Customer Reviews

Twisted Terror Collection (Deadly Friend / Dr. Giggles / Eyes of a Stranger / From Beyond the Grave / The Hand / Someone's Watching Me)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Someone else has already said which films are in this set, so I will add detailed descriptions of each featured film:

From Beyond the Grave (1973) Peter Cushing - 4/5 - Cushing hosts this anthology of four tales that is pretty good if you are a fan of British style horror. The shortness of the four tales keeps things moving along nicely so that you don't get bored. What holds the stories together is that Cushing plays the owner of an antique shop whose customers meet supernaturally tragic fates if they try to wrong him.

Someone's Watching Me (1978) - Stars Lauren Hutton and David Birney, directed by John Carpenter - 4/5 - Lauren Hutton is a woman being stalked by a neighbor across from her apartment. He calls her, sends her gifts, and watches her through his telescope. When she can't get the police to take her seriously, she has to take on her tormenter herself along with her boyfriend and a woman that works at the same TV station as she. This is actually a well-done film that was made for TV. The features are:
Anamorphic Widescreen Presentation
English, French and Spanish Mono
English, French and Spanish subtitles
New Featurette "John Carpenter: Director Rising"

The Hand (1981) - stars Michael Caine, directed by Oliver Stone - 3/5 - The idea is simple enough. Jonathan Lonsdale is a comic book artist whose right hand is severed in a car accident. The hand takes on a life of its own and kills everyone who annoys or wrongs Jon. Although not great, good direction by Stone and good acting by Michael Caine as the tortured artist really save this one. It's not meant to be so much horror as a character study of Lonsdale, and on that level it works. The features are:
Anamorphic Widescreen Presentation
English and Spanish Dolby Surround
English, French and Spanish subtitles
Commentary by Oliver Stone
Theatrical Trailer

Eyes of a Stranger (1981) - Lauren Tewes and Jennifer Jason Leigh - 2/5 - This is your typical immediate post Jason/Michael Myers kind of slasher movie that was prevalent at the time. Tewes, of "Loveboat" fame, is a reporter on the trail of a neighbor that she believes is a serial killer. And of course, what would a 1980 era slasher film be without the helpless girl waiting to be a victim, Jason Leigh, the blind and deaf sister of Tewes. Not very interesting or thrilling at all except for the fact that this is Leigh's film debut. The features are:
Anamorphic Widescreen Presentation
English, French and Spanish Mono
English, French and Spanish subtitles
Theatrical Trailer

Deadly Friend (1986) stars Matthew Laborteaux (Little House on the Prairie) and Kristy Swanson (Buffy in the original BTVS movie) directed by Wes Craven - 2.5/5 - Laborteaux plays Paul, a new kid in a strange town whose only real friends are the girl next door, Samantha (Kristy Swanson), and a robot that he has built. When Samantha is murdered by her abusive father, Paul steals Samantha's body and implants his robot's microchips into her brain to bring her back to life. However she is merely reanimated rather than "alive" in the moral sense, and soon becomes out of control. I have to say it's not like any other Craven film I've seen, and it comes across more cheesy than anything else. It does have one extremely original thing going for it - death by basketball. What a hoot. The features are:
Anamorphic Widescreen Presentation
English, French and Spanish Mono
English, French and Spanish subtitles
Theatrical Trailer

Dr. Giggles (1992) - Holly Marie Combs (Charmed) and Glenn Quinn (Angel) - 2.5/5 - Larry Drake, the villain in "Darkman", plays the insane son of a mass-murdering doctor. Drake's character escapes from his confinement, sets up practice as a doctor in the town where his father was caught, and comes up with all kinds of inventive ways of killing his patients as a means of avenging his dad. The worst thing a horror film can be is boring, and it seems the film makers had this in the front of their minds because they are so busy juggling activity that the picture literally becomes cramped with action. Much could have been cut from the script and they would have had a better movie. The features are:
Anamorphic Widescreen Presentation
English Dolby Surround
English, French and Spanish subtitles

I didn't show any extra features for "From Beyond the Grave" because the Warner press release doesn't specifically mention any. The extra features on the whole package really just add up to the commentary by Oliver Stone on "The Hand" and the featurette about John Carpenter on "Someone's Watching Me". Because of the paucity of extra features in this set I just averaged my ratings of the individual movies in the set to get my final rating of three out of five stars.

