White of the Eye

Plot synopsis:
A series of murders of rich young women throughout Arizona bears distinctive signatures of a serial killer. Clues lead Detective Charles Mendoza to visit Paul White, a sound expert installing hi-fi systems in wealthy people's homes. His special talent is to make a noise which echoes through the air cavities in his head and shows him where the sound of the speakers should come from and echo in the room. He is married to Joan, whom, ten years earlier, he had seduced away from Mike DeSantos, who was her current boyfriend. Joan is questioned by Mendoza, but does not believe his insinuations that her husband is somehow involved in the murders.
Various flashbacks show Joan's previous relationship to Mike and later explain how it came to be that he abandoned her. The couple met Paul and befriended him. At Mike's suggestion, he and Mike go on a deer hunting trip together. Paul shoots a deer and brutally mutilates it, demonstrating his sick fascination with killing. This is partly intended to scare Mike off, which it does. Mike catches Joan and Paul after they've made love, and Paul declares that he will take Mike's place. "I am the one," Paul says. Mike puts his gun at the back of Paul's head but decides not to kill and abandons Joan.
By now Joan has run into Mike DeSantos working at a gas station in a neighboring town. Mike tells her he got out of prison after suffering a major head injury and he thinks life is looking up. He makes her promise not to tell Paul that she has seen him. Joan soon discovers Paul has committed adultery. By puncturing Paul's tires she provides him with an alibi for the most recent killing. He begs her forgiveness as the police turn their suspicions away from him. At home, Joan looks into a crawl space in the house, and discovers preserved body parts of Paul's victims wrapped in paper and plastic. Joan confronts Paul, and Paul tries to explain his motivations for killing. He believes he has been "chosen" and is expressing the nothingness of the universe, whose heart is female and destructive like a black hole. He is putting women "out of their misery," but he loves Joan.
Joan's distrust of Paul over the next night and day agitates him into a fury. First, he tries to imprison her and then kill her and his daughter. He heavily arms himself and paints his face to look like a samurai warrior or an Indian brave. Joan and the little girl escape in different directions and soon Joan has to elude Paul in the abandoned quarry. It turns out Mike has been staying there, armed with a machine gun, certain that he will meet Paul again. He rescues Joan and takes away Paul's gun, leading him to the edge of the quarry. Paul makes the sound he uses in the emptiness of living rooms and savors its echo from the quarry. While incessantly pontificating about his philosophies of life and death, Paul reveals a lighter with which he has lit the fuse of his explosive vest. Mike opens fire on him with a machine gun and Joan dives into the lake in the quarry. Paul and Mike both die instantly, in a hail of destruction. Joan is reunited later with her daughter. She talks with Detective Mendoza about what the ten years with Paul could have meant, whose destructive and nihilistic nature she never understood.

Tags: neo noir, murder

Review:
Shamefully neglected thriller from director Donald Cammell is an outstanding and disturbing character study!Arizonia family man becomes the chief suspect when some local women are violently murdered, but is this charming man the real killer?White of the Eye is a bizarre trip of a thriller that's quite unlike any other film of the thriller/horror genre.
Director Donald Cammell gives this film such incredible and dazzling style that one almost becomes hypnotized at times.
Cammell has a terrific talent for inventive cinematography and well uses the parched filming locations of Globe, Arizona.
A nicely atmospheric music score also helps to set up the rather primitive-like setting of the film.
Keith does perhaps his all-time best role with this film.
Hollywood needs more David Keiths!Why such an intelligent and finely-made suspense film never became a recognizable classic is simply beyond me.
White of the Eye is a completely unique, engulfing, and haunting film.
David Keith secures his place here in the Pantheon of film weirdos that includes Eric Roberts in Star 80.
Oddly, I was so wrapped up in Keith's performance that I didn't notice the flashbacks the first time I watched the film.
In the wealthy and isolated desert community of Tucson, a sound expert (David Keith) is targeted as the prime suspect of a series of brutal murders of local suburban housewives who were attacked and mutilated in their homes.
(Unfortunately, the director had long since passed.) The film is beautifully shot, using extensive time to show the landscape and surroundings.
This does slow the picture down, which will scare some viewers off, but at least for the first half of the movie, it is more of a work of art than a thriller or horror picture.
(Actually, there are other interviews on the disc not listed on the case, which are very much worth your time.) For a film that has been widely forgotten, Scream pulled all the stops and gave this just about as good of a release as anyone could hope for..
