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Deadly Eyes

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    Horace Cordier
    Senior Member

  • Deadly Eyes



    Released by: Shout! Factory
    Released on: July 15th, 2014.
    Director: Robert Clouse
    Cast: Sam Groom, Sara Botsford, Scatman Crothers
    Year: 1982
    Purchase From Amazon

    The Movie:

    The rats are coming, the dogs are here.

    The Canadian tax shelter flick has a long and storied history. From the late '70's to the early to mid-1980's various producers filmed genre fare taking advantage of a variety of financial loopholes. This created some great films like THE CHANGELING, some iconic items like PROM NIGHT and stuff like, well... DEADLY EYES. A hilarious mishmash of so many things that it's sort of the mystery stew of cheapjack genre horror, the film is objectively good in no real way, yet it nevertheless manages to be quite entertaining. Often riotously so.

    Steroid infused super sized rats are on the loose in some unnamed fake-ass Canadian "supposed to be in the USA" city. The FOOD OF THE GODS crib sheet is on autopilot for the script - a sleazy corn importer has his shipment of steroid/rat infested tainted goods halted at the docks by curvy health inspector Kelly Leonard (Sara Botsford). Ordered to burn the shipment, he does just that - however the rats (actually small breed dogs like dachshunds and terriers in rat costumes!) manage to escape. They quickly set up camp primarily in the sewer system. You can bet they'll be heading out from their new lair pretty quickly though.

    Once this setup is put in motion we meet our motley crew of teens/authority figures/rat food. DEADLY EYES biggest "star" is actor Sam Groom (Mr. Harris) - a teacher at the local high school who has a hot young student named Trudy (Lisa Langlois) who is desperately trying to seduce him. While she's trying (and failing) to make the moves on this older guy, her friends head out for some burgers. And the rodent buffet is ON.

    Look, let's skip the plot recap. DEADLY EYES was "theoretically" an adaptation of horror novelist James Herbert's "The Rats" but it bears little resemblance to the source material. This is a basic template mutated animal attack movie - and if anyone has seen FOOD OF THE GODS, EMPIRE OF THE ANTS or hell NIGHT OF THE LEPUS you know the drill. Unlike its more realistic cousin that uses normal size animals run amok (think GRIZZLY, JAWS or the multi-species populated DAY OF THE ANIMALS), the mutated AA film uses something like radiation or steroids to create a jumbo sized threat. Past that, the genre conventions are as stringent as a slasher film - get victims in various spots where the critters can munch them, and make sure to have at least one gory set piece.

    There's some badly plotted human drama chucked in sideways with horny schoolgirls going after older male teachers while said older male teacher pursues big-breasted health inspector. There's also a teen with a baby sister. DEADLY EYES charges out of the gate on the gore front nicely by sacrificing the high chair occupant first. Even today, having child victims is shorthand for "not fooling around" in the horror genre. The gore is both plentiful and preposterous with nice close ups of mega rats chomping on humans. The blood and gore is in your face enough to actually make some impact even though it never looks all that real. The film's centerpiece is an extended slaughter sequence set in a movie theatre full of teenagers who are watching a Bruce Lee film. Aside from the goofy gore it is actually pretty well set up and moves at a brisk clip. Plate glass gets shattered and the bodies pile up. Nice!

    DEADLY EYES was produced by Chinese studio Golden Harvest and directed by veteran Robert Clouse (of legendary ENTER THE DRAGON fame). One of the funniest in-jokes in the movie is that the Bruce Lee film the doomed teens are watching is the highly troubled GAME OF DEATH (which was completed after the martial arts superstar's untimely death). There's something oddly hilarious about watching Bruce Lee battle Kareem Abdul Jabbar while screaming teens get mauled by Willard sized canines. Unlike some other more troubled Canadian productions like CURTAINS however, it appears that the creative team behind DEADLY EYES were all on the same page. There's no attempt at anything here except ludicrous horror and it's paced accordingly.

    Acting is average to good across the board with veteran Scatman Crothers in a cameo standing out and Groom doing good straight faced duty. The teens skew blander but Lesleh Donaldson as Trudy's pal Martha does a nice job in the de rigeur wisecracking role. And the dogs in rat suits? Well... sometimes it actually works well like when they are traveling in a pack down a sewer tunnel and sometimes (usually in extreme close ups) it looks patently ridiculous. Even worse, it looks like hand puppets (!!!) were utilized in a few shots. Good sound design though - the rat noises are startling to say the least.

    Ultimately DEADLY EYES may be as dumb as a bag of wet hammers but it will never be called dull or boring. Whacked perhaps?

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    Scream Factory's AVC encoded 1.78.1 framed 1080p transfer looks strong with good fine detail and color saturation. Pores are visible and blood looks like blood. Film grain is on the lighter end of the spectrum here but it appears properly managed with a consistent appearance. There are no obvious deficiencies with black levels and no use of DNR is apparent. This is a solid mid-level transfer of a catalog title and as such presents a worthy HD upgrade to previous versions.

    Sound is provided by an English DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track that exhibits some mild distorted clipping on the high end that renders it less than optimal - but truthfully this is a minor niggle. Volume levels are well-rendered between sound effects and dialog and music. The actors can all clearly be heard and the disc also has optional English subtitles for the hard of hearing.

    The meatiest extra is a nearly half hour making of piece with writer Charles Eglee, make-up fx assistant Alec Gillis and production designer Ninkey Dalton. The main bases are covered here with a focus on the whole dogs-in-rat costumes stuff getting fair coverage and everyone involved has a good sense of humor about the project. One of the more interesting things about this piece is some of the comments about Clouse - who was a bit of an enigmatic figure in the industry not prone to publicity and interviews. Actress's Lisa Langlois and Lesleh Donaldson both sit for approximately fifteen minute interviews as well. Both talk briefly about their overall careers with Canadian Donaldson talking about some of her other iconic films like HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME and Langolis speaking frankly about transitioning to more adult roles from her earlier ones. Actor Joseph Kelly (who plays Trudy's more age-appropriate boyfriend in the film) gets another short piece where he talks primarily about his death scene. The best of the interviews however is probably delivered by "rat-dog wrangler" and fx man Alan Apone. He describes the travails of getting wiener dogs and obstinate terriers in outfits and what he had to do to make dogs move like rodents (it wasn't easy since the body language is distinctly different it seems). He's an amusing and good-natured interview subject. One of the overall impressions that one gets from all these pieces is that nobody took any of this all that seriously. Not a bad thing! And oh yeah - a TV spot and a DVD with identical content in standard definition.

    The Final Word:

    Silly but gory fun DEADLY EYES is a no-brainer for fans of cheestastic early 80's horror. It doesn't make a lick of sense and the effects are often absurd but it has gusto and verve. I'll always have a soft spot for a genre film that's only concern is keeping bums in seats and delivering the horror goods. And DEADLY EYES comes through nicely. Recommended - and Scream have also provided some high quality supplements to sweeten the pot.


    Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!






























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