Since it is not included in the description, the collection includes the following titles:

1. Deadly Friend (Wes Craven)
2. Dr. Giggles
3. Eyes of a Stranger
4. From Beyond the Grave
5. The Hand (Oliver Stone)
6. Someone's Watching Me (John Carpenter)

Recipient of some of the decade's worst reviews, this film deserves a better fate. It has moments of sheer, unadulterated terror that makes the shower scene in Psycho look like Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood in terms of visceral impact. I'm not putting down the Master, but "Eyes of a Stranger" works as a tribute to him. I think he really would have enjoyed this film. It does what Hitchcock liked to do best, manipulate the audience.

Eyes of A stranger isn't the worst of its kind, and does offer some suspense and likeable characters. There is effective creepiness, such as the killer's cuckoo clock, and the phone calls are decidedly weird. There is way too much nudity however, the film revels in this. But it is an interesting game of cat and mouse as the newswoman makes it a personal vendetta with the rapist sicko. Jennifer Jason Leigh's performance is really great, very moving.

OMG! Dont let the "R" ratings listed on the sleeves fool you... Both EYES OF A STRANGER and DEADLY FRIEND are the super rare UNCUT versions that were given X-Ratings by the MPAA!

Whata treat! I wonder if Warner's knows this?

Lauren Tewes (of The Love Boat fame) and the talented Jennifer Jason Leigh (Single White Female, Dolores Claiborne) in her film debut star in this horror/suspense thriller about a killer who stalks, rapes and murders young women. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays Tracy, both deaf and blind from a molestation attack when she was a young girl. Lauren Tewes plays her sister Jane Harris, a gutsy TV reporter who blames herself for the attack on Tracy. One night in the parking garage, Jane witnesses some strange activity from one of the male tenants. She begins to keep tabs on the man as she hears of more young women being murdered in the area. Could the killer be the strange man she is spying on? Taking a key from the maintenance room, she breaks into his apartment and her suspicions are confirmed. Going even further, she calls him up on the phone and taunts him much like he does to his victims. Unfortunately, Jane makes a slip while giving a report on the news as the killer watches. Now he knows who she is and where she lives. While taking another look around his apartment she notices the man from across the way in her apartment attacking Tracy. With an explosive finale, Eyes of a Stranger is a rare gem of a movie released during the horror slasher craze. Although this is more of a Hitchcock-inspired suspense film. Eyes of a Stranger also pre-dates many films where women are not helpless victims, but women who are capable of fighting back. I highly recommend this entertaining thriller!

The TWISTED TERROR COLLECTION consists of 5 horror movies of varying quality and frightfulness. SOMEONE'S WATCHING ME has Lauren Hutton as a woman victimized by a phone-stalker / homicidal maniac. This guy just won't quit! Hutton changes her number, moves, etc., but the freak keeps finding her! John Carpenter did his best within the suffocating limits of network TV. Adrienne Barbeau (The Fog, Creepshow) and Charles Cyphers (The Fog, Halloween 1+2, Assault On Precinct 13) co-star. EYES OF A STRANGER is about a TV news anchor (Lauren Tewes) who witnesses a man throwing away his bloody shirt, and believes he might be the very serial rapist / killer she's been reporting on! Not bad. This one features the infamous decapitation / fishtank scene! It's also Jennifer Jason Liegh's (The Hitcher, Single White Female) debut film. FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE gives us Peter Cushing as the owner of an odd little antique shop where any customers caught stealing from / cheating the owner are dealt with in strange and diabolical ways. This Amicus anthology is almost as good as TALES FROM THE CRYPT and ASYLUM. It has five stories w/ stars like David Warner (The Omen, Time After Time) and Donald Pleasence (Halloween 1+2, Raw Meat, Phenomena)! It's like a mini-classic collection within this collection! THE HAND is Oliver Stone's take on horror. We get Michael Caine (Dressed To Kill) as a cartoonist who loses his hand in a car accident. Weird things begin happening and people start dying. We don't know if it's the creeping hand or Michael Caine's crumbling mind causing the deaths! This one's goofy but fun. Wes Craven's DEADLY FRIEND is a completely ridiculous story about a teen who re-animates his ghoulfriend, only to have her go bananas and start killing people. Still, DF is somehow watchable, even addictive! I liked the characters (especially Samantha) and find myself watching this one a lot. Of course, I love Anne Ramsey's head-exploding-like-a-tomato-with-an-M80-stuck-in-it scene! I'm sick! DR. GIGGLES is a showcase for Larry Drake's (Darkman) skills as a darkly humorous psycho-surgeon w/ his black bag of (lethal) tricks. His one-liners and notorious chortling make this one a true creeper-keeper! Well, there's the lot. TWISTED TERROR is definitely worth owning...

