Whoa! This low-budget experiment in horror was directed by me, Kent Bateman, and with few funds, we did the best we could. Obviously, it wasn't fitted with enough blood and gore for the distributor, so the producer, Ron Sullivan, added some scenes. I only wish to make a comment on the assertion of a reviewer who erroneously referred to me, Kent Bateman, as aka Henri Pachard. Mr. Ron Sullivan, the producer of the film, aka Henri Pachard, producer of over 300 porno films, took my director's cut and added footage I never wrote or directed. This is just to set the record straight. Kent Bateman is not HENRI PACHARD. Please refer to my own IMDb listing. If you go to Henri Pachard's IMDb listing, you will see that he doesn't even list Headless Eyes as one of his films.

All fun & games until someone loses an eyeball

[Chase_Witherspoon · 4/10 · 17 December 2022]

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'.

Low budget masterpiece

[stefant · 10/10 · 20 October 2002]

This movie i watched for about 8 years ago. If a movie still is very memorable after that time, it just have to be a masterpiece. It starred swedish actor Bo Brundin, who made one of his best performances ever, the scene when he waits for the elevator, about 12 feets beside the elevator is just fantastic, also the scene when he carves out one of his victims eyes and a police officer shows up, is just cinematic perfection. I believe this one is very hard to find in video shops, but if you do, just lean back and enjoy.

I gave it 10 out 10

MY EYE! AHHHAHHH my eyeeeee.....

[CMRKeyboadist · 7/10 · 6 September 2006]

Hahahaha! This film is great. If you are looking for low-budget crap from the early 70's, check this grade Z film out. No budget, horrible editing, some atrocious acting, and eyeballs.

The plot is so simple, even a 10 year old could have thought of it. A struggling artist decides to rob a woman's apartment in the middle of the night so he can afford to keep his shop open. In the process of the robbery, the woman wakes up and scoops his eyeball out with a spoon. He gets away, only after screaming "MY EYE! AHHHAHHH my eyeeeee....." over and over again. This whole event changes his life and he decides to start killing woman, remove their eyeballs and use them to further his art career.

This movie is so bad, but I really enjoyed it. The beginning of the movie is possibly one of the funniest moments I have ever seen in a movie. When he gets his eye removed and starts screaming about it, the sound editors decided to loop his scream over and over again, looping it about 6 or 7 times. You just have to see it to really understand.

The gore in the film is hilarious. There isn't a whole lot of it, but there are a few scenes noteworthy. If anything, it is far more bloody then it is gory. Don't expect HG Lewis here, though.

If you like this stuff, it is worth a watch. I thought it was great, but that is just my opinion. 7/10

le bad cimema

[dunsuls · 3/10 · 19 June 2002]

I remembered this as a film that delivered.It doesn't.The mind forgets as it gets older.Do not see this film.Its badly acted and poorly made. I can't think of a worse film,although the idea was ok,just done badly.Put it in say Mario Bavas hands and who knows?

The French New Wave meets Vietnam Era psychosis.

[rixrex · 2 October 2006]

There's a lot to be said about this grisly extreme low budget thing, much of it not too good so far, however it is a precursor to the Henenlotter style, not a copy of such, as was implied by another commenter. It's not hard to imagine that Henenlotter, Abel Ferrara and maybe even Scorcese caught this at a midnight screening or something when they were younger. If viewed being mindful of its year of production (released 1973 but production started around 1970-71), it comes on the heels of the angst-ridden French New Wave and borrows much from that style. Every independent film "artist" was familiar with the French New Wave, especially New Yorked based ones

There are actually moments that are quite unnerving watching this eye-stealing serial killer move in and out of a psychosis and stalk his prey. Not as nicely done as Michael Lerner's eye-obsessed maniac in ANGUISH, but still effective. It's hinted that he may have two personalities, but it really seems more like schizophrenia. (No, they are not the same thing!) The gore effects are poor to adequate for the time and budget, they would be considered lame by modern standards. As typical for horror films of this period, it's reflective of the bloodshed and violence of Vietnam that was consistently broadcast over television, and of the dread regarding the effects of the war on returning veterans. This is a common theme, that has become more visible as time passes, in horror and other films of violence of the time

