User Reviews

This so-called giallo (rather late entry into the genre if this was filmed in 1994) tells the story of a masked murderer who is attacking women and a police detective trying to find out the killer's identity before a beautiful comic book illustrator becomes the next victim.

"Madness" AKA "Eyes Without A Face (which comes up in the closing credits), is a pretty sloppily put together piece of cinema. Although it's currently extremely hard to track down a copy (there is no current VHS or DVD release, bootleg copies only, it seems), it doesn't reward anyone who goes to the trouble of finding it. The plot is pretty thin, the killer seems to be copying a character in a comic book called "Doctor Dark" and the pretty young illustrator of the comic seems to be the focus of the killer's attention. First of all you need to know that the pretty young illustrator is played by one of the worst actresses in any Italian giallo I have ever seen. Together with they guy who plays her boyfriend, she pretty much drags the whole story into the gutter. There are unfortunately several scenes where she is called upon to scream and panic or freak out in terror after nightmares, and she completely ruins it every time. In scenes where she is in hysterics and being "calmed" by her boyfriend, the pair of them look as though they are barking at each other like hyperactive dogs. The English dub is terrible, but for once that isn't to blame for this poor display of ham acting.

One factor that might have saved the film is the grisly murders, as the murderer's methods are quite shocking: first he incapacitates his victims with a hypodermic syringe to the neck, then gouges out their eyes with some kind of extended fork, then he sticks broken glass into the empty sockets, and finally he shoves the fork up their nose to impale their brain. He then makes off with the eyeballs! This all sounds awesome/disgusting, but the presentation of it on screen is very disappointing. It only really happens once, and this is in the first 10 minutes of the film. The shots of the dead victim's mutilated face look quite gruesome, but the actual murder itself is very badly filmed - and no other deaths in the film are shown in any detail at all.

So what we do have is a central cast of really bad actors (the slimy police inspectors are as bad as the central couple), and bunch of poor special effects with perhaps the one good shot of the first victim (oh and while she's alive she can't act either), and a "whodunnit" plot which to be fair does deliver a twist ending that you might not guess. But there's very little to enjoy. The central idea of the killer copying a comic book character might have gone somewhere but even that is wasted - the few times that any illustrations from the comic are seen on camera reveals some really pitifully poor drawings that would never make publication let alone be a "sensation".

It's disappointing to search for a rare film and then be let down like I was by "Madness" - and to think people are reviewing it as one of Bruno Mattei's better films...oh dear

If you look at the majority of films from the Italian exploitation directors of the late seventies and early eighties, many of them worked within similar – if not identical genres. After Fulci's 'Zombi 2' was a major box office success, Umberto Lenzi (Nightmare City), Marino Girolami (Zombie Holocaust), Andrea Bianchi (Burial Ground) Claudio Fragasso (After Death) and Joe D'Amato (Erotic Nights of the Living Dead) all jumped on the bandwagon to helm their own gory genre-additions. The same could be said about Ruggero Deodato's Jungle Holocaust, which led to the production of movies like Cannibal Ferox (Umberto Lenzi), Mountain of the Cannibal God (Sergio Martino) and Antonio Margheriti's Cannibal Apocalypse. But still by far their biggest contribution to Horror cinema has been the Giallo, which to those that don't know is basically the Italian version of the American slasher movie – only the Giallo came first. You can blame Mario Bava. His 1963 and 1964 murder/mysteries (The Girl who knew too much and Blood and Black Lace) are in fact credited with launching the cycle. If you check through the filmographies of any of the Euro exploitation titans that were working throughout the years that followed, then you're sure to find a Giallo lurking in there somewhere.

It came as a surprise then when I learned that Bruno Mattei (arguably the sleaziest filmmaker of them all – and the first to jump on the bandwagon)) - hadn't blessed the genre with his own contribution right up until 1994. Now I know that the Italians kept working with the slasher/giallo category long after the Americans had realised that the cash-cow had been well and truly milked; - but by 1994, I reckon that even cinema fans in New Guinea were aware that masked killers were truly a thing of the past. Perhaps that explains why Eyes without a Face (Gli Occhi Dentro - surprisingly NOT a remake of George Franju's classic of the same name)) has become such a tough little cookie to track down. Even the copy that I eventually found was coverless, subtitled in French and was almost unwatchable due to the poor quality.

Artist Giovanni Dai (Monica Seller) comes under fire from the media when a masked maniac begins emulating the murders committed by the lead character in her comic Doctor Dark. It tells the tale of a murderous schizophrenic that spends his days working as a Pagan professor, but spends his nights murdering babysitters. The assassin then removes his victim's eyeballs and places broken glass over the bleeding sockets. Before long the slaughters begin getting closer and closer to Giovanni and her boyfriend and it's left up to the dedicated detective Callistrati (Anthony Zequila) and his squad to stop the psychopath before he finally reaches her…

Eyes without a Face begins with a surprisingly engaging scene, which hints at the argument that violence in home entertainment has a huge effect on behaviour in the community. This is a popular debate that has stretched from books to cinema and more recently video games and it still rages on even today. "If they kill someone with a power drill, do they take it out on Black and Decker?" Giovanni asks sarcastically. I guess that it depends on your own personnel views whether you agree with that statement or maybe you look at it from a different perspective. Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that this topic is being discussed by a character in a movie directed by Bruno Mattei; a filmmaker that has never been credited for showing intelligence in his works. In fact, this feature does a fair amount to disprove the fallacy that Mattei doesn't have a shred of talent in his body and is just an exploitive hack – something that his critics will always leap to acknowledge. Some of the photography is smartly planned and exciting, the score's brilliantly orchestrated, the gore's fairly restrained and he even manages to create a large amount of suspense in a number of the stalking scenes.

