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Eyeball: Deluxe Limited Edition
[Blu-ray 4K]
Blu-ray ALL - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (3rd November 2024). |
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The Film
 Eager to distance herself from her boss/lover Mark (Black Sunday's John Richardson) until he can deal with his mentally unstable wife Alma (The Ages of Lulu's Marta May), secretary Paulette (Paprika's Martine Brochard) joins a group of fellow Virginians on a bus tour of Spain guided by prank-playing Martinez (Web of the Spider's Raf Baldassarre). Among them are bickering couple Robby (The Arena's Daniele Vargas) and bitchy Gail Alvarado (Crimson's Silvia Solar), photographer Lisa (Count Dracula's Great Love's Mirta Miller) and her lesbian lover/model Naiba (Arabian Nights' Ines Pellegrini), cigar-chomping Hamilton (Cannibal Ferox's John Bartha) and his daughter Jenny (The Werewolf and the Yeti's Verónica Miriel), the Randalls (The Killer with a Thousand Eyes' Richard Kolin and director Umberto Lenzi's wife Olga Pehar) and their teenage daughter Peggy (Olga Montes), and meek Reverend Bronson (The Case of the Bloody Iris's Jorge Rigaud). While the group is wandering the markets of Las Ramblas, a young woman is brutally stabbed on her left eye gouged out. The tour group, along with Mark who has turned up out of nowhere in search of Paulette, seem to be unfortunate onlookers to the aftermath until one of their own is subsequently murdered and found with an eye missing in the funhouse at the Tibidabo amusement park; whereupon soon-to-retire Inspector Tudela (A Bullet for Sandoval's Andrés Mejuto) and his university-educated replacement Inspector Lara (99 Women's José María Blanco) are eying them as prime suspects. As more victims turn up wherever they go, the group members start to accuse each other, but Mark has reason to suspect that his own wife Alma might be in Barcelona and possibly responsible for the deaths which match the modus operandi of a crime that occurred in their home town of Burlington a year before. A late entry into the giallo cycle around the time that Lenzi was also turning to the trendier Eurocrime genre with films like Almost Human and The Cynic, the Rat, and the Fist, Eyeball's wackier elements (including the killer's past trauma) have overshadowed the fact that it is actually a diverting thriller in addition to being cheesy fun. Far from the style of Lenzi's earlier gialli which concentrated on plots of greed and lust exposing the seedy underbelly of the jet set, Eyeball and its companion piece Seven Blood-Stained Orchids are more in the post-Dario Argento mold down to the animal-related Italian title "Red Cats in the Glass Labyrinth". There is a certain parodic aspect in the plotting with this group of very "ugly American" tourists who are conveniently all from the same place in the United States with various connections to one another – and whose whereabouts manage to be unaccounted for during the crimes (including a later sequence where a couple of them have excuses for making trips back to Madrid from Sitges when another attempt is made on the life of a hospitalized victim) – as well as the manner in which they carry on with the tour even as it appears evident that a crime is going to occur at each of their stops. There is also a more literal than usual "justification" for the film's Italian title with a witness describing the killer wearing one of the identical rainslickers provided to all the members of the tour group as looking "like a red cat" (although this is surely no more ludicrous than James Franciscus describing the various disparate leads to a murder case as being "like a cat o' nine tails" in the film by like-titled Argento film). The mechanics of the plot actually remain sound, and the interplay between grizzled veteran cop Tudela and psychoanalytical Lara is balanced with Tudela's preference for logic over supposition and scientific testing actually preventing them for apprehending the killer earlier (although that is not apparent until one discovers the identity of the killer). The scope photography of Antonio Millán (The Sinister Eyes of Dr. Orloff) is not always as striking as the Italian equivalents but the score of Ennio Morricone-arranger/conductor/ghosting co-composer Bruno Nicolai (The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave) finds a balance between suspense and travelogue accompaniment. Brochard would later play a photographer who must be silenced after capturing something incriminating in Riccardo Freda's slasher/Gothic-hybrid swan song Murder Obsession (which also featured Richardson). 