While the main character, the killer, has nothing to do with the war, the mental anguish and violence are sure themes of this period. You won't like this much if you must have super-realistic gore effects and hyper-intense action with cardboard characters, but for those horror fans who lived through this period and those who are interested in studying the horror films of the time, this one is worth the few dollars you can buy it for on VHS on Amazon, less than what it costs on ebay, where it's available on bootleg DVDs. With a wonderfully eerie soundtrack as well and a nicely done understated ending. Nice to view on a double-feature with THE SEVERED ARM.

a true schlockfest

[duke_of_lilywhite · 5/10 · 27 May 2023]

Regardless being his first screen credit, Kent Bateman, the future father of Jason Bateman, has slapped together a true schlockfest.

But once you peel away the bad editing, cinematography, direction, and acting, there is a compelling story underneath. Bo Brundin, who would later appear in the Great Waldo Pepper (1975), as well as the miniseries Rich Man Poor Man (1976) and Centennial (1978), turns up the psychosis to number 11, playing a tortured artist. And his obsession with eyeballs is reminiscent of the main protagonist in the Richard Burton vehicle Equus (1977).

As for the murder scenes, they are not too out of the ordinary from what you expect from a '70s slasher film, albeit one that was made long before the arrival of Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees.

And yet, his focus on Ann Wells, AKA Mary Jane Early, appears to be the main subplot. Discovering her by chance, he stalks her repeatedly throughout the story, to the point where he discovers that she is an actress named Catherine. Unfortunately, Wells's character doesn't follow the usual "final girl" trope in the finale.

In that set-piece scene, she makes a series of ridiculous blunders, resulting in her being trapped in a frozen meat locker where the killer liquidates her mercilessly.

And yet, the very end of the story is reminiscent of the Clock Tower scene in Niagara (1953), where Joseph Cotton murders his unfaithful wife, Marilyn Monroe, only to discover he's trapped in the Tower with her dead body. But unlike Joseph Cotton, who miraculously escapes from the Tower the next day, Bo Brundin's character is discovered frozen along with his murder victim by the butchers.

With all that said, despite having a gritty early '70s New York as his backdrop, Bateman could've had a classic slasher film on his hands if he had more resources and the skills of John Carpenter or Tobe Hooper to back them up.

He's out there... out of sight, and out of his mind!

[Reid-4 · 1/10 · 24 May 1999]

The Headless Eyes seems to be one of the worst motion pictures of all time. It was so gory that they couldn't even put it on the silver screen! My video store has the video and on the cover it says that it was too gory to put on the silver screen. Isn't it terrible? How did it come for this to be such a bad movie? Even I can't rent the movie anymore it freaks me out to see a serial killer poking people's eyes out. That is why I rate this movie on a scale from 1 to 10 as a 1. It is just too bad the movie had to turn out like this! Fortunately, now the movie is out of print so everyone is safe from it. Just take it from me if you ever happen to pass it in some video store DO NOT RENT IT!

Stupid Garbage

[wbells · 1/10 · 28 January 2003]

This is one of the worst horror movies I have ever seen. The plot is good - man loses eye & goes crazy & starts killing people & gouges out their eyes. But that's all that's good about this movie. It's not even watchable. The lead is awful, there aren't enough gore scenes & the gore scenes that are there are horrible. You won't be cringing when you see the eyes get carved out, as a matter fact, you won't see anything. The killers hand almost always covers the victims face when there is an eye scene, the effects are pathetic. There are long boring scenes where the killer talks, or stands around or whatever. The characters are stupid. It is such a waste, it's not even worth fast forwarding through. See the movie Eyeball instead.

Real bad drive-in psycho film is a laughable experience.