There's a lot going on in this movie, I just look forward to the day I can finally decode it, which doesn't sound like a good sign.
The only thing that lets the film down is the ending, which looks like a Hollywood style tag-on but probably isn't.
Only his third film in 17 years, Scottish director Donald Cammell followed his mind and identity-bending psychedelic masterpiece Performance (1968) and the studio-butchered Demon Seed (1977) with another oddity, the strange and confusing, yet nonetheless effortlessly intriguing White of the Eye. Cammell killed himself shortly after seeing his final film, Wild Side (1995), heavily censored by an appalled producer, at the end of what seemed like a frustrating career.
It's a shame he wasn't allowed more opportunities to direct features, as although White of the Eye sometimes steers into TV-movie aesthetic and features an unnecessarily overblown climax, it is something to be savoured and thought about a long time after the credits roll.After a series of brutal murders of upper-class women, tire tracks left by the killer leads Detective Charlie Mendoza (Art Evans) to sound expert Paul White (Keith David).
We learn through flashbacks the meeting of Paul and his now-wife Joan (Cathy Moriarty), and how he stole her away from her boyfriend Mike Desantos (Alan Rosenberg).
Mike knows something too, and when Joan discovers Paul's secret affair, she slowly uncovers who her husband really is.There's not really much point trying to unravel the mysteries in the movie, as it will leave you with a headache.
The soundtrack, by Rick Fenn and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason, is a powerful presence, and drums up a dusty, apocalyptic feel reminiscent of Richard Stanley's Dust Devil, which came out 5 years later.David's performance is also impressive, especially in the latter stages when he is let off the leash.
It's got one of those titles like "The Stepfather" and "Cop," titles that are bad and misleading and really don't give you a sense of how well-made the film is.
Like the other movies, White of the Eye benefits from an intense performance by its leading man.
In this movie, he completely loses it and becomes a suburban monster; those looking for the appealing David Keith from An Officer & a Gentleman or The Lords of Discipline should look elsewhere.
This type of compass of colored objects, and an actual compass recur several times throughout the movie, but to what purpose, I don't know.A man who makes custom sound systems for people lives with his wife and daughter.
Someone is butchering local women, and the investigating officer (Art Evans) is zeroing in on sound engineer (David Keith) who lives in the desert with his wife (Cathy Moriarty) and daughter.
the film through wonderful uses of 16MM shows flashbacks which charts Cathy Moriarty's former relationship with Alan Rosenberg of Cybil fame,& depicts episodic moments which may give clues as to who the Killer may be, all is not what it seems which culminates in a rather bizarre climax.
Directed by Donald Cammell Performance/Demon Seed, & also Ace Photographer on Nicolas Roeg films, there is lots of excellent photography especially innovative Steadicam (Larry McConkey)who is excellent wherever steadicam is used.the soundtrack is composed by Nick Mason (of Pink Floyd) a tour-De- force performances by David Keith, who does his best screen work, as does Cathy Moriarty of Raging Bull fame,.
The performances are great, the film always looks tremendous and we are kept wondering almost till the end.
David Keith and Cathy Motiarity along with some recognizable supporting actors do their best to save this stylish film.
The movie drags on until the final scenes in a gigantic quarry, where everything ends with a bang.
What we have here is a clear case of a movie that tries to get by on sheer style, without any particular concern for the story or the characters.
Well done serial killer/thriller movie....
David Keith does a good job as the husband/suspect and the beautiful Cathy Moriarty as his wife is great as usual.
I took a chance on this as it was (a) billed as an 80s slasher, and (b) in a shop display with other Arrow blu-ray releases such as Argento's brutal classic TENEBRAE, and the awesomely inept bucket of winning failure that is CONTAMINATION.White Of The Eye is a completely different sort of 80s slasher though - in fact not really a slasher at all, more like a very laid back, slow paced drama.
The atmosphere of vaguely quirky characters in small-town Americana almost made it feel like a Coen Bros film, but with zero laughs.
The late Donald Cammel, the co-director of performance, brings his talents to his own serial killer script.
The acting is reasonable; credible but not a stretch but what really makes the film worth watching is the directorial stylistic oddities.
The title refers to an old apache legend about the nature of violence and those who look into the abyss of violence and eye close ups (another Argento favorite) are so recurrent throughout the film that they become boring.The final reel has to be seen to be believed, ranging from classic "Stepfather" (Joe Ruben) scare tactics to an utterly bonkers denouement which, I suppose, is in keeping with the erratic hit and miss mysticism of the film..