Video
Unreleased in the United Kingdom theatrically or on VHS, Eyeball earned its popular monkier in the United States with the release by Joseph Brenner Associates (although some references cite the English title as "Wide Eyed in the Dark" export prints bore the onscreen title "The Secret Killer") – sometimes in a reissue double bill with Suspiria which was originally put out by Twentieth-Century-Fox's dummy company International Classics – and on VHS in a painfully cropped edition by Prism Entertainment. Apart from shuffling some footage from the ghost train sequence in the middle of the film to the opening teaser along with a new animated title card, Brenner left the film pretty much intact unlike his releases of other gialli like Torso and Autopsy (the releases of which were once again the sources for those film's most popular English titles even when spoken of abroad). The film was a long time coming to digital in English-speaking countries but American and British fans could avail themselves of an anamorphic widescreen DVD from the German company Marketing Film with English and German dubs released in 2002. A 4K HD remaster first turned upon German Blu-ray from X-Rated with no dub track but English subtitles and an English-language audio commentary by film historian Troy Howarth. A fully English-friendly Blu-ray/DVD combo edition followed from 88 Films in 2018 using the same master but with additional color correction.  For their 2024 4K UltraHD/Blu-ray deluxe limited edition – also available directly from 88 Film sin a web-exclusive edition with a different slipcover and in standard retail in separate standard edition single-disc 4K UltraHD and Blu-ray lacking the paper extras – 88 Films debuts a brand new 4K restoration, with the 4K UltraHD edition featuring a 2160p HEVC 2.35:1 widescreen encode with Dolby Vision HDR. Framing seems similar to the earlier 4K master but with slivers of additional information on the top and right side of the frame, but what is noticeable from the start is the color correction which was not hampered by what was already baked into the earlier master before 88 got it. Skin tone are more varied and naturalistic with the tanned characters like Richardson no longer looking flushed and the paler characters like Rigaud no longer sallow. Reds in the blood, the rainslickers, and the ghost train gels now pop more distinctly free of the earlier overall color casts. The grain of the Techniscope negative is also better resolved, no longer trailing as it did on the SD masters or flattening the underexposed areas of the frame. The HDR gives a minor sense of added depth in some of the moodier-lit sequences but even the included 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.35:1 Blu-ray is an improvement over the 2018 Blu-ray which itself had once been definitive.
Audio
Audio options include English and Italian LPCM 2.0 mono tracks which are presumably from the same remastered materials used for the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 tracks on the 2018 Blu-ray since the specs include no information about remastering of the audio. Although there is only one English subtitle option on the menu screens for both the 4K UltraHD and Blu-ray discs, enabling them with the English audio track brings up SDH subtitles while enabling them with the Italian audio track provides an English translation to the Italian dub (both tracks are post-synched). 
Extras
While the 2018 Blu-ray featured one commentary track, this has been carried over in addition to including two new tracks. First up is an audio commentary by film historians Troy Howarth, Nathaniel Thompson, and Eugenio Ercolani who cite the film as Lenzi's last real giallo – with his later U.S.-lensed Hitcher in the Dark and Nightmare Beach being more slasher films than thrillers – and towards the end of the giallo boom right before Argento's hit Deep Red changed the genre again (although they note that even Argento dropped the earlier animal-oriented working title "The Sabre-Toothed Tiger"), and that apart from Spasmo, Lenzi did not really adapt well to the more experimental and surreal elements of the genre, favoring realism and social commentary. Ercolani also provides an interesting insight that the giallo as a film was more of a cycle than a concrete genre, and that many producers did not set out to make gialli but asked their writers and directors to do something like a certain popular film, with the filmmakers sometimes working from descriptions and not having seen the model film at all. They also discuss the cast – including familiar bit-part actors Tom Felleghy and Fulcio Mingozzi who both turn up here – and note that the film was one of the last theatrical assignments for composer Nicolai who went into television shortly after this coinciding with the dissolving of his collaborative relationship with Morricone for which Nicolai's contributions were often underrated and overshadowed (according to Ercolani, the co-credit on The Tempter is accurate as both composed fifty-percent each of the film's score, although as far as soundtrack releases only one cue from each of their sides have ever been available). Also new is the audio commentary by critics Kim Newman and David Flint who note that Lenzi has never been a particularly "woke" filmmaker and ponder his choice of an