[emm · 2/10 · 9 December 1998]

As Jason Catanese said in his "Bad Movie Night" review for this film, no one will ever find it! Well, I did! How did I get it? I can't tell you that! I'm just an undercover fortune hunter in the search for buried treasure, that's all! At least THE HEADLESS EYES is worth choking on some stale popcorn, but only if you have the strong will to appreciate badly produced movies of the early 70s. This one easily embarrasses the die-hard horror freakazoids who demand solid fright and realistic chills. Luckily, there is some graphic gore in a silly and peculiar fashion, and some weak-hearted individuals might still feel horrified over it. Even my mother is still afraid to see BLOOD FEAST, by god! Either way, it's quite laughable to enjoy scenes of our eye gouger roaming around on camera and finding broads to play with, along with the dreadful sounding music and dubbed up samples of the killer shouting "My eye, my eye!!". I'll give this a bit more credit for a fairly entertaining low-budget experience, but as it stands, THE HEADLESS EYES is best avoided by the majority who see endless reruns of HALLOWEEN and SCREAM. I doubt the entire world population will ever find this one on the shelves.

A special note to Mr. Catanese. GURU THE MAD MONK is the sloppiest AND worst motion picture experience of all time, period! It fails in every single department known to man!

Worst horror film ever

[ctanner5 · 1/10 · 1 May 2002]

If this isn't the worst horror film ever, then it comes pretty close. Words cannot fully describe how truly awful this inept feature is. It falls short in all areas: acting, directing, special effects, you name it. The video box is completely misleading. The two pictures on the back aren't even from the movie! This isn't even one of those movies that is bad enough to be funny....it's just horrible. Only rent this if you really want to see one of the worst films ever. Trust me, you'll hate yourself afterwards.

He has the vision

[Tender-Flesh · 6/10 · 9 November 2012]

Bo Brundin delivers a tour de force as Arthur, a starving artist, in this early slasher. Arthur begins by breaking into a woman's apartment where he finds her sleeping. As he digs in her purse for money so he can afford his rent, the woman awakens and he tries to keep her quiet, repeating that he only needs money. She apparently still thinks he's there for a bit of in-out and while he is trying to stifle her screams, she gouges out his left eye with a spoon.

This deformity leads to severe mental anguish as he realizes not only will people stare at him, but his painting will now suffer because of his lack of depth perception. So, naturally as an artist, he finds a different medium. He turns to stalking and killing mainly women, then scooping out their eyes and placing them in his sculptures.

He maintains a meager shop where he displays his wares with a back parlor where he keeps his collection of eyeballs. I was expecting this to be a real borefest even though I have seen the original VHS boxes are highly collectible and have a decent asking price. I was happy to find it uploaded on youtube. While the beginning attack was hokey, with Arthur's screams of pain being set on an audio loop, he pulls off some of the greatest Smeagol to Gollum grade-Z horror performance I think I have seen. Brundin is Swedish and I think his accent lends an air of sophistication to his character. Critics will cry misogyny, but normally with films like this, you'd get nude girls around every corner with their bodies being groped then stabbed. Not so with Arthur. No one is naked, there are no sex scenes. There is a fair amount of blood, but this is 1971, and on this non-budget, the actual eye scooping is sort of left to the imagination, with plenty of blood running down faces, but not much in the way of money shots.

I can't imagine why this hasn't gotten a good DVD treatment. It suffers on VHS from overexposed and washed out daylight shots, which some might say adds to its naive charm.

But, given the steady supply of actual garbage that gets a DVD these days, I don't think it will be too long before this baby gets its day in the sun. My only real complaint was the ending. Of course, our man Arthur can't go on doing this forever, but his comeuppance is rather limp. The director set up something that could have been splendid in the final harrowing chase sequence. Arthur chases a beautiful down-on-her-luck model into a meat locker while the business is closed. All around are dangling hooks to hold large sides of beef and one of those points was just begging to impale Arthur's other eye. Alas, this never happens, and his ultimate end is rather meh. Overall, a solid and enjoyable early slasher film with surprising acting.

