The Headless Eyes

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The Headless Eyes
Promotional poster
Directed by	Kent Bateman
Written by	Kent Bateman
Produced by	Ron Sullivan (as Henri Pachard)[1]
Starring	Bo Brundin Ramon Gordon Kelly Swartz Ann Wells
Production company	Laviniaque Films
Distributed by	J.E.R. Pictures Cinema Shares International Distribution
Release date	October 27, 1971 (1971-10-27)
Running time	78 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

The Headless Eyes is a 1971 American exploitation horror film written and directed by Kent Bateman.

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The film depicts an artist named Arthur Malcolm (Bo Brundin) who sneaks into a woman's bedroom and tries to steal the money off her nightstand to pay his rent. Mistaking the thief for a rapist, the woman pushes his eye out with a spoon from her evening tea and knocks him out the second-story window. After being gawked at with his eye dangling from his head and the ultimate loss of his eye, Arthur becomes a serial killer and uses his victims' eyes in his artwork.

• Bo Brundin as Arthur Malcolm
• Gordon Ramon
• Kelley Swartz
• Mary Jane Early

The film was produced by Ron Sullivan (credited as Henri Pachard), a cinematographer with a background in pornographic films.^[1] The film's director, Kent Bateman, is the father of actors Justine and Jason Bateman.^[1]

The film was distributed by J.E.R. Pictures, an independent company based in Times Square, New York City, who paired it as a double feature with The Ghastly Ones (1968).^[1] It opened in Canandaigua, New York on October 27, 1971 as part of this double feature.^[2] Though it received an X rating due to violence, the film was a box-office success.^[1]

The film was released on DVD by Wizard Video on July 16, 2013.^[3] Code Red released a Blu-ray edition of the film featuring two alternate cuts on December 6, 2016.^[4]

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Joseph A. Ziemba from Bleeding Skull! gave the film a positive review, writing, "Unkempt and gloomy, yet somehow radiant, the mind-bending Headless Eyes is a touchpoint for every element that makes nonconformist 70s trash-horror cinema so enduring today. As soon as “The End” rolls around, you’ll want to watch it again."^[5] On his website Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings, Dave Sindelar gave the film a negative review, calling it "pointless, pretentious, annoying, and no fun at all".^[6]

Film scholars Bill Landis and Michelle Clifford write in Sleazoid Express (2002): "With murder scenes choreographed like slow-moving sex assaults, The Headless Eyes is true to the psychosexual underpinnings of blood horror...  Ultimately, [it] earns its place in the exploitation pantheon because it's as isolated, weird, and discordant as its main character."^[7]

• Landis, Bill; Clifford, Michelle (2002). Sleazoid Express: A Mind-Twisting Tour Through the Grindhouse Cinema of Times Square. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-743-21583-1.

• The Headless Eyes at IMDb
• The Headless Eyes at Rotten Tomatoes

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