Terror Eyes

My review was written in January 1989 after watching the feature on AIP video cassette.

"Terror Eyes" is an uneven video program incorporating a slight premise (writers' strike impact on horror film production) with a couple of student films for ballast.

Vivian Schilling is the project's mastermind, portraying a budding screenwriter summoned by the devil' envoy (hammy Daniel Roebuck) to pen a horror script during last year's WGA strike. She also doubles as star opposite Lance August in a very chintzy opening segment wherein they're a young couple handed a Book of Life which disconcertingly tells them their future.

Best segment is the finale, a shot-on-videotrape (rest of pic is filmed) episode reminiscent of the classic "Epic" segment of the British tv series "The Avengers", wherein evil toy magnate Phil Lowey torments femme chess champion Diana James with a real-life violent game to the death, after she bad mouths his videogames to the press. USC student tape (with classic helmer Edward Dmytryk as faculty adviser by Michael Rissi shows promise.

Middle segment, another short film by Steve Sommers, is a hopelessly padded attempt at film noir with Dan Bell as the fall guy in a robbery and murder scheme.

Ramshackle structure fails to knit these disparate materials together and mixture of film and video doesn't come off. Makeup effects stress gore for its own sake.