So yes, 'Eyes of a Stranger' and 'Deadly Friend' are indeed completely uncut, and the sound and picture quality on all of these is superb, and the movies are...well, you're on your own there. I just wanted to note that every single DVD in this set is presented in what I guess you'd call anamorphic pan & scan, at a ratio of 1.78:1 or so (which fills up the entire screen on an HDTV, you see). This is fine for four out of the six movies here; they were originally 1.85:1, so there's very little difference. 'Someone's Watching Me!,' however, was originally 1.33:1 and is cropped on the top and bottom, and 'Dr. Giggles' was originally 2.35:1 and is presented in this ratio through a combination of cropping (on the sides) and unmatting (on the bottom). My guess is that the masters for all of these were originally made for use as programming material for HD movie channels, and were then just transferred to DVD.

Anyway, it's a perfectly competent pan & scan job, but if you were hoping to see these two films in their original ratios, you won't...and the packaging does very little to let you know this beforehand. ('Someone's Watching Me!' is presented in "a theatrical aspect ratio," which is a great way of saying nothing at all, and 'Dr. Giggles' is described as scope (ie, 2.35:1) while turning out to be nothing of the kind.)

1978's "Halloween" ignited a firestorm in the low budget film making industry and by 1980, a mere two years later, you saw slasher movies increasingly upping the ante and getting more and more graphic and explicit, some examples being "Maniac," "Don't Go in the House," and the Italian "Macabre."

One other notable example from this year was Ken Wiederhorn's suspense/terror film "Eyes of a Stranger," which was released by Georgetown Productions, the company that marketed the same year's original "Friday the 13th."

Though in his film guide Leonard Maltin dismisses "Eyes of a Stranger" as "utter trash," I find it to be one of the very best psycho chiller/thriller movies of the early '80s.

The plot concerns a sicko psycho who is terrorizing Miami in a series of rape/murders, and a TV newswoman (Lauren Tewes) who gets hunches as to his identity. When no one will believe her or support her case, she embarks on her own private quest to see justice served that eventually leads her into the creepy haunts of the killer's apartment. Finally, her younger sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who is blind, deaf and mute as a result of a childhood kidnapping, is established as a potential victim.

The opening scenes of this movie, in which the killer stalks and follows home a lovely bartender named Debbie (played by the gorgeous Gwen Lewis), sets the stage for the bite-your-nails level of suspense of the whole movie. The sicko first harasses her with a series of obscene, sick twisted heavy breathing phone calls that he makes from a nearby payphone (this was 30 years ago after all) and eventually enters her apartment.

As said in the header, "Eyes of a Stranger" takes its cues just as much from the Alfred Hitchcock traditions of suspense as it does from the more contemporary use of splatter effects (handled by the one and only Tom Savini) and gratuitous nudity. In addition to the aforementioned Gwen Lewis, a number of the women here are remarkably hot. I thought Jennifer Jason Leigh was adorable in 1982's "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and here at 18 in her film debut, she is really fine and even bares a bit of skin at the end.

Thus, despite the presence of Lauren Tewes, "the Love Boat" this movie ain't. It is definitely one for adults only and I wouldn't recommend anyone under 18 viewing it.

With its combination though of extremely suspenseful and well directed stalk and kill scenes and first rate acting by the two female leads, I consider "Eyes of a Stranger" to be a classic that will hopefully find the audience it deserves on DVD. Highly recommended to any fans of quality terror films.

Eyes of a Stranger
I saw this movie in the 80's have been searching for it to watch
over again. Found it on Amazon, very suspensful movie and of course
Lauren Tewes is a terrific actress. So glad I found it again now
I can watch whenever I want. Thank you Amazon