Product Details

• Actors: Kaylani Lei, jessica drake, Charmane Star, Lezley Zen, Monica Sweetheart
• Directors: Brad Armstrong
• Format: NTSC
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Number of discs: 1
• Studio: Wicked Pictures
• DVD Release Date: September 15, 2004
• Run Time: 146 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (192 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000HEV8P0
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #186,993 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

This problematic thriller boasts several inspired elements, especially intelligent, committed performances by leads Ewan McGregor and Ashley Judd, both of whom have become hot commodities. Fans should definitely investigate their incisive work here, even if McGregor and Judd's talents are ultimately cast into a lost cause.

Judd plays a black-widow serial murderer named Joanna, who is systematically seducing and killing men who, in one way or another, are outside the ordinary. (Among her victims is a blind mulimillionaire, played by Patrick Bergin, and a nasty loser portrayed, surprisingly, by Jason Priestley.) McGregor is on board as a British intelligence agent who happens to be following her. Referred to as "the Eye," McGregor's operative is a haunted man abandoned years before by his wife and daughter. His isolation is such that he holds imaginary conversations with the latter, and she advises him to take pity on Joanna and protect her even as she carries on with her monstrous mission.

That's precisely what he does, at a distance, ushering in comparisons to Hitchcock's classics about voyeurism and obsession, particularly Vertigo and Rear Window. (Allusions to Francis Coppola's The Conversation are unavoidable as well.) But despite the great material (the 1980 source novel by Marc Behm was highly praised by The New York Times) and a fascinating cast (including Geneviève Bujold and k.d. lang), Eye of the Beholder bogs down in Stephan Elliott's often thoughtless, obvious direction. Elliott (Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) grinds down several members of the cast by insisting on dreary, one-note performances, and he makes a long movie seem even longer by telegraphing story twists and other developments long before they happen. Justice would be served if one could extract Judd and McGregor's appearances here and graft them onto a better movie, but so it goes. --Tom Keogh

Product Description

An erotic thriller with no equal, Brad Armstrong brings Eye of the Beholder to life with amazing special effects and an intriguing story. Nominated for 11 AVN Awards and winner of Best DVD from DVD Empire, Kaylani Lei is Sonya, a transplant patient who gets more than vision from her donor. Strange dreams haunt Sonya almost immediately after surgery. She is tormented with terrifying visions of her donors' death and becomes determined to solve the mystery of her sudden death. Her quest brings her face to face with chilling details of her donors demise. Will Sonya bring the killers to justice? It s all in the Eye of the Beholder.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Two psychotics find a deeper psychosis, June 17, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Eye of the Beholder (DVD)

This movie is so bad that I'm sure that someone will like it. A twelve-year-old's idea of an "art" film. Lots of cute effects and disconnected scenes, as one crazy stalks another for far too long. For me it just went from bad to horrid to utterly awful, finishing with an ending that plumbed the depths of pointlessness....

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Pointless, May 31, 2000

By 

"ericakb" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eye of the Beholder (DVD)

This movie is probably the worst storyline I have ever seen. Ewan MacGregor follows Ashley Judd around for months, spying on her & supposedly keeping her safe from harm. He looks into her background - finds out she was abandoned as a child by her father, feels empathy for her - because his wife took off with his daughter. A daughter he imagines seeing throughout the entire movie. There is no real plot, other thank that and the ending is pathetic. "I wish you love", indeed! Do not waste your money or time on this movie.

52 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars It does matter who plays a role., April 18, 2002

By 

Jessica Davis (Las Cruces, NM) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eye of the Beholder (DVD)

...it protrays a wicked serial killer but spends most of its time focusing on how someone might sympathize with her, not on either condemning her or objectively portraying the grisly nature of her crimes. There are no grounds of sympathy for her, but the movie seems to portray her as somehow understandably worthy of sympathy, by running by us the VAGUEST suggestions that something from her past "made her what she is". But leaving that something so vague just compounds the already gross impertinance of pointing to any "reason" why anyone should treat her sympathetically. She even seduces and kills a blind man, for heaven's sake! Secondly, when we look at good and worthy movie portrayals of mass murderers, we can be confident that the actor IS acting, for pete's sake. When Anthony Hopkins played Hannibal Lecter, that WAS acting, we all know that, don't we? He was above suspicion that he the actor was just acting out his ultimate fantasy. If a movie is to be made about a female serial killer of men, it might have a chance (with better writing than this!) to succeed similarly if cast in the killer role were some versatile actress like Jodie Foster or Laura Dern. Then we could know that it was acting. But take an actress who prides herself on a self-chosen nickname of "ball-buster" and cast her in that role, and it seems less like acting than playing out her fondest fantasy! That is what makes this so grisly and macabre. If such an actress is to play a killer at all, let's at least make it seem like acting by having her kill some women as well as men, or maybe having her hijack a plane with both men and women on board, or let her pressure-boil someone's pet rabbit. But this movie must be a sort of one-up-manship that intentionally blurs the distinction between performer and role. I've sometimes liked one-up-mansnip when it was comedy, but this is just sickening. We were badly in need of seeing Ashley Judd prove that she has a human soul above the haunting suspicion that her movie roles are a terrifying window into her psyche. I still hold out hope that she will do that. But this movie is reallly a downturn in any road to that happening, just when we least needed it.