Maybe for a movie made in 1987 it might have been good in that time but for now you have much better thrillers to watch.
You get not one, but two hamfisted psychopaths dragging you towards this film's embarrassingly flat ending....and no, it does not fall into the "enjoyable b-movie" category.
Donald Cammells take on the psycho-thriller,is an absorbing,offbeat,beautifully made affair.Opening with a breathtaking sequence,as a woman is murdered in her chic house by an unseen assailant.Cammell uses extreme close ups of the killers eye,slow motion,and a weird pulsating music track,to blistering effect.This is a stunningly directed film,with a script by Cammell and his wife to match.Thankfully the cast are up to the challenge.Raging Bull's Cathy Moriarty gives her best ever performance in this,as the wife who not only has to discover her husbands infidelity,but also his terrible secret.Alan Rosenberg also impresses as Moriarty's ex,giving a sympathetic performance for such a pathetic character.The revelation here though is David Keith,who is quite simply awesome and believable as a man who appears normal,but inside is a mass of raging insanity.The flashback scenes that appear sporadically as the film progresses are clever and well written,gradually revealing Paul Whites mindset.Although the film isn't overly violent,one of the murders is disturbing in the extreme.*POSSIBLE-SPOILER* Also nasty is the scene where Moriarty discovers the secret her husband has hidden under the bathtub.The climax as Paul,clad in warpaint and wearing half a ton of dynamite,hunts his wife is riveting,with an explosive ending in a disused quarry.Another good feature of the film is the stunning location work,showing Tucson Arizona as an almost alien but starkly beautiful landscape.Criminally underseen and underrated,this is stunning cinema and one of the best films of the eighties..
A friend of mine who once watched this film with me said it was the biggest load of old cobblers he'd seen in a long time.
I think Cammel missed the point of his own film, which is basically a chamber piece.
Instead, perhaps because he didn't get to make a film often, he threw life, the universe and everything into the mix in a garish jumble.The direction is a curious mixture of styles, some of it shot like a commercial, other parts almost cinema verite.
In the scene where Mrs White discovers what's behind the bathtub, the camera seems to lurch to give credence to the expression 'my world turned upside down.' The film reminds me of Nick Roeg's 'Bad Timing' to the extent that it could have been directed by him.
It's just a shame he wasn't given subject matter more worthy of his talent.Cammel apparently thought it was really beautiful that David Kieth was willing to go so far into his character but, although good, he often gives an amused and bemused expression as if to say: "Blimey, what bizarre sh*t have I got involved with here?" Cammel was an interesting scriptwriter, and builds up a real picture of small town life before the film descends into the surreal and otherworldly.
I love the way the cayote's bark seems to hit the beat of the blues guitar in the scene where Paul White is banished to the outhouse.Now that Cammel has sadly kicked the bucket, we can no longer ask him about the more bizarre aspects of this extroadinary and vivid experience.
Donald Cammell directed this 1987 thriller about a sound technician in a little town in Arizona, that is suspected of being a serial killer of local suburban housewives.
David Keith and Cathy Moriarty star in this movie, that was at the top of my Want List for quite awhile.
Keith portrays Paul, whom the police have several clues that tie him to the bloody mutilation murders, and Moriarty is his wife whom is starting to believe the police.
This movie has a lot of style, and what a soundtrack with Nick Mason of Pink Floyd providing the Floydish music.
It falls pretty much in the art movie genre, even though it has some Giallo elements to it, and David Keith is indeed a scary guy in the best role of his career.
The movie has some interesting twists and turns, and one particular scene where Paul's wife finds something hideous hidden under their bathtub is truly horrifying.
This is not a movie to miss, a true cult type film that you will probably want to watch multiple times.
"White of the Eye" is an interesting little film.
So, just because there is a car chase, doesn't mean it is "Hollywood".Also, the ending does contain a huge explosion, but it too does not feel like it is out of a "Hollywood" film.
Plus, the thunderous chorus accompanying the explosion and the aftermath is a really neat touch.It is neat moments like this that make "White of the Eye" unique while standing apart from Hollywood-type films..
At the core of the thing are two vivid and memorable performances by the two stars, David Keith and Cathy Moriarty.After making quite a splash in "Raging Bull" and "Neighbors", Moriarty returned to films after an absence of several years, playing married woman Joan White.