interracial lesbian couple among the characters – with no judgments made by any of the characters including the red herring priest – as well as making a black character the final girl (as well as noting how the original protagonist seems marked to be the killer when the narrative pushes the former to the forefront during the final act). They also speculate that the film may have played down popular Italian genre anticlerical attitudes as well as police corruption angles due to the film being shot almost entirely on location in Franco-era Spain (and ponder the differences in the domestic Spanish version which must surely have also played down the lesbian relationship). They also discuss Lenzi's seeming attitude towards his characters, comparing the slick surface of the film and its flat presentation of characters to the Antonionian ennui Lenzi himself decried, with his his earlier giallo being about rich people doing horrible things to each other and Eyeball seeming in some respects a throwback to the aspirational elements of the genre like the allure of international travel with many scenes set in airports, lounges, and hotel lobbies. Ported over from the earlier edition is the audio commentary by The Hysteria Continues (Justin Kerswell, Joseph Henson, Nathan Johnson, and Erik Threlfall) who all greatly enjoy the film as a slasher precursor and the "last gasp of the giallo" (pre-Argento's Tenebrae), as well as the "simplicity" of the title along with the other aforementioned Brenner retitlings. They demonstrate knowledge of the genre, noting that the early giallo paperbacks were actually Italian reprints of the likes of Raymond Chandler and Agatha Christie and that the more salacious examples were homegrown paperback and magazine stories, and that – despite Lenzi's preference in discussing the giallo entries in his filmography – he did not return to the genre after moving onto crime and horror films but he did write and publish a number of giallo novels in later years. They also discuss the plot and how it could be interpreted as a parody.  While the 2018 Blu-ray included a feature-length documentary on Lenzi and an interview with Brochard, the 2024 edition drops these in favor of new interviews. In "An Eye For Murder" (20:58), Brochard recalls starting out as a dancer on French television and choosing to pursue acting to travel after her mother's death, settling in Italy with an unhappy first marriage, and her first credits. Of her giallo films, she compares the experiences of working with Lenzi, Freda, and Vittorio Salerno (No, the Case is Happily Resolved), and she also compares the ordeals of working with special effects on the films of the former two. She also recalls meeting Lenzi again later in life, being invited to his wife's dinner parties, and attending the readings of some of his novels. "Genre Maestro" (17:15) is an archival interview with Lenzi that does not really focus on the film but on his work across genres, particularly gialli and crime for which he attributes his admiration for Hollywood noir filmmakers who themselves were mostly European expats. He provides anecdotes about shooting his gialli with Carroll Baker as well as working with both Tomas Milian and Maurizio Merli. "The Wandering Eye(ball)" (13:46) is a lighthearted visual essay by film historian Mike Foster discussing the state of the giallo cycle at the time of the film's production and how some of Lenzi's choices in the film may have been attempts to innovate the played-out aspects. He also pokes fun at the film's American-isms as well as the monotonous reuse of Nicolai's main theme, both of which are illustrated with quick cut visual and aural citations from the film. Ported from the earlier Blu-ray, the "Locations" (2:04) juxtaposes clips from the film with how the Spanish locations look today – with very little in the way of change – although it does suffer from a stuttering effect noticeable in the pans of both the film clips and the HD video (which was also the case with the 2018 Blu-ray). New to the disc is the "The Secret Killer" English export title sequence (2:01) – which could also be seen on the German DVD but with the video-generated added subtitle "Labyrinth des Schreckens" – as well as the English end credits (0:55). The Eyeball trailer reel (5:43) features the same content as the earlier Blu-ray: the U.S. theatrical trailer which is the only place on the disc you can see the American title card animation, an Italian trailer presumably created later for video/DVD-era seales, and the U.S. TV spot. 
Packaging
Not supplied for review were the rigid slipcase with art by Graham Humphreys, the reversible sleeve featuring new art by Graham Humphreys and original Italian poster, or the 80-page perfectbound book featuring five articles – we have no idea if it includes the pieces by Calum Waddell and Ercolini included in the shorter booklet for the 2018 edition – foldout double-sided poster, and set of collectible art cards.
Overall
Umberto Lenzi's final true giallo and one of the last in the genre as a cycle – subsequently followed by Dario Argento films which were more "events" than part of a trend – Eyeball may be somewhat of a parody or just a cheesy ghost train ride, but it remains entertaining and diverting nonetheless.
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