The Devil Eyes Out

Eye of the Devil has all the ingredients of a great British horror movie: an intriguing mystery set-up, a baroque Gothic setting, crisp black-and-white cinematography, an inspired ensemble cast and a haunting musical score. For the first hour of the movie I was sure I had stumbled upon an unheralded gem.

Then in the last 30 minutes the whole thing tripped up on itself, becoming less of a horror-mystery and more of a supernatural drama. Around this point I fell asleep and was woken by Deborah Kerr's screaming. As credits rolled over a glum orchestral score I discovered I'd pretty much missed the whole end of the movie.

After going back to the scenes I slept through I started nodding off yet again in the same climactic spot. That seems to say it all, doesn't it?  The whole story just becomes predictable by act three, in part due to the fact that Kerr's character is flatly written and the mystery is dispensed with early on. 

Eye of the Devil is not a total waste of time, it's just very dry and very British and very predictable. The cast is spectacular, sporting the aforementioned Kerr, a charismatic David Hemmings, a stunning Sharon Tate, a weird Donald Pleasence and a picking-up-a-paycheck David Niven. They mostly turn in grade A work and keep things moving even when the plot is crawling like a snail. The film's also well directed by J. Lee Thompson (Cape Fear, Happy Birthday To Me) who gets some eerie visual mileage out of his witchcraft plot and makes creative use of dream sequences.

I just wish there was more of that stuff in the movie. The back of the Warner Archive DVD cites Eye of the Devil as a precursor to The Wicker Man (1972). The latter does the town-with-a-secret subgenre better, but if you're into British horror Eye of the Devil is worth a watch, preferably with a lot of black coffee on hand.

If a movie has David Hemmings and Sharon Tate dressed up in snazzy black outfits playing killer sorcerer twins, I cannot in good faith shun it completely.