A movie that makes you wish time travel was possible

[hailebear2002 · 1/10 · 21 July 2006]

If only there was time travel, then I would pull up in front of the video store an hour before I rented this hogslop and I could have destroyed the copy. After a half hour of this poorly acted, poorly directed, and poorly written crapfest I was looking for a spoon to end my own suffering. Perhaps some can gain use of this as a means to torture 3rd world prisoners or riff on it mstk style, but for me there will always be a vision of Hell's video store with row upon row of Headless Eyes videos. People always claim they have seen the worst movie on these boards, but accept no substitute. Headless Eyes will make you rethink ever watching a movie again! Beware

Hell Yes

[Vominus · 8/10 · 19 June 2003]

I randomly came across this movie when I was perusing the horror selection of a local video store. I was expecting a splatteriffic gore-fest based on the box's description, but instead I got a quirky mind-f**k with sadistic pleasures.

This movie is definitely cult and easy to despise; the acting is sub-par and some of the sound editing is questionable, but if you're into cult horror then you probably don't mind such shortcomings.

I could really feel the killer's desperation, remorse, and especially his confusion when he befriends a potential victim. It's worth watching just for the opening sequence, and the ending is nice and ironic (it actually made me laugh).

Intrepid, minimalist exploitation flick

[drownsoda90 · 6/10 · 31 December 2016]

"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.

Now I know

[Kastore · 22 July 2003]

My eyes! AAOOOAAAUUUGGHH! My eyes! That's what I screamed myself after watching this atrocity of a film. No gore, no effects, no acting, no sense. The movie opens with a guy robbing a woman's apartment while she sleeps, and when she wakes up and screams, he tries to silence her by getting on top of her and smothering her mouth and nose. Fortunately she grabs a nearby spoon on the nightstand and slides it along the intruder's temple – no wait, she actually penetrates his eye socket with it!?! With his eye popped out and dangling by its nerve, the man stumbles out of the apartment, out the hall, down the fire escape and crawls to a stop in the alley. The entire time howling the ever-looped line "My EYE! My eyyyyyye!" In case you miss him hearing it during this opening credit sequence, don't worry. It's played and replayed every 7 minutes for the rest of the film. During which time we see the main character (who happens to be a failed artist of some sort) finally get his comeuppance by cutting out the eyes of women and "freezing" them in blocks of ice (?) as art.

The highlight scene has to be the news report in front of the apartment of one of the killer's first victims. First of all (as someone else has pointed out), nobody shows the first hint of suspicion about the creepy-looking guy with the eyepatch being at the crime scene where the victim had her eyes cut out. Secondly, since when are funeral services held at a person's apartment building, complete with coffin being carried down the steps into the street? And lastly, you gotta love the reporter's interview of the folks. He asks one woman what she knew about the murdered, and her answer is pricelessly generic. Perplexed at the woman's response, the reporter realizes he has lost track of who the actor with the scripted line is amongst the crowd and openly calls out the improvised line, "I understand one of you knew the victim quite well" to find the proper response. Obviously, whoever it was that had the all-important line for the scene was stuck in traffic when it was filmed, because we don't get any good answer for the poor reporter.

Oh, and about the guy who plays the "eyeball killer". He's a lot of fun to watch. I always wondered what it would be like if a burned-out community theatre director played a C-horror serial killer. Now I know. With hilarious monologues and delicious overacting, he hams up everything beautifully in what can best be described as Shakespeare's "Othello" meets Lustig's "Maniac". From victim to victim to potential admirer to the incredibly lame finale, we know this guy's insane because he keeps rambling to himself that he's "got to finish" something or other. My guess is there's only about 15 copies of this movie left in existence. It needs to get snatched up quick and given the DVD treatment, so that low-budget horror fans everywhere can take it home and give it the MST treatment. It is indeed that bad.