WHITE OF THE EYE

A Tucson woman arrives at her stylish, isolated home one afternoon and busies herself, oblivious to the black-gloved intruder hiding in her living room. Having already upset her pet fish, the trespasser then pounces upon his prey. She is just the latest in a string of suburban housewives to have been killed in their own homes...

Not too far away, audio equipment installer Paul (David Keith) returns from his latest job to the sleepy little town of Globe where his pretty wife Joan (Cathy Moriarty) waits loyally with their daughter Danielle (Danielle Smith).

Paul and Joan enjoy a healthy relationship, one that is still extremely physical despite it emerging that he has a history of sleeping around. Perhaps it's a facet of his Native American heritage that he's subconsciously retained a thirst for spiritual freedom despite clearly loving his wife.

As they make love and generally go about their lives, we learn through fragmented flashbacks how Paul and Joan first got together: she was travelling across America with her then-boyfriend Mike (Alan Rosenberg) when she poured coffee into his stereo and he stopped to get it fixed by sound system expert Paul. The three formed an odd friendship, but somewhere along the line Paul ran off with Joan.

Back in the present tense, the latest murder has occurred across the street from where Paul's carrying out his latest installation job. One detective, Charles (Art Evans), is quick to approach Paul - noting how the tyre tracks made by his vehicle also match those found at the last victim's house.

Charles' investigation is initially a laidback one. He effectively leans gently on Paul but gathers steam when he uncovers his suspect's wayward past and encourages Globe's laconic local lawmen to take Paul into consideration too. Paul remains calm and a little bemused by their subsequent questioning. Tensions grow, however, when his affair with local hussy Ann (Alberta Watson) comes to the fore - and she is found murdered shortly afterwards.

As the finer details of how Joan and Paul first hooked up continue to be drip-fed to us in flashbacks, and she has a chance encounter with a fresh-out-of-prison Mike, even she starts to doubt her husband's innocence...

Taking its title from a reference to a Native American-Indian superstition, the late Donald Cammell's 1987 thriller remains a curious, singular proposition.

The screenplay, adapted by Cammell and his then-partner China Kong from Andrew and Laurence Klavan's novel "Mrs White", finds many interesting things to comment upon: small town mentalities; the blurring between love and sex; the bastardisation of Native American culture and beliefs; how TV was already replacing reality as far back as in the late 80s; the correlation between music and mood, etc. And yet it frequently loses sight of such aspirations, attempting also to be both a probing character study (semi-successfully) and a conventional thriller. It's in this last respect that EYE falters most, its stunning visual compositions and impressively eclectic pop culture-driven soundtrack (everything from Mahler to Hot Chocolate) being replaced by flat TV movie aesthetics, choppy editing and Nick Mason's matinee melodrama score.

When the film works, it works extremely well. Prime examples are its two major murder set-pieces. The first features hyper-stylised colours and camerawork, as well as tight edits (55 shots in just 2 minutes) to jar the viewer into thinking they've witnessed something far more explicit than what's shown. It's a masterful sequence. The second pays clear homage to Mario Bava's BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, as well as taking time out to provide a priceless 'looking-one's-own-death-in-the-eye' moment that feels like it's been ripped straight out of a Dario Argento film. It helps that this scene is also quite beautiful to remark upon.

About 60% of the film really impresses on a visual level. The remainder looks strangely like a Channel 5 afternoon movie. These scenes are thankfully elevated by the consistently interesting, varied soundtrack and the calibre of performances by Moriarty and - especially - Keith. His ambiguous turn really drives the film, or at least it does until the final 10 minutes practically derail the 100 minutes of build-up that precede them.

A film that begs to be viewed more than once, WHITE OF THE EYE is as accomplished as it is frustrating. I say the latter, because for all its frequent flashes of brilliance it never quite achieves that standard as a whole.

Arrow Films Video bring WHITE OF THE EYE to blu-ray for the first time anywhere in the world. In fact, their offering is two-disc blu-ray/DVD combo affair. Considering its rather spotty history on home video the world over during the last three decades, this is something of a coup. What's more, it looks very good indeed.

A 4k restoration process has been undertaken from the original camera negative for this new 1080p transfer, and the results are both bold and vivid, as well as being satisfyingly filmic throughout.

A fine layer of natural grain works with fine detail on close-ups and agreeable depth during wider scenes to reveal complete restraint when it comes to unwelcome noise reduction. Meanwhile, the film's natural softness has been adhered to in favour of any ugly edge enhancement having been employed.

The flashback sequences are gritty and grain-filled, but this was the intention of the filmmakers and is explained further in one of the disc's featurettes.

English audio is provided in 2.0 stereo, and is given a very healthy LPCM treatment. It's a robust, reliable mix which also benefits from well-written optional English subtitles.

The disc opens to an animated main menu page. From there, a pop-up scene-selection menu allows access to the film via 12 chapters.

Extras begin with a thorough, flab-free audio commentary track on the main feature by Cammell biographer Sam Umland. He elaborates more on the filmmakers' history and how he came attracted to this project, as well as discussing Kong's background and the locations used. The meatiest aspect of this track is undoubtedly his dissection of the film's themes and the motifs - sex, mirrors, identity and so on - that continue not only through this flick but in Cammell's other works (PERFORMANCE, WILD SIDE etc) too.

Umland is also on hand to proffer a commentary track through Cammell's early 11-minute short film, "The Argument". This is a haunting piece which looks to have been sourced from video elements and upscaled to 1080p. Still, it remains a worthwhile proposition for fans and the curious alike.

"The Ultimate Performance" is the highlight of the bonus material on offer here. It's a 73-minute BBC documentary from 1998, filmed two years after Cammell committed suicide (something he'd always intimated he would someday do). The likes of Mick Jagger, Barbara Steele, Nicolas Roeg and more are present to chat candidly about the "beautiful" young artist who moved through the hippy movement, loved freely, and brought unorthodox methods to the concept of film direction. James Fox offers some great anecdotes from the back of a taxi, but the best snippets come from interview footage with Cammell himself. He comes across as erudite, pensive and intense - but affable with it.

"Into the White" is an 11-minute interview with cinematographer Larry McConkey. He reveals how he turned up on the film's set only to discover he was one of two DPs hired. As the shoot wore on, he realised that Cammell was prone to such trickery - seemingly wanting to antagonise everyone on his crew. This candid chat doesn't paint the director in a great light personality-wise and is all the more fascinating for it.

A 2-minute alternate opening credits sequence is not much different to the one that made the final cut; 11 minutes of pre-'bleach bypass' footage reveals what the flashback scenes looked like before the aforementioned process was used to rough them up.

This set also comes with a DVD featuring all of the above in standard definition, as well as a collectors' booklet including notes by Brad Stevens, Elliott Kastner and Umland.

WHITE OF THE EYE perhaps hasn't aged greatly and is certainly overrated by some (most likely, those who owned copies of it during its hard-to-find phase). But that doesn't mean it's not a good film; it has lots of strong points, and is still well worth a watch or two. And it remains pretty unique within the realm of 80s horror-thrillers.

Arrow's package is a sterling one.

Also available in Steelbook packaging.

By Stuart Willis