Dead Man's Eyes (1944) was the third of Universal’s Inner Sanctum mystery supporting
features starring Lon Chaney Jr. In casting one of its horror stars and
sometimes straying tangentially into darker material, the series earns a
mention in horror reviews. After that year’s Weird Woman (see earlier review), the next in line was a bit of a
marketing red-herring. The title promises one of those lurid, by-now familiar
genre plots concerning donor organs transmitting their owner’s homicidal
impulses into a new host. The actual story is much more a crime whodunnit where
the results of the grafting matter less than the love triangle and murder
sleuthery. If you think that’s disappointing, you haven’t seen the woeful
performances under the hack direction of Reginald LeBorg whose work we’ve
already endured in the previous film plus Jungle
Woman and The Mummy’s Ghost (also
1944).
Chaney plays
struggling painter Dave Stuart - on paper a suitable role suggesting the kind
of tortured soul possibilities that he was known for, particularly as the
cursed Larry Talbot in The Wolf Man
franchise. Initially, he’s a happy man with marriage to the lovely Heather Hayden
(Jean Parker) and her wealthy family to look forward to, while looking on with
smouldering jealousy is his dark-eyed model Tanya (Acquanetta). In the early
calm-before-the-storm scenes, as in other films Chaney always looks
unconvincing when called upon to convey the relaxed demeanour of the light
leading man. We know though that he is biding his time until he can get stuck
into some no-doubt masochistic heavy lifting.
There is no
such relief for (or from) Acquanetta however who is utterly wooden throughout
the entire picture. We’ve already
experienced her as the titular Captive
Wild Woman and Jungle Woman in
which the studio tried to project a raw, native islander image for the real
life Mildred Davenport of Wyoming. In those films her lack of talent squeaked
by, passed off as a hypnotised other-worldly exoticism. Here in a modern-dress
role she is more exposed than in a jungle loin-cloth, her character’s
profession only being apt since it would allow her long periods of
inexpressiveness.
Fortunately
it isn’t long before Chaney’s awkward bliss crash-dives into screaming reality
when he accidentally bathes his tired eyes with acetic acid instead of eyewash,
resulting in crippling blindness. Dr Wells (the Blondie series’ Jonathan Hale) warns that “His mental state will
not be good for a while” – tragically good news for horror fans.
Less welcome
is the opportunity the plot complexities keep providing for Acquanetta to
demonstrate sub-zero emotional temperature. Tanya feels guilty, if you can
tell, confessing to Dave’s prospective father-in-law Daddy Hayden (Edward
Fielding) that she may have mistakenly placed the wrong bottle near Dave. “You must believe me”, she pleads drearily. Hayden rounds on her, matching her
mahogany dressing-table with a fitted wardrobe of his own bad acting.
“You…you…“, he emotes, waiting for an interruption that awkwardly never
arrives.
Tanya then positions herself as Dave’s nurse. Was this a scheme of
hers all along? It’s impossible to say as she’s unable to telegraph any subtlety of nuance.
In that
respect so is the screenplay, the first by LeBorg collaborator Dwight V Babcock
who went on to supply either full scripts for a multitude of low-grade horror
films or storylines (e.g. Rondo Hatton 1946 ‘Creeper’ vehicles House of Horrors and The Brute Man). His dialogue works on
fewer levels than a broken elevator, sabotaging even those of the supporting
cast who are semi-decent, forcing them to simply state their innermost thoughts
in clunking exposition. When Daddy Hayden is found dead after offering to
donate Dave his corneas post-mortem, Dave, who is found by Helen at the scene,
becomes chief suspect. This prompts Thomas Gomez (blustery Count Seebruck in The Climax), who fancies himself the
amateur shrink, to aim his portly Capt. Drury at psychiatrist Alan Bittaker
scoping for motivational insights. “Blindness is a serious thing to happen to
an artist” he observes, proving he shouldn’t give up the cop day job just yet.
By sheer coincidence,
Paul Kelly who plays Bittaker was in real life convicted of manslaughter
himself in 1927 after the involuntarily fatal beating he gave to lover Dorothy
Mackaye’s abusive ex-husband Ray Raymond. He was paroled in 1927 and rebuilt
his life and career leading to a Tony Award (a tie with Basil Rathbone and
Henry Fonda) for Broadway’s 1947-8 season in Command Decision.
Regular
readers of my column will know of my fondness for studying horror movie
newspaper front pages and Babcock’s screenplay hits us with such unsubtle gems
as ‘BLIND MURDER SUSPECT TO RECEIVE DEAD MAN’S EYES’ for those who were out
getting alcohol or sedatives when this plot information was already clearly
given. For added amusement, to the right of the aforementioned header is a
nostalgia piece about a boxer titled ‘LOOKS BACK TO GOOD OLD DAYS’, the kind of
unintentional pun that has me always freeze-framing these covers when they
appear.
With films
as bad as this you must find your entertainment value where you can because
there’s very little that’s deliberate. After Tanya is mercifully silenced by a
shadowy figure, Drury remarks a priceless tribute upon admiring Dave’s portrait:
“That’s a great painting of her. Captures her warmth and her passion”. Since
nether quality was evident in the sitter’s performance, it’s only fitting that
it actually looks like someone else.
Dead Man’s Eyes could have redeemed itself if
reworked as a full-blooded B-movie horror vehicle in which the eye graft
possessed the power to plague Chaney with visions of, let’s say, real guilt for
example, or if he was the beneficiary of a killer’s peepers as the grisly covert
experiment of a mad scientist (Karloff, Lugosi or if wet, George Zucco).
Instead, we are treated to am-dram theatrics of Alan being in love with Tanya
and Heather propositioned by lounge-lizard Nick, who dissolves later into the
seemingly incriminating gibber: “You’re all against me!” By the time we
discover Dave concealed the success of his eyesight restoration to catch the real
killer, I was longing for some unrestrained nuttiness to liven up the
soap-opera.
Despite the
solved mystery, when it comes to quality film-making the team behind Dead Man’s Eyes haven’t a clue.
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