2022 A month of Halloween movies -- October 16th

White of the Eye (1987) [Criterion]

Is a movie a horror movie just because Criterion decided to include it in their '80s Horror collection for October?  I don't know.  White of the Eye has a serial killer and arguably kind of a final girl bit at the end, but I don't know that it's a horror film, a couple of brutal onscreen murders and an extended psychopath-vs.-blonde chase scene near the end notwithstanding.  I'm more inclined to think of it as a messy thriller/character study, with a disorienting nonlinear plot where the biggest twist is really just the subversion of a hoary movie trope.

The Scatterkat and I were talking about watching a Hammer Frankenstein movie that I can't remember if I've seen or not, but after a busy weekend she decided to head to bed early and I didn't want to watch Cushing and Lee without her.  Browsing through the Criterion-curated '80s Horror selection (and thinking seriously about rewatching John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness, which I haven't seen in many strange aeons), I realized that this one was directed by the co-creator (with Nicholas Roeg) of the strange, brilliant, weird, inexplicable classic Performance and that this one also had (oddly) a soundtrack by Mason+Fenn, i.e. Nick Mason (Pink Floyd's drummer and sole continuous member from inception to the present) and Rick Fenn (10cc's guitarist after Godley and Creme left the band in the mid-'70s).

Oh, and there's David Keith in the lead role, kind of a "that guy" actor who's been in a million different things but none of them ever seem to be the things I think I remember him being in, and who recently popped up in the ignoble periphery of a beloved actor and internet personality's recent revelations about child abuse on the set of a film Keith somehow was directing.  If you're unfamiliar with that sad tale, I'll leave you to your own research and will only say that I'm sorry the gentleman in question--he'll always seem like a kid to me even though he's literally only six months younger than I am--had to deal with trauma.

Anyway, re: fictional horrors: White of the Eye is no Performance nor do I think I'd call it a horror movie.  I'm genuinely not sure what it is.  I don't know if I'd say it's good but it's definitely not bad nor is it mediocre.  It's got an art film's lurching sensibility, all ambition and confusion.  It's also, bizarrely and perhaps should be mentioned, a Golan-Globus era Cannon distribution, which might well lead one to assume it's a low budget exploitation film; I would say it doesn't feel like a big budget movie (though it's well-acted and well-shot enough) but, despite the subject matter, doesn't ooze with sleaze the way an exploitation movie ought to.  Would I recommend it to anyone?  Probably not, not unless they were a huge fan of Performance and wanted to see what the writer and co-director of that one went on to.  Would I tell anyone not to see it?  Probably not; it's not a bad movie, just a strange and disjointed one that has occasional moments of visual poetry mixed in with moments of "What am I watching?"