Her husband Paul (Keith) is a sound and electronics expert, and a fairly charismatic guy, but he falls under suspicion when a succession of housewives fall victim to a serial killer in their affluent desert community.The big reveal of the story occurs sooner than one would expect, leading to a not entirely predictable finale.
A very stylish movie, with some great shots and memorable scenes.
A couple of the supporting characters could have been pulled right out of a David Lynch movie, as they're quite cryptic.
Forget about internal coherence and just enjoy the direction, cinematography and editing.Unfortunately, the plot (and film) run out of steam at the climax of the third act.
The only reason I can see to watch the film through to the end is to see a real explosion.
This is a real, bunches-of-dynamite explosion.So, if you don't insist on films making good sense and appreciate an imaginative and well-photographed scene, give this a try..
***SPOILER ALERT*** Before were even introduced to the major characters in the film we witness one of the most brutal and sadistic murders in all of motion picture history.
The savage slashing and dismantling of the murder victim makes the shower scene in "Psycho" look like as if someone nicked their face shaving in comparison.At the scene of the crime local cop Det. Charles Mendoza, Art Evens, not only notices very distinct tire tracks but things lined up, in the murder victim's house, that resemble that of an ancient Apache direction marker or weather-vane.
It turns out that the tire tracks fits the truck tires that Paul White (David Keith), the areas crackerjack electronic and sound upgrade expert, drives.
The movie then seems to go off kilter with David's love life, not his being suspected in a number of horrific crimes in and around Globe Arizona, being the main focus of its story.We get a number of flashbacks of a younger David, looking like a 1960's hippie, meeting his future wife Joan, Cathy Moriarty, who together with her boyfriend Mike DeSantos, Alen Rosenberg,stopped off at his repair shop on their way to Malibu to get their eight track tape recorder fixed.
Now some ten years later with both David & Cathy happily married with and eight year old daughter Danielle, Danielle Smith, a bitter Mike, who had since served time behind bars, shows up out of the blue!
David for his part has been cheating on Cathy for what seems like years with him having an affair with one of his customers, whom he installed a TV and stereo unite, the sultry Ann Mason, Alberta Watson.
What all this had to do with David being suspected in a string of vicious murders, which by then you almost forgot about, made you wounder if the film's storyline somehow got lost on the cutting room floor?
****SPOILERS**** It's in the last fifteen or so minutes of the movie, after Mike showed up, that we get to understand what all these disjointed events had to do with the series of murders in and around Arizona.
Something happened on that hunting trip in the Arizona Rockies that later changed things around in the movie not only forever but for the absolute worst!I doubt if anyone can match the murderous psycho in the movie "White Of The Eye" who's actions, while both crazy and normal, should have easily earned him, or the actor who played him, the best actor Academy Award for 1987.
Donald Cammell's hyper-stylized direction captures the eyes, but the script (which he co-wrote) is rambling and slow-moving.
In the final twenty minutes, the film goes so (intentionally) over-the-top that it crosses over the line from a tense thriller to a bloody black comedy.
The last half of the movie is a "shining" ripoff ;to be fair ,one should add there's a final "unexpected " twist for good measure,and plenty of gore .It's a wonder attractive Cathy Moriarty did not go nuts after such an adventure.The first half suffers from a loose screenplay .Most of the scenes do not bring much to the thin plot.The most interesting side is the guy-next-door side of the hero ,but the "I can't help it,It's another person " neurosis is as old as the hills ,itw as already what Peter Lorre said in Lang's "M".If you do not ask for too much,you may have a look ,but only if you are into the "serial killer" sub genre..
*spoilers*Donald Cammell's final film White of the Eye is more similar in theme to the chameleon-esque Performance than the sci-fi adaptation Demon Seed.
Both films concern identity, either the loss of (Performance where the two disparate leads merge into one) or the rigid absolution thereof (White of the Eye), resulting in madness and murder.
See also the films of Performance co-director Nicholas Roeg.The opening sequence of White of the Eye depicts an eagle soaring over the man-made landscape of city and quarry/mines, completely distanced/alien from that world.
An eagle is a predator reliant on vision, it could be construed as a metaphor for Paul White.The first murder is overtly stylised, as is most of the film.
It is more like art than murder (but what else is any film?).The second murder is more sinister, particularly when the killer holds a mirror to the drowning woman's face.
It reminded me of the male/female interplay with a mirror in Performance (identity theme again).There is a revealing moment into the psychology of White when his wife, Joan, confronts him about the murders.
As he knew the truth about White, he is partially responsible for the murders, and with typical film morality had to die at the end.