The mystery is fairly well constructed and should keep you guessing up until the slightly over ambitious climax. There are also a few moments when Mattei unleashes a few of his trademarks. The first murder victim suffers a particularly graphic eye impalement, which brought back fond memories of Margit Evelyn Newton's infamous fate in Zombie Creeping Flesh. It doesn't take too long either for Monica Seller to rip off her clothes and straddle her boyfriend – another of Mattei's necessities. But that's all you'll get in the gore and nudity department, even if the other murders are hardly 'family viewing material'. The inspiration for the feature looks to have stemmed mainly from Umberto Lenzi's Eyeball; however the killer dresses in a black mask and fedora like a more familiar Giallo bogeymen. He also heavy breathes like an American 'slasher' - so it's obvious that Bruno had taken a dose of the genre's American counterparts before production.

After a promising start the pace does huff and puff somewhat until the climax and a few more murders would have been nice. It's also a shame that this was yet another victim of abysmal dubbing for the English speaking market, which made the movie even tougher to appreciate. Even so, the net result is a fairly decent murder mystery that should push the right buttons for fans of the slasher/Giallo genre. It's only a shame it's as rare as a bus in the rain, because it may have done a fair bit to boost Mattei's debatable cinematic reputation. Give it a try if you can manage to track it down. You may even find that you're pleasantly surprised

Also known as Gli occhi dentro (The Eyes Inside) and Occhi senza volto (Eyes Without a Face), this Bruno Mattei* giallo - made a few decades late, but hey, give the man a break - tells the story of Giovanna Dei (Monica Carpanese, who is also in Mattei's Dangerous Attraction and Legittima Vendetta). She's the creator of a comic book called Doctor Dark, the tale of an anti-hero who is a Pagan professor by day and a babysitter killer by night, cutting out his victim's eyes and replacing them with shards of broken glass. Now, someone is acting out the murders in real life and leaving the ocular evidence in her apartment.

Written by Lorenzo De Luca - who is writing the upcoming Anthropophagus 2 and The Fourth Horsemen which will have Franco Nero as Keoma and Fred Williamson as Cobra, as well as appearances by Mick Garris Alex Cox, Ruggero Deodato, Fabio Testi, Enzo G. Castellari, Gianni Garko, Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, R. A. Mihailoff, Massimo Vanni and more - and shot by much of the same crew that worked on the aforementioned Dangerous Attraction.

There's a fair amount of story taken from Tenebre - taking the line "If they kill someone with a power drill, do they take it out on Black and Decker?" directly from Peter Neal's question in Argento's movie "Let me ask you something? If someone is killed with a Smith and Wesson revolver...do you go and interview the president of Smith and Wesson?" - with art becoming real-life murder, and Doctor Dark's trick of putting glass into the eye sockets of his victims feels a lot like Manhunter. And, of course, there's Eyeball to be taken from as well. And the entire story of Sexy Cat. But the most grievous theft is in the Italian VHS release of this film, which completely takes two murder scenes from Lamberto Bava's A Blade in the Dark. Did they think no one would notice?

That said, it may just be the fact that I love giallo and am a Bruno Mattei apologist, but I found myself liking this movie. You'd have to be a superfan of both for me to recommend it to you, but if you are, come on over and watch it with me.

*Using the name Herik Montgomery.

EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1994, original title Occhi senza volto, aka MADNESS) isn't a remake of the old '50s French classic but instead a derivative little giallo film from schlock purveyor Bruno Mattei (of ZOMBIE CREEPING FLESH and RATS: NIGHT OF TERROR infamy). Made in the dying days of Italian genre cinema, this one involves a young female artist who finds herself menaced by a homicidal maniac with a penchant for plucking out his victims' eyeballs! In a twist, the killer dresses up as a black-clad comic book character (shades of Bava's DANGER: DIABOLIK). Almost inevitably given Mattei's presence and the lack of money, this is a lacklustre affair that manages just a handful of unpleasantly gory moments and is content to rip-off Argento's TENEBRAE elsewhere.

Life imitates art when "Doctor Dark", a popular comic book depicting the adventures of a college professor-cum-serial killer, begins offing babysitters in its storyline. The real-life counterpart removes the eyes from its victims and leaves them as gifts for its creator, graphic artist Giovanna Dei, who is also taking a ton of heat from the press as she vigorously defends her art while denying any connection between current pop-culture and real-life violence ("If they kill someone with a power drill, do they take it out on Black and Decker?"). When the police arrest a crusading reporter for stalking Giovanna and attacking her boyfriend, Inspector Callistrati thinks he's caught the killer -but those connected to the comic continue to die...

EYES WITHOUT A FACE has no connection to Georges Franju's 1959 horror classic but does tread the familiar territory of the 1970s Italian giallo cycle. Fumetti characters coming to life and going on a killing spree had been done before in 1973's SEXY CAT and a number of the genre's conventions get a good workout here: an imperiled protagonist, a multitude of red herrings, a black-gloved/trench-coated killer with an undetectable motive going back to childhood, and a few mild set-pieces and surprises thrown in for good measure. Schlock director Bruno Mattei doesn't have a particularly good reputation overall but acquits himself rather nicely in this, his only giallo outing. The by-now oft-told tale has a timeliness that can still resonate: the entire premise/plot line was reworked in a recent episode of U.S. TV's CRIMINAL MINDS and the message seems to be that, yes, fantasy violence is a vicious circle and can be very dangerous, indeed.