Despite being shot-on-video in Manchester and lacking a budget of any kind, THE EYE OF Satan is actually pretty good as an amateur-level yarn. It's a film which skilfully combines both the action/thriller and horror genres and delivers the goods in a fast-paced movie with plenty of incident going on all the time. Although the bone-breaking violence comes thick and fast, my only complaint is with the lack of grue as the camera always cuts away from any bloody murder scenes. Obviously this is due to a lack of budget for special effects but even some cheap effects splashed here and there would have been more satisfying than suddenly snapping the camera away from the action and into someone's face. They say that more is less but that's not the case here.
Otherwise, there's not really much to complain about. Director David Kent-Watson handles his film with a level of skill that's unusual to see in a shot-on-video production. Editing, camera-work, acting, and everything else is perfectly adequate and there are lots of nice little stylish and atmospheric touches, like candles blowing out and close-ups of weird-looking statues and the like to build the suspense. The rather complex plot opens with a well-staged tasteless moment in which mourners are disturbed by a gun-toting maniac who empties his pump-action into a harmless corpse! From then on such diverse elements as voodoo sacrifices, gangsters, double-crosses, a panther, contract killings, shoot-outs, and police investigation are stirred into an unlikely brew.
Towering over the happenings is one Cliff Twemlow, the film's hit-man anti-hero and an extremely unusual character. His hard-as-nails killer has a passion for wildlife, as we see during an extremely amusing sequence in which he goes after two guys who have been shooting ducks with airguns and breaks both their necks. The reason for his back-to-nature approach soon becomes apparent when it transpires that he's actually part of a supernatural African cult which believes it has the power to transform people into panthers. Cue lots of eerily effective glowing eyeball shots and plenty of ominous music and thunder crashing on the soundtrack. Twemlow - who looks to be some kind of bodybuilder, judging by his bulk - is a really unusual actor who is very impressive in the role. Physically, he's something like a cross between Gordon Mitchell and William Sadler and he also provides the film with some rather shocking nudity!
As for the Eye of Satan itself, it's some kind of glowing red jewel which possesses the power to turn Twemlow into a panther, which happens right at the very end of the film during a shock freeze-frame finale and some special effects trickery. Other unusual and offbeat moments include a man memorably getting sucked into his own ceiling and killed (whilst the room goes to chaos around him, poltergeist-style), an innocent secretary having her throat slit, and Twemlow's violent encounters with various henchmen and bodyguards. The acting is par for the course with a few generally good performances (the kidnapped girl, the vicar, and the chief John Saxon-lookalike gangster spring to mind). Fans of low-budgeted madness should check this one out, especially when you consider it contains 100% more originality than something like THE DEAD NEXT DOOR.
Otherwise, there's not really much to complain about. Director David Kent-Watson handles his film with a level of skill that's unusual to see in a shot-on-video production. Editing, camera-work, acting, and everything else is perfectly adequate and there are lots of nice little stylish and atmospheric touches, like candles blowing out and close-ups of weird-looking statues and the like to build the suspense. The rather complex plot opens with a well-staged tasteless moment in which mourners are disturbed by a gun-toting maniac who empties his pump-action into a harmless corpse! From then on such diverse elements as voodoo sacrifices, gangsters, double-crosses, a panther, contract killings, shoot-outs, and police investigation are stirred into an unlikely brew.
Towering over the happenings is one Cliff Twemlow, the film's hit-man anti-hero and an extremely unusual character. His hard-as-nails killer has a passion for wildlife, as we see during an extremely amusing sequence in which he goes after two guys who have been shooting ducks with airguns and breaks both their necks. The reason for his back-to-nature approach soon becomes apparent when it transpires that he's actually part of a supernatural African cult which believes it has the power to transform people into panthers. Cue lots of eerily effective glowing eyeball shots and plenty of ominous music and thunder crashing on the soundtrack. Twemlow - who looks to be some kind of bodybuilder, judging by his bulk - is a really unusual actor who is very impressive in the role. Physically, he's something like a cross between Gordon Mitchell and William Sadler and he also provides the film with some rather shocking nudity!
As for the Eye of Satan itself, it's some kind of glowing red jewel which possesses the power to turn Twemlow into a panther, which happens right at the very end of the film during a shock freeze-frame finale and some special effects trickery. Other unusual and offbeat moments include a man memorably getting sucked into his own ceiling and killed (whilst the room goes to chaos around him, poltergeist-style), an innocent secretary having her throat slit, and Twemlow's violent encounters with various henchmen and bodyguards. The acting is par for the course with a few generally good performances (the kidnapped girl, the vicar, and the chief John Saxon-lookalike gangster spring to mind). Fans of low-budgeted madness should check this one out, especially when you consider it contains 100% more originality than something like THE DEAD NEXT DOOR.
