Eye Of The Devil (1966) No question there's enough crazy stuff going on in this movie to qualify it as a horror film......
Except for the fact that it's troubled production history left it looking like a confusing, chaotic mess, edited with a Cuisinart......
Its only major point of interest is that its basic structure bears striking similarities to 1973's"The Wicker Man", the cult classic horror film which it predates by seven years......
No one, however would claim cult classic status for "Eye Of The Devil", one of those many, many misbegotten WTF abortions that flourished in the 1960's......when the slowly crumbling movie studios would regularly pump out 'what-the-****-were-they-thinking oddities like this one.....
So what we basically have here, a la "Wicker Man", is a horror stricken innocent who stumbles into an entire community of cult-ish wack-a-doodles. And you just know that nothing good is gonna happen.....
Deborah Kerr plays the innocent in question, reshooting the entirety of Kim Novak's role after the actress suffered an on-set accident. A solid, gifted pro, Kerr spends the entire film with the same terrified deer-in-the-headlights expression she used to better effect as the ghost-tormented governess in 1961's "The Innocents" (a true horror classic based on 'The Turn Of The Screw')
Kerry's devoted husband (David Niven) must mysteriously return to his vast French vineyard and its surrounding town, due to the failure of the grape crops......
Actually, not so mysterious. But the film spends its entire laborious running time laying out the premise.........in the time honored tradition of his ancestors, Niven plans to offer himself up as a human sacrifice to appease the wine gods or whoever, so the villagers can get back to work pickin' and crushin' those grapes.
And there's no shortage of weirdos surrounding Niven, including a gang of robed, hooded figures, the sinister soft-spoken town priest (the perfectly cast Donald Pleasance) and the two jokers in the deck, a bizarre brother sister duo played by a young blonde David Hemmings and the soon-to-be-doomed starlet Sharon Tate.
Hemmings gallops around on horseback, killing birds with a bow and arrow, while the creepy Tate turns the birds into toads and hypnotizes Kerr to take a near suicidal walk on the highest ledge of Niven's castle.....whoopeee!
All of this put together sounds like the makings of a decent horror film, but the disjointed, artless editing (loads of flashcuts of threatening things, like Hemmings' arrows) drains the film of any style or sense of dread.
Fascinating goulash to watch for discoverers of 60's nutso movies (like BQ)......but too silly and strange in its conception to work up any real scares, with the entire British cast supposedly playing French people......
We're not sorry we finally caught up with this one after all these years.......but no repeat viewings for us......this one's a strictly 2 star (**